10 Video Games That Pissed Off Gamers Right Away
3. The Last Of Us Part II
The Last of Us Part II is an exhausting endurance trial of a game - a visually stunning marvel of engineering and design, but also a bleak 25-hour meditation on the ugliest aspects of the human condition.
Asking players to tough it out for such a lengthy, oppressively grim experience is quite the demand, especially when the game drops a shocking plot twist in their lap less than 10% into the main story.
At roughly the two-hour mark, the original game's protagonist Joel is savagely beaten to death by Abby, at which point the rest of the game unfolds via the perspectives of Ellie and Abby.
Given the connection players had to Joel and his relationship with Ellie, many were left deeply upset that he was killed off in what was effectively the prologue sequence of the sequel.
It's a classic sequel tactic, to wipe out the prior protagonist and reset the table, though at least in the case of The Last of Us Part II it felt dramatically motivated rather than the result of, say, an actor being unwilling to return for a whole new sequel (as often occurs in movies).
Whether the twist worked for you or not, it meant that a lot of disgruntled players spent the next 18-20 hours hatefully slogging their way through a game that had basically broken their heart early on. Bummer.