Words That Kill

Showing posts with label Grounded. Show all posts

Grounded: Fart In A Jar

I didn't intend to make another blog about the subject, but as I finish The Last of Us on Grounded Mode(The DLC super-difficulty), I just have to talk about it. Also, as I was looking through the other character clothing options I realized it never acknowledged my Hard completion. So that's annoying. Thankfully beating it on Grounded ticked the trophies for Survivor and Hard. Also spoilers.

#JustGroundedThings

The Enemy A.I. really doesn't do that much

The thing I talked about a lot in my previous blog is the "incredible A.I." that will distract you and flank you and try to get behind you or around you any way they could. Well, that's true. It's still more complex than the base difficulties.

One example is an enemy who lays down covering fire for his friend to move up. It was a little surprising to see something so well done, but sure enough an enemy sprayed-and-prayed to keep me behind cover while his friend moved up.

Another example of the newer and "smarter" A.I. would be an enemy that would sit behind cover and shoot train his weapon right on my position. If I were to ever aim my gun or try to move out of cover, he would fire and fire and fire seemingly forever. Like the above point it was great to see new things taken to extremes that, yeah, this guy would totally try to fucking murder me. Fun.

And the other example of one enemy, sneaked his way behind me without any prompt on my part, and killed the shit out of me while I had no idea he was even after me until he was running and grunting right behind me. I was too scared shitless to know what was even going on so I could have countered him, I just couldn't because god damn that was frightening.

The problem: It doesn't happen often enough to make it fun. In the early game, I was seeing all kinds of interesting and brutal shit from the A.I. I had never seen before, but that was about it. After the half way point in the game, give or take some chapters, it was back to "You got caught, the enemies will run to cover and wait for 10 minutes before doing anything". No enemies ever got proactive. No enemies ever decided to come after me. There was nothing new to be found anymore and it's such shit.

In a statement from Naughty Dog:

"The AI is relentless, smart, and brutal, and survival will be near impossible,"

Well... no. Not really. They are brutal, and survival was nearly impossible, but the enemies aren't relentless or smart. In fact, the enemies relented quite a bit.

In a game where life and death are mere seconds apart and checkpoints so far away, the companions block your movement and get in your way at every possible opportunity

How's that for a header?

The most immediate issue playing on Grounded: It made me hate the companions. Ellie, Bill, Sam and Henry. They constantly get in your way and just fucking stand there(!!!). There were, I'll say, hundreds of times where I'd be moving to cover to hide from an enemy, when what do I see but Ellie standing in the doorway and not moving so I have to keep pushing against her very awkwardly until she moves.

Not only do they block your movement, but they constantly get in your way. After discovering the meaning of true hatred during the wave-based-forced-combat-survival sequence near the end of the game with David, I really did think I was done with the difficulty. Enemies killing me? Sure why not. Missing important shots while dangerously low on ammo? Absolutely, it is a game after all! David CONSTANTLY GETTING IN FRONT OF ME AND BLOCKING MY SHOTS EVERY TIME ALWAYS FOREVER FUCK FUCK FUCK.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I have no shame. So I'm not ashamed in admitting that it took me over 30 tries and at least a couple of hours to get through that first sequence of survival with David in that hut while the infected are constantly coming at you. Most of the reasons is, well, it's fucking hard. But the other reason was it seemed liked David would get in my way whenever I aimed the rifle at someone running right at me. I died so many times because David got in the way, blocking a critical shot.

It would not have bothered me one bit if the checkpoints weren't stunted for this difficulty level.

A screenshot of the incredibly depressing alternate ending*

The checkpoints being fewer and farther in between feel more like a punishment than a challenge, especially in the late game

One thing I pointed out in my last blog was the fact that there are less checkpoints in Grounded mode. As I go through the game and the engagements get bigger and longer(Unf) it really does make death feel more like a punishment and less like a challenge.

For example: Through the final level of the game, the hospital segment, there is not a single checkpoint. You have to go through several floors of heavily armed, armored enemies who are packed tightly in a very small area all on one life. If you die, you're right back at the beginning of the level. And boy, is that fucked.

There was no amount of stress in a video game I have ever felt that compared to the constant failures during that last sequence. Worse still was when I managed to get a little further and then suddenly the stress multiplies. "Can I do it this time? No, probably not". But that didn't stop me. Although maybe it should have because I can just feel the years being shaved off of my lifespan after this ordeal.

Honestly though, the true difficulty in this game is the realistic-ish ways you can die on Grounded. For example, a headshot is instant death. But when an enemy melees you, you pretty much die instantly. When you get staggered or stunned or whatever state it is that Joel goes into after being punched, it initiates the instant kill animation and you die. So it's not that being punched is an instant death, it's that being punched leads to your instant death and there's no really anything you can do to stop it because you are stunned.

And there's nothing quite like going 25 minutes without a checkpoint to really solidify how fucking terrible it is to get punched in the face until you see that all too familiar black screen and have to do it all over again. Fuck.

This difficulty is like a magnifying glass that highlights every tiny little flaw until it's massive and unavoidable

Fuck you too, David

When you are constantly dying and having to play through a sequence time after time after time you start to pay attention to the small details. And I mean really pay attention to the small details.

Like how hopping over small ledges/railings/windows or anything that you can hop over will produce sound that the enemies can hear... only sometimes. The most mind-boggling of the small details, definitely. Sometimes I'll hop over a window and an enemy will hear it and come and investigate. Nope, no broken glass. Nope, I didn't bump into anything. They just decided to hear it for some reason. But then I'll hop over the wall right behind an enemy and he'll continue on with his day. It was always a gamble on when to jump when I couldn't truly depend on the mechanics to explain themselves.

Enemies only notice bodies in certain areas. Sometimes you'll kill a guy and his friend will see it and everyone will begin investigating the area. Sometimes they'll walk right over it and not say anything. It's never really explained why this happens but it makes some zones easier and some zones not so easy.

While facing infected: Aiming a weapon and standing up, you produce constant noise after a second or two. That's right. Stand still and aim your gun. You will alert the entire goddamn map to your presence.

While aiming a gun with infected around: Going from a crouched stance to a standing position will also alert the hoard.

While crouch-walking up stairs, your slowest speed is increased and therefore you make a bunch more noise that will alert the enemies. You may say, "Hey, aiming a weapon slows me down considerably! Perhaps I can aim my weapon to carefully climb these stairs!" Nope. Somehow moving with weapons will attract attention. Brownie points for trying, though.

I was having a lot of trouble with the part where you're with Sam in the sewer tunnels and all of those fucking infected. I spent so long trying to find out what I was doing wrong to constantly get killed or spotted by the infected. That's one of the few areas of the game I felt was truly unfair. I eventually got through it by getting super lucky but if there was one truly fucked area of the game, it was that one.

Companions don't know when to shut the fuck up. When you have some other people with you and you try sneaking, it makes it really hard when you get caught because running away does nothing. Henry, Bill, and Tommy both react poorly under stress and don't really understand "stay back and don't shoot at enemies". Of course you can't really say that so I guess it's not their fault. One example is the forced combat section with Tommy right after your horse gets Molotov'd. I kept trying to sneak but suddenly Tommy would start shooting at people and then they would instantly know where I was and I'd be dead. That was another sequence that gave me a lot of trouble that I just barely managed to get through. Also I had very little supplies for this one so that did not help me.

Bonus: If Ellie is immune to spores, how come the Bloater can kill her with spores? Food for thought.

Bonus: While Ellie is a companion, no enemy ever sees or hears her in stealth mode. But when you play as Ellie and you sneak around, enemies can see and hear you. How come she can turn into a phantom only sometimes? What is she hiding...

Forced combat sections are the devil

Pictured: Forced combat sections

When I first played The Last of Us, even when I second played The Last of Us, and even third played The Last of Us, I never had an issue with the forced combat sections. Sometimes I died, sometimes I died a lot. It was the ebb and flow of video games. Life goes on. And you have a complete lack of information, like no HUD whatsoever, no listen mode, no health bar(That goes with HUD but I'd like to specify that no, you cannot see your health bar. Not even while healing. Not knowing what your health is like can affect your decision to jump into battle, and when you have no choice in the matter, everything sucks.

Really, I don't have anything intelligent to say here. Forced combat sections made my Grounded playthrough feel like I was dying. It was terrible. You would progress through a level and think oh boy I've done it and then 8 more people run through a door and the fight continues. I say "fight", but it's more like opening a constant fart in a jar; It's not very pleasant but over time you enjoy it, and you hate yourself for it, but that doesn't stop you from opening more jars.

I should point out, just to be clear, because I am a talentless hack writer who can't get my point across without overbearing amounts of italics, I liked, no, loved, the forced combat on Hard and Normal. I'm not giving a commentary on the mechanic as it exists, just the forced combat on Grounded. And also to be clear, I'm not actually complaining or anything. I'm not saying this should be changed or anything. I'm using the metaphorical sense of "this sucks" like, wow, there's 19 guys in this room and they are all gonna take turns playing bullet ping-pong with my asshole. You know. That kind of thing.

Jerry's Final Thought

Once you get past the initial wow of seeing the A.I. work together in new and interesting ways, it begins to get really frustrating on multiple levels.

Really, "crazy A.I." should have been some kind of modifier you choose for any difficulty instead of being locked to Grounded, because while I don't think it's as groundbreaking as I initially thought, it certainly is welcome to see enemies really try hard to kick your shit in. In this case, it's frustrating on the level that I want to see more of these tactics. I wanted to be surprised by enemies popping up out of nowhere. Unless you are in a forced combat section, the enemies will only ever react to you. It's so refreshing to react to enemies acting on their own volition rather than walking back and forth and saying the same dialog over and over again.

It's also frustrating because sometimes you die fucking quick. And so it'd be really refreshing to see A.I. that makes you react while also not having the fear of having to repeat a 25 minute long sequence that could surprise me with surprise forced combat at any second.

I have had a lot of trouble out of the melee as well. It's notoriously unreliable. So reliable that I had actually kept a melee weapon across multiple sections of the game because I was too afraid of trying to use it, missing, and then restarting from the checkpoint a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I will see an enemy, hit him, and even though I hit him, because he did his "instant kill" dance, I die immediately. It's the worst. It was like this in Uncharted, too. Sometimes enemies just have to hit you first. The only downside here is that it results in instant death.

Several times throughout the game, I'll go ahead and say "hundreds" of times, I'll hit a guy, maybe hit him again, but then suddenly he just hits me out of nowhere and then I'm stunned and then I'm dead. It was particularly frustrating as Ellie in which I actually had a guy in the execution animation(Knife in the stomach, zoom in on the face) only for him to not die and then grab and strangle Ellie. All within fractions of a second.

Really, even though I suffered through some pretty unfortunate situations, I'm glad I played Grounded. I think, personally, the only challenge you will face in that game is the challenge to your patience. I wanted to give up so many times. I just didn't enjoy a lot of the forced combat sections, and when you play Grounded you realize very quickly that there are a lot of forced combat sections. Some of the stealth sections had crazy difficulty spikes and sometimes I just didn't understand why certain things were happening like they were.

I never had these experience on normal or hard, and though I never played survivor, I doubt it was as intense as Grounded. I certainly knew what I was getting into, but man, this was challenging. Half of the time I wanted to give up, and half of the time I was disappointed that there were so many neat things in a difficulty that I didn't get to really see because I was too busy dying all of the time.

But I guess it did deliver on its promise as being idiotically hard. It was pretty hard.

*Alternate ending does not actual exist. See store for details.

Grounded: I'll make a survivor of you yet!

I got a TV this year that's actually capable of playing 1080p, so you know what that means... That's right, I went back to a game that only goes to 720p.

The Last of Us. You know, the game that everyone really liked or something. No, not The Evil Within. That's the other game everyone really liked.

This one

I still only have a PS3, so I am not playing the Remastered Edition. But I am playing Grounded mode, a difficulty that was added via $5 DLC(Free for season pass holders) that completely changes how you will experience The Last of Us. And I am getting my shit kicked.

Grounded mode is, by and large, the most accurate and realistic depiction of living in a monster ridden post-apocalyptic world I've ever seen. And the best part is, I get to experience this difficulty over a 15 hour long video game.

Full disclosure: I've beaten TLOU a lot. So much so that when the Grounded DLC was released, I wasn't interested. I had just played through Left Behind and felt like I had already gotten my TLOU "fix". So I started the game just to check it out, then I quickly remembered that it's a solid hour and a half before the game even truly enters the prologue. And so around the time you get downtown, right before you enter the collapsed skyscraper, I quit playing. It was a gimmick, I thought. I've already played the game on hard mode so I already experienced the hardships. Fucking hell was I ever wrong.

A quick aside: As the difficulty levels increase in TLOU, you get less resources in the world. I thought it was tough on hard, in which supplies are less common than normal mode, which can have dire consequences as the game goes on. Another quick aside: I have never played "survivor" difficulty, which is the one following hard. So I had no idea what to expect. Here I am jumping straight into a difficulty I don't understand feeling like hot shit before getting swatted down like an annoying fly. And then stomped on. And then lit on fire. And then fucking galvanized.

As you may have already gathered, Grounded mode is fucked. Resources are extremely rare, enemies are so overpowered that every firefight becomes so unbelievably tense that it creates a whole new atmosphere on a whole new level. The previous difficulties had their challenges, but they weren't as fucking nuts as Grounded mode. I was never once "scared" of combat on hard mode, but Grounded presents combat as a trial of time and patience that can end as quickly as it begins with one shot to the head or a solid right hook to the jaw.

I said before, this is incredibly realistic. What does that mean, you ask? Well let me break it down for you. Everything can kill you, no matter how much health you have. I have been at full health only to be killed instantly by a shot to the head, and enemies often sprint at you with a haymaker to the face, knocking you, as they say, the fuck out. And that's just the firefights. Enemies are so much more intelligent in this mode, as they actively take cover until you forget about them and then begin flanking maneuvers.

Get used to seeing this over and over again

Just today. I was in the hotel sequence of the game. I was sneaking my way through the entire level, stealth killing every enemy I could. I was very excited because I had never done this so successfully before(When Grounded makes you as afraid of combat as it did me, you start to make good friends with the stealth mechanics). I was pressed up against a wall, looking at an enemy. Ellie says "Joel! Behind you!". I laughed. Ha ha ha. No, silly child. He's in front of me. I mock the A.I. for its lack of true understanding. That's when I turn to look and see there's a fucking person standing behind me holy shit what the fuck.

Grounded mode strips you of your "listen" ability, and as such, spotting enemies can be very difficult as the levels are usually dark and enemies find ways to blend in. When Ellie calls the enemies out, they become highlighted as if they were being displayed in Listen Mode. This becomes invaluable as, once more, battles can be over in mere seconds as any stray bullet could hit you in the head or a fast enemy could knock you out within the blink of an eye.

People call The Last of Us a survival horror game, but that's never sat right with me. I prefer to think of it as a modern interpretation of survival horror. But with Grounded, with the subtle changes in the gameplay, I start to wonder if I'm just a psycho hipster that relies too much on labels to feel superior, or I even know what I'm talking about. I say this, because Grounded makes one more difficult change to the game to enforce even more of a survivalist feel than the original difficulties: Less checkpoints. Segments that would originally be separated by two, three, or even four checkpoints are now just one checkpoint.

As I mentioned above, the hotel section of the game in Pittsburgh was just one checkpoint. You need to fight through all of the human enemies on all three floors of the hotel until you fall down the elevator shaft before you get a checkpoint. That's like 15 enemies you need to meticulously sneak your way through lest you be insane enough to take them on in open combat.

Also this

I had to take advantage of every, single, opening that I could get. If a character had their back to me, I had to strike. Because I knew that if I didn't, it would be just another enemy left to potentially come after me if I were to fail. And failure, oh boy... there's nothing quite like spending 15 minutes sneaking your way across an entire level only to die because, oh, right, this part is suddenly fucking wave combat and having to do it all over again.

In The Last of Us, one of the better parts of the gameplay is that you are so powerful, but also so vulnerable. You were capable of dropping enemies with a single bullet, but also prone to great danger if you weren't careful. The human A.I. was ruthless and cunning and the infected A.I. were swarming and overwhelming. It's like that scene at the end of Titanic, where Michael Coreleone says "Not like this" only to be put down by Casey Jones. Grounded takes this a level further by making you even more vulnerable.

I have yet to beat the game on Grounded, but so far I sit in awe of my adventure already, not even out of Pittsburgh. So far every encounter with the enemy has been fought tooth and nail, like some kind of street fight between rabid dogs. I'm juggling between four weapons with one bullet in each while staring down 6 or 7 enemies. God forbid one takes cover behind some wall because they are likely transitioning into a flanking position somewhere behind me. They actually use player tactics like breaking line of sight only to move around and on one hand it's incredible, and on the other it's terrifying.

I never thought The Last of Us was a scary game, but Grounded mode adds a level of "scary" to it that feels almost alien. I've already beaten this game a bunch, so I shouldn't really have that much to experience from this game, right? But nope. That's what it wants you to think, man.

The first playthrough of TLOU I felt like an old grizzled badass. I'm Joel, fuckers. And I'm gonna protect Ellie no matter the cost! But when playing through Grounded, I don't feel like an old grizzled badass. I feel haggard, paranoid. I walk into rooms with dozens of enemies only to look at my inventory and see nothing. Completely nothing. No ammo amongst my four guns, no molotovs, no bombs or smoke bombs. All I have is my fists, a brick, and Ellie. And even then, using melee combat is almost an instant failure as enemies hit you back, which can trigger instant death. Really, the best way to go about fighting is not fighting. It's keeping your distance, staying low, and moving on when you can.

Playing Grounded reminds me of a quote Joel has earlier in the game. He says "It's called luck, and it's goina run out". Indeed, I find myself in all sorts of precarious situations against all sorts of elements.

It's truly something special, I think, that something so optional can make the game feel so real, so... natural. Really, it's almost like this is the way the game was meant to be played. And honestly, I find it a shame that it's locked behind a $5 pay-wall in that it's DLC, but I'm sure $5 isn't anything special to most people. So I wish people will give Grounded a try. I wish people will go for that experience of feeling what The Last of Us is like when you're brought down on such a vulnerable platform that any move you make could lead to your doom.

Really, I find the overbearing difficulty unique. For example, you will enter an area and kill an enemy. That enemy will drop ammo for a weapon you really need ammo for(In my case, I'm out of ammo for everything so anything would be great), end up getting yourself killed and when you kill that very same enemy, he drops nothing this time. That gun that you needed ammo for? Yeah, you still need ammo for it. There's also something particularly frustrating about stealth killing an enemy with a firearm and watching that firearm instantly disappear into the ether the second you grab them. Yo! I needed that shit! Where did it go!? The truth of the matter is ammo is a double edged sword. If you have ammo, you can freely engage enemies and kill them, or try to. Doing so will expend all ammo and you're out again. But not having ammo allows you to get creative and sneak kill enemies as best as you possibly can. Sure, there's nothing stopping you from "getting creative" while you do have ammo, but the fact of the matter is I don't even remember what that was like anymore.

For example, Bill's Town sucked. Everything about it sucked. There's infected fucking everywhere and I've got little to no ammo. The best thing is the introduction of the Bow and being able to retrieve arrows from the corpses of enemies, provided that the arrow doesn't break on impact... which they all did, leaving me shit out of luck. But hey! I've got this sick bow, right!? Right... Anyway. The infected are fast and move erratically so accuracy comes and goes along with the natural weapon-sway. The entire thing was a shitshow from start to finish that can only be described as like when The Undertake threw Mankind off the top of the Hell A Cell and Mankind was being carried away on a stretcher only to get up, come back, climb to the top of the Cell again before being slammed through it. It goes from bad, to worse, to really worse instantly.

This motherfucker.

When I first fought the Bloater on Normal difficulty, I had a fucking arsenal. I had several Molotov cocktails, a bomb or two and ammo out the whazoo. It was a tense fight, but an easily victorious fight. Grounded mode? I had four shots in my shotgun and two bullets in my revolver. That's it. That's not even talking about the random infected that get added to the fight every now and again. I died so many times I honestly didn't think it was possible. Perhaps I had fucked up and somehow went in with too little ammo? Maybe I wasn't supposed to use that bomb from before and could have used it now? All questions, no answers. But when the time was right I got hulked out and picked up that big fucker with those 24 inch pythons, brother and slammed him so hard in the Pontiac Silverdome the entire earth was temporarily knocked out of orbit, jack. Okay, not really, but it was pretty close.


...And that's when Donald Trump invited me to play bass for Metallica, jack!

Then I got to Pittsburgh and had to fight an entire hotel of insane fuckheads who smashed me face in a couple hundred times(Or so it felt like), then I had to deal with a hoard of infected in the lower reaches of the building only to make my way outside and deal with three or four waves of hunters. After I beat those guys I saved the game and that's where I'm at now.

Honestly, I'm way into Grounded and think it's an incredible and unique experience. The difficulty makes Dark Souls look like candy land at times because in Dark Souls you're at least allowed to fight back. In Grounded mode, you'd be lucky if you can get a single swing of a melee weapon in before some hunter has you on the ground, flat. The only problem I'm running into is that the game has a very strict script. The game wants you to play the way it intended for you to, and it does not like you to deviate.

For example, in Bill's Town, when you are pushing the truck along. There are three infected along the left side of the road in the front yards of the houses. I decided, hey, I've got less than no ammo so I'll go and kill those guys before the truck gets there so it can lessen the load! Genius, right? Well, not really. What happens is you can get to about two of the infected before it does two things: One, forces Bill into action mode and causes him to sprint at the last infected while blazing-guns and triggering anything else in the neighborhood. Two, it instantly spawns an infected on Ellie so you will have to run back and save her. But, the timer is so short there's a good chance you won't make it. When you fail to save Ellie from the infected, it's game over and you have to do it all over again. And this time you'd probably not want to go and take out those infected anymore.

Honestly, that really annoyed me. My logic: I'm playing on Super-fuck-my-face mode and I'm using logic to solve a puzzle and attempt to make this incredible hard feat somewhat easier. It sounds reasonable, I mean logical reasoning is pretty much the way you get through video games. Logic: Bullets kill enemies, so I'm gonna shoot enemies with bullets! Ding, you're correct. Logic: Killing enemies will reduce the amount of enemies around! BONK YOU'RE WRONG FUCK YOU GO BACK TO SCHOOL IDIOT. JESUS.

I have yet to beat the game on Grounded yet(Echo, echo, echo...) so I'm not sure if any fine details will change, but one thing I wish would have at least been considered was increasing Ellie's dependability. They changed the A.I. to be a lot more cunning and tactical, so I wish they would have made the frequency of Ellie's MLG moments like saving you during a scuffle or hitting enemies with bricks to stun them. The only thing that happens is bricks being thrown, but so far I've yet to be saved during an instakill animation. It's disappointing because playing Grounded makes you more dependent on Ellie's abilities and so it would have been interesting to see what happens when an enemy has you down and mere seconds from game-over, only for Captain Switchblade to jump into the fray and start stabbing people. It doesn't happen. Though, to be fair, and maybe a little hypocritical, I have noticed that Ellie kills people on her own a lot more. She'll run up to some guy, jump on his back and stab him to death almost without prompt. Usually it's someone I'm trying to fight and she comically gets in the way as if she's saying "No, Joel! I've got this!" and take the fucker down.

Watch out boys, kitty's got teeth! Wow that's the worst caption I've ever made.

It's absolutely appreciated, and I'm definitely trying not to whine or complain about it "Because it's just too hard! *insert sad face here*". It's just that they made the enemy A.I. a lot more advanced and yet Ellie just seems to be Ellie. I don't know, maybe I just suck. Whatever. You're not my real dad anyway.

Anyways, let's wrap this up the only way I know how: Bulletpoints!

Likes:

Insanely difficult
Extreme lack of resources forces you to get creative
Super vulnerability also forces you to get creative
Suddenly like being forced to get creative

Dislikes:

I feel sometimes like I'm not being given enough time to do what needs to be done. Those infected move fast and some have a pretty wide range for their instakill grab and I seem to always be a few feet away but get grabbed anyway.
The lack of checkpoints is also a double edged sword as I like the additional challenge of knowing I have to get this shit right, but when I fail quite a distance into an area(Sometimes 16 minutes into an area) I get sent back to the very beginning and I just feel so defeated. I think it's a necessary evil to enforce such a strict challenge, but sometimes it feels more like a noose wrapped around your neck at all times.

My Grounded journey isn't over yet, in fact it's about the half-way point, if I remember correctly. But I like what I see so far. Enemies popping out of the woodwork and then retreating for cover, only to disappear and flank around you makes for some interesting scenarios. Truthfully, I would have preferred a customizable difficulty system, something like Sniper Elite 2 and 3 that allow you to choose from a preset list of difficulties while also allowing you to cherrypick what you want to be easier or even harder. I like the creativity of enemies going to cover so their friends to distract you, giving them an opening to move around and flank you. I can understand why there had to be an entirely different "mode" for that difficulty, but it's more fun to go up against these guys. In a perfect world, I'd be able to choose the super-hard A.I. while also reducing the instakill melee range on these guys so I can get some room to breathe and have intense shootouts while still having to worry about my flank. Because I can't understate enough how fun shootouts are on Grounded mode. It's fucking brutal.

But I guess that won't happen, and I'm certainly not going to knock Naughty Dog for not having some crazy feature that very few games actually have. It's just that I'd love to be able to appreciate the crazy difficulty under a maybe-not-so-punishing light. But that's not going to stop me from continuing on my journey. And until next time, I'm gonna fucking die a lot yeehaw!

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