The Last of Us Review

I said that I would be reviewing InFamous Second Son this week, but after binge-playing The Last of Us, I feel like it needs to come first.

I'm also sticking with the style of review I used for Sherlock. It seemed a lot better, so I'm trying it out.

So without further ado, here we go.

The Last of Us-

I'll be honest, when I first heard about this game I wasn't excited.
My first thought was, "Great, another no-so-scary survival horror game."

Luckily I have friends who have a nasty little habit of changing my opinion. Shortly after The Last of Us was released, my fiancee and I were convinced to come over and check it out by one of those friends.

When he said "Come over and watch The Last of Us" though, I was confused. It all made sense when I noticed just how much this game was like a movie, and that has always been a big deal for me.

The biggest thing I noticed about this game is that the story is the focal point. Most games they try to make the story stick out, but the gameplay is so boring that you end up not caring enough about the characters or the plot and end up not playing it. The flip side of this being that some others make the gameplay great, but drop the story like a bad habit.
[To be perfectly honest, I still don't know what the hell Borderlands is about, but I could play for days.]

The Last of Us was a breath of fresh air for someone like me who values story, but greatly appreciates a decent challenge. The story is captivating, the gameplay is fluid and not too hard to get the hang of. [The bow requires a bit of practice, and you have to get used to the sway of Joels aim, but it's by no means to much to handle.]

What really draws you in, at least in my personal opinion, is the first part of this game. In these first moments you get a taste of the amazing graphic quality of this game. [Greatly enhanced in the Remastered edition for PS4, and something I've come to expect from Naughty Dog] Also notable is the voice-over. I have NEVER played a game or watched an animated film where the voice and the character

Probably helps having the VO do the motion capture too

were so absolutely perfect that I felt like they were real people rather than a fictional creation. The actors gave such amazing performances that they drew you even deeper into the story than if their performances would have been off in any way.

On to the gameplay we notice that the walking alone is very smooth, and that it seems like almost everything is explorable. Walking through the house you hear a TV, and if you go to investigate you can hear a news report of riots in the streets of Austin, just before seeing an explosion out the window and the broadcast cutting off. A moment that sets the tone for the entire game.

Right in the feels.

I have to say that if you're any kind of bleeding heart, don't play this game or watch a playthrough on youtube. You'll have too many feels just within the first few minutes. [If I didn't know any better, I would say Steven Moffat wrote this game, because we all know how much he likes to tear out your heart.]

Cheers to Naughty Dog!

Shoot ahead twenty years into this new world, and we've got a new, ass-kicking, drug-peddling Joel, working with the most badass girl I've seen in any game. I really have to give Naughty Dog credit on this one. I mean, usually the AI in games are useless. They walk into walls, they miss every attack, and half the time they glitch entirely, forcing players to restart their games just to be able to get to the next area. With Tess, the formula has changed. She's actually helpful. Honestly, at the beginning of the game I was still getting a hang of the controls, and if it weren't for Tess I would have died countless times.

[I feel like this review is all over the place already. Damn it.]

I really want to jump ahead and not focus too much on explaining the game to you, because lets face it, these are supposed to be reviews, not summaries.

So moving forward past more heartbreaking moments like Tess
revealing her infection, Joel treating Ellie like some kind of cancerous lump on his back, and meeting Bill and witnessing his painful struggle, we get a taste of something really special.

Here we have it. The Holy Grail of post-apocalyptic survival stories, graphic excellence, and intense gameplay... And what should Naughty Dog throw in but the conflict of fighting both fungus zombies and human enemies alike. It's a definite challenge when you have to change everything about your play style in order to have a hope of making it to the next part of the game. On top of it all, you get into these confrontations in realistic ways and places. You can approach these scenarios in any way you see fit, and the AI will react in a realistic manner to what you do. After seeing multiple people play this game, and after playing it twice myself, I've never seen the same encounter twice.

Another high point to me is the change in characters. This game

doesn't play like a giant escort mission, and Ellie can be played at various points through the game. At one point in the story, Joel is injured and comatose for what seems like months. Ellie has to step up and take care of them both in the dead of winter. It leads to an interesting change for Ellie, helping her mature.

What I've heard a lot of players rave about is the lack of boring characters in this game, and I have to agree. Not a single character is

boring, and I would love to have more background on them. For instance, I would kill for a DLC about Henry and Sam, the two brothers met in Pittsburgh that help Joel and Ellie get out of the city safely. Even though their run in the game was so short lived, I still felt a big tug at the heart-strings when Sam became infected, and Henry had to put his little brother down. Even more tugs when Joel and Ellie left him at his instructions, and as they closed the door there was the sound of a gunshot and another body dropping.


As their journey continues, Joel and Ellie meet up once more with the Fireflies, the organization that hired Joel and Tess to transport Ellie all

this way so she could be examined to find what makes her immune to the infection. They thank Joel for his time and sacrifices he's made, and take Ellie. Soon, however... We find that in order to synthesize the cure they're searching for, Ellie has to die. The part of her that the cure relies on grows on her brain, and has to be removed. Now for Joel to decide whether her life is worth more than the entire human race.

Every part of this game, from the first scene to the end credits, is an amazing experience that everyone with a PS3 or PS4 needs to

experience in some way before it's too late. Everything about this game touches you in ways that no other game has ever been able to. Your favorite game series will not fill you with so much fear and sadness, even in the darkest of moments.

This is without a doubt the first game I've ever believed deserved a full 10/10 rating from anyone, let alone me.

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