Joel (voiced by Troy Baker; perhaps his best performance yet), a hardened survivor, and a 14-year old potty-mouthed girl named Ellie (Ashley Johnson), search for the elusive Firefly militia group through the states ruled by martial law, cannibalistic hunters, and human beings infected with a fungus known as Cordyceps. Simply put, the world’s gone to hell, and the apocalypse is long over. Sounds simple enough? It’s a basic zombie story, with many of the tropes associated with those works. Where The Last of Us sets itself apart, however, is its fresh new spin on the genre, with excellently scripted adult storytelling, and a powerful execution to boot, much in the same vein as last year’s “The Walking Dead”.
The Last of Us accommodates whatever playstyle you prefer, and will adapt to it rightfully so, with a high level of polish, though it almost always rewards stealth over gunplay. In fact, if you’re good, there’s maybe a handful of sections where stealth is disallowed, so you can play through most the entire game subtly. You can find unique weapons throughout the game, though (as far as I know), you only have one chance to pick up certain weapons, one of which can only be found if you go out of your way to explore the area it’s located. You can level up these weapons using workbenches, which cost various amounts of upgrade pieces, while certain upgrades will require you to find wrenches, and go up in level.
Besides weapon modifications, you can also craft an assortment of useful items, with supplies found throughout. These include such necessities as health packs (no regenerating health), shivs (the only way to stealth kill a Clicker), projectile weapons, and modifications to your melee weapon. These supplies quite literally litter the gamespace, and are the most bountiful collectibles available, next to bottles and bricks (projectiles which aid you in stealth, and melee). You have little chance of surviving without utilizing these items, which means it’s very important that you try and search every inch of the map, and always have a full shiv handy, for opening locked doors, full of supplies and ammo.
Supplements act as a variation on experience points, which can be used to level up abilities of Joel’s, such as being able to hear farther (and through walls), and being able to use a shiv to ward off a Clicker grab, who would otherwise kill you instantly. These supplements, like everything else, can be found. Almost nothing in this game is handed to you, meaning you would be wise to heed my earlier advice.
Whether it be human or one of 4 types of infected, every faction of enemy is powered with unique, realistic AI, that should never be underestimated. Same goes for your AI partner, Ellie. She isn’t simply a useless damsel in distress, but rather as much of a murderous bad-ass as Joel himself. She will flush out, hold up, and even help kill enemies. Naughty Dog has always been the leader in realistic AI, but they have truly outdone themselves this time, delivering humanly-flawed AI, instead of always-the-wiser bullet sponges. These enemies will hunt in packs, and will make mistakes like a human would, such as overlooking an element that they aren’t looking for or aware of. Sometimes, however, the AI will break immersion in a way that’s common courtesy than any kind of flaw. The enemies have been designed to not respond to your AI partner, unless you’ve already been caught. Example would be when your partner calls out to you, or half of her body is sticking out of cover, it won’t register with an enemy. Don’t get me wrong, this is NOT a bad thing. The game would be absolute hell if your partner could give you away; damn near impossible. I’ll gladly give up that bit of immersion at the cost of sanity.
Naughty Dog, as always, holds the monopoly in the best console graphics of all-time, and they have managed to do something which I long thought was impossible: they out-did Uncharted 3′s quality of graphics. The Last of Us is supremely gorgeous, and incredibly, almost otherworldly detailed. Unlike most post-apocalyptic games, brown is merely a side-note to the abundance of green and white, which really benefits the uniqueness of the whole affair. Apparently, it’s too good. This game is literally maxing out the PS3 in a way that we had once thought Uncharted 3 was. The consequences of that is that the occasional graphical glitch will show up, usually more entertaining than anything, though it’s still somewhat disappointing, considering the flawlessness of Uncharted 2, though the quality of this game far out-classes every one of Naughty Dog’s past affairs.
The expertise and execution in the writing and directing, and powerful adult storytelling is unbelievable, considering that these same guys once made Crash Bandicoot. Like all of us who grew up with Playstation, so did Naughty Dog, almost as if they were developing their games for each stage of maturity for us; the little tykes that once had good ol’ fun with Crash and Jak.
This game just wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the chemistry between the two leads, Ellie and Joel, and the relationship they develop throughout. They make this game, much in the same as Lee and Clementine from The Walking Dead, though in a slightly different way. The surprisingly down-to-Earth writing makes Joel and Ellie’s plight hit home pretty hard, and puts much depth in even the most minor of characters you meet along the way, and helps you to infer why? Why any character does anything, and why they must. Nothing is ever contrived, and everything is for a reason. That’s a fact of life; there is no true good or bad, no morality when the world goes to hell; only surviving, and protecting the ones you love, no matter what.
The multiplayer is a decent time-waster, though nothing special. Basically, you’re on one of two teams (Fireflies or hunters), and you go head to head in one of two modes, killing enemies, and earning supplies to feed your clan, which consists of Facebook friends (even the ones that don’t own a PS3, or play video games at all, for that matter). So much wasted potential can be inferred here, such as the lack of a co-op campaign, a horde mode, or any other kind of game mode that could have lent some kind of lasting appeal. Instead, unless you’re the most hardcore of multiplayers, you may just try this once or twice, or play it whenever you might be bored, or don’t have access to better multiplayers. It’s not completely horrible, like Tomb Raider’s, but it’s not all that great; it’s middling from Naughty Dog. It’s also cursed with lag, like all of Naughty Dog’s online multiplayers before. I can count about almost twenty times where I would be completely frozen due to lag, right as I’m about to get some kills in. Everyone else is free to pick my ass off as this is happening.
Simply put, you aren’t, or should not be, buying this game for the multiplayer, but rather the superb, near-flawless single-player campaign. Even though you don’t need the online pass to play this middling mediocrity, you should still buy this game new, simply because Naughty Dog has earned it. They’ve earned every bit of money they make for this game, which is hopefully a large sum amount.
Naughty Dog has, once again, created an unforgettable masterpiece, with every bit of gameplay and narrative expertly directed to the point of perfection, and it would be remiss of me to mark this game down for flaws that only come from it being developed on aging hardware. It has earned its perfect score.
"The Game Music Foundation are today very proud and pleased to announce an additional concert, circling back to the roots of Game Muisic Festival in Poland. On April 28th, 2024, the National Forum of Music in Wroclaw will once again become a place to celebrate the art of video game music, featuring scores from The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II." - The Game Music Foundation.
Najam from eXputer writes "It's time fore a new installment in the series, not another pointless remaster."
They are working on something new. Not to be rude but it is impossibility stupid to think ND next major announcement is going to be a remaster or their next Last of Us entry is going to be another remaster.
I think this is in response to them releasing a remaster for the sequel, a game that didn't need a remaster.
Basically a "why did you put out a remaster no one asked for when you have all there options available"
They remaster is to put out something quick while they are deving new stuff. I don't get how people can be so static.
That was a Remake. I guess they could do that to 2, but man…. They should wait a couple generations so it can look like a major upgrade.
Naughty Dog released The Last of Us Part 2 over 3 years ago, and since then, the only good thing we have received is a TV series.
not complaing tbh, i love the last of us but for me the story is done, i dont need more it. they couldve left it at 1 and i wouldve been happy with it.
i have no interest in playing as abby what so ever or anyone else not named joel or ellie for that matter.
give us a new IP naughty dog, its bloody time, insomniac has snatched your throne as sonys best studio, remind us again how talented you are!!
I'm with you on that. People might not have noticed yet, but Naughty Dog has worked on basically only Uncharted and The Last of Us for almost two decades now. It's pretty much 3/4 of their entire history under Sony, dedicated to those two franchises.
This series should have been put to rest since the first one.. tlou2 was absolutely not needed because the first one was perfect.
Now i how ND wake up and give us something to be excited for
Honestly even if Joel was was still in it, I'm still fine with just not having another game period. Like even after the first game, I was fine with the option of just leaving things as they were, and I feel the same about TLOU2. yeah they're great games but the story would be fine left as it is imo, just takes if a messed up situation in a messed up world
insomniac is only big because they are working on Spider Man. Give that ip to any good studio and they will succeed. So i don't feel that is fair to say for that reason. i would like a part 3 with ellie only, where she is old 40 years old or more and end the story there somehow but there were some rumors of multiple playable characters which makes me not so interested. A new ip is a hard sell, i trust them but at the same time not sure about current ND talent to deliver on that front.
Yea let's just ignore 4 games in 5 years and ratchet and clank.
All absolutely quality quality games, theybdeserve the kudos!!
It did! It’s called The Last of Us Part II and it currently holds the record of the most awarded game of all-time! Highly recommend it!
And yet I could give you a dozen games which didn’t get as many awards but are better.
Even 2020…Ghost of Tsushima gave us not just one great revenge tale but two.
Well that's on you Fox. Most people seems to like it wich the awards are a proof of.
Honestly, TLOU2's story came off as more of a comedy of errors masquerading as a 'serious' game.
Not to mention, despite having all of these awards much of which only existed once, TLOU2, a sequel to a critically acclaimed game, took as much time as Horizon: Zero Dawn, a new IP and a huge gamble for Guerrilla at the time, to hit 10 million sales. Heck, Ghost of Tsushima nearly hit 10 million sales by the 2 year mark and that one was also a new IP.
@CombatEmu
"Heck, Ghost of Tsushima nearly hit 10 million sales by the 2 year mark and that one was also a new IP"
Exactly
And they were only behind TLOU2 by like a million
Put it into perspective
A brand new IP which could have gone either way vs a massive 7 years in the making sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed games in the last 10 years.
Yet they only managed a million more...
People are still mad about TLOU2. 😂😂
Great game and I’m prepping for another playthrough. Might have to wait until they release the PS5 version and see how that is
The rumors say it's development wasn't up to par with internal expectations, so it's on ice for a while, but there's been nothing official saying what's happening with it for a while.
We should have gotten some new information once the remake of Part 1 was done.
ND has to have something new to announce, they've been quiet for a while now.
Meanwhile half their dev's are now unemployed... I wouldn't count on anything for quite awhile.
@JackBNimble: The studio had over 400 Staff back in July, about 25 staff have been made redundant, this could very easily be because a game has had a large part of it's development finished and ND are the biggest they've ever been.
Scaling back to focus more and cut the fat isn't a bad thing.
The studio could easily still have close to 400 staff, it's also been 3 years since their last release, it's very likely that they're gearing up to announce their next game and release it within the next year or so.
I always here people complaining about graphical glitches but I played it all the way through twice and never saw one graphical glitch. What graphical glitches did you have?
Are you kidding? the multiplayer component is AMAZING, it's the most fun I've since the MGO servers shut down. Pretty clear you wrote it off before you gave it a chance.
um weak multiplayer, then no game i know has strong multiplayer
The MP is one of the best ones i've ever played. Weak Mp? Absolutly no :).