The Last of Us Review

by SaikyoBro on Oct 23rd, 2013

I’ve intentionally held off on talking about The Last of Us until a few months later because I wanted to see if the game left an impression on me the way the media said it would. As you probably know, this game got tons of perfect scores everywhere. Naughty Dog is well-known for setting the bar on every console they develop on; the charming platforming of Crash Bandicoot that defined the PS1 era, the expansive and imaginative world of Jak and Daxter on PS2, and Uncharted becoming one of Sony’s flagship franchises for the PS3. The Last of Us marks the first time since joining Sony that the developers have worked on multiple series on the same platform, and it managed to slip in just several months before the launch of the PS4. Did this game define its generation of hardware the same way Crash and Jak did?

For better or worse, well, yeah. Pretty much. The Last of Us can completely sum up the previous generation of video game consoles quite well! The graphics, the story, the atmosphere, these are all things that The Last of Us could be considered a master of. The game is undeniably gorgeous to look at; best graphics on the PS3, arguably of the entire last console generation. Everything is lifelike and full of cool little details that show just how much effort was seriously put into this game’s visuals. The setpieces are memorable and the dialogue is particularly well done. Months later I can still recall certain conversations between protagonists Joel and Ellie and just how interesting they were, what they meant for the development of the relationship between these two characters.

I’ll be honest, the story is half the point of the game. A rapidly spreading zombie infection is ravaging the world and few remain, one of them being a man in his late 40’s named Joel. He remembers life before the apocalypse; he remembers the world as it is today.  The 20 years of zombie apocalypse he’s survived through have hardened him into a tough, bitter man. He’s given the job of smuggling Ellie, a 14 year old girl who’s never known a world outside of this rundown apocalypse, across the whole country over the course of a little less than a year. The two’s relationship and its development is the focus of the story. You get to know a lot about them and their pasts just through their own conversations as you go through the game, and once you sink some time into it, it really feels like you got to know these characters and watch them develop. The voice acting and animation is phenomenal and there are times when it really seems like you’re watching a movie.

The game’s primarily a third person shooter with some action and survival horror elements, and I’d say it’s good at all these things but not perfect at any. I’d say the survival horror aspects are the strongest, as the game really does make you feel like you’re trying to work through a zombie apocalypse. You carry around weapons, supplies and medicines in your backpack and switch between them in real time. This means that if you need to heal yourself, you’d better find somewhere to hide, because the killers and zombies chasing after you aren’t going to stop. You can craft your own weapons and upgrades, which is useful and takes some thought. One of the bigger disappointments in the game for me is the small variety of enemy types: among the zombies, there are the runners that chase after you, the clickers that have super-sensitive hearing and kill you in one hit, and the giant boss-like bloaters that take way longer than necessary to kill. You’ve also got some human enemies that provide some fun firefights, but none of them are particularly memorable. I don’t know, like, it’s not like there are thousands of different ways you can design a zombie enemy, but seeing the ones in this game being identical to the ones in just about every other game is a disappointment.

Another thing I really don’t like is the melee combat. It’s not terrible or anything, and there’s actually a pretty good variety of weapons to use, but when it comes down to it you’re just mashing the square button, similar to Uncharted 2. This isn’t awful or anything, just doesn’t really take much thought. In this regard, it’s a step back from Uncharted 3, which improved Uncharted 2’s combat significantly by adding multiple options and button inputs as opposed to just hitting the button. Joel also doesn’t feel like a superhuman the way Nathan Drake of Uncharted does; I understand that this game’s theme is more about survival than doing the impossible the way Drake does, but it seems like Drake runs faster, takes down enemies more quickly, is less fragile, and is generally more fun to play as than Joel. I mean, yeah, a lot of the fun of the survival gameplay comes from feeling limited and thinking on your feet, but there are times where it just feels sluggish and repetitive, while the Uncharted games really never had that problem. They’re two different types of games, but I really do feel like The Last of Us would’ve been more fun and satisfying to play if Joel didn’t sometimes feel so limited. There are times where you’ll be repeatedly dying to cheap deaths (many of these involving the one-hit-kill Clicker enemies) and replaying the same fights, and during these times the game’s flaws become pretty obvious.

You’re given different ways to tackle every situation; you can quickly and cleanly get through a room of enemies by taking them out with some weapons, but you can also slowly and stealthily sneak through it and save your ammo. Sometimes I’d die, try again with a different strategy, and notice that it went much better than whatever I was doing on my previous try. The fact that this game is so open-ended and gives you so many different options to tackle different situations is a major strength in my opinion. One last thing that I really, really disliked about the gameplay is all the busywork it gives you. Let me explain; there are times where you’ll need to do something specific in order to progress. Sometimes you’ll need to go find a ladder or something else to climb on in order to reach something that’s high up, or find a way to get Ellie across some water since she can’t swim. Doing this doesn’t really take much brainpower or challenging gameplay at all, it’s just tedious and drawn out and happens way too often. Like, okay, getting Ellie across some water on a raft is kind of cool the first time. But by the fifth time, you start to notice the godawful swimming controls and how monotonous the process of finding the raft and pushing her across really is. These segments really just feel like complete wastes of time. But in the end, I’d say the gameplay of The Last of Us has more good than bad. There’s also some online multiplayer that I gave a couple of tries, but I’m so awful at multiplayer shooters that I don’t think I could really describe it without making an idiot of myself.

So a few months after playing this game, did it leave an impact on me? Well, yeah. The story is really fulfilling and interesting in all aspects. There are so many shocking twists and turns that you’re really left confused how to feel after watching a lot of them. And while these moments are awesome in their own right, the main appeal of the story is the development of the relationship between Joel and Ellie. And…like, there are so many different moments and conversations between the two of them that are just so much fun to listen to that it’s hard to pick any in particular to talk about. I spent roughly 16 or 17 hours getting to know these two, and whether they were slaughtering zombies or just walking around and having a conversation, listening to them was so lifelike and interesting. And while many of the more memorable moments come from the story, there are also some really, really cool gameplay sequences. In particular, a certain boss fight during the Winter chapter ended up being probably one of my favorite moments in a game this year.

The Last of Us is the kind of game that, well, if you’re gonna buy it, you probably already have. It’s a solid shooter and survival horror game, but in combination with the gorgeous graphics and deeply involving story, this game becomes something truly great. There are definitely some weird missteps and areas that feel like they could’ve used a bit more polish (or in the case of the stupid raft-pushing, removal entirely), but you never once feel like you want to stop playing. Seeing one thing with the story lead to the next, listening to all the conversations between the two protagonists, these are the things that assure we’ll be remembering this game fondly for years to come. Overhyped? Probably. Good game? Damn straight.

4/5

Categories: Reviews