I played The Last of Us and it killed me
I’m still reeling from finishing up The Last of Us yesterday. To say that it’s a good game is to say that the sky is blue – a statement so underplayed and non-descriptive as to be inane and irrelevant. The Last of Us is not a good game, it is a MUST game. I repeat, it is a MUST game. If you like video games, you must play this one. That being said, the game isn’t perfect. I thought I’d start by talking about the game’s downsides, because if I start with the good stuff this review will go on for so long that you’ll still be reading it when my next review comes out (and because no one else is talking about the bad stuff).
The major downsides of the game come with its mechanics. As in . . . they aren’t really there. There are three major gameplay mechanics you’re expected to perform throughout The Last of Us – stealth, combat, and puzzle solving. I’d call all of them light ventures in the various mechanics of those three challenge areas, especially since those are the three most commonly used challenges in video games (with the possible exception of platforming).
The stealth portions are fairly fun and the best of the challenges, with a nice dose of tension, because in this game you really don’t want to be discovered. Not because the enemies will kill you, as you are something of a Rambo, but because fights cost you resources. Naughty Dog used the stealth mechanic to play into the idea of post apocalyptic scarcity quite well. You scrounge for EVERYTHING in this game, and getting into fights when you could stealth your way past really feels like you are taking unnecessary risks. So why is this a downside? Well, you have companions with you throughout almost the entire game, and the suspension of disbelief about stealth is completely broken when your companion runs up and tries to use one of the bad guys as cover to hide from another bad guy. For a game where the companion AI is generally amazing, the stealth portions really fall down.
The combat is . . . ok? It’s basically the exact same combat system from Uncharted, which works well in an action adventure game, but feels a little over the top false in The Last of Us. Joel and Ellie simply mow through bad guy after bad guy, and there really isn’t a reason for it. I want bullets to hurt a little more, especially after pumping like 7 shots from my pistol into an enemy. Everything else in the game is built to show you how dangerous life in the world of The Last of Us is . . . except you can get shot 3 times, hit in the head with an axe, and have a molotov cocktail set you on fire, and then go on to kill the 14 people that did it to you.
And finally, the puzzle solving is terrible. I hesitate to call it puzzle solving, but the only other phrase I can think of is “useless time delaying frustration to pad the game”. It generally consists of walking around trying to find a ladder, board, or dumpster in a poorly lit area, or possibly swimming underwater for about 5 seconds. I get that in the post apocalyptic city scapes of the game, you can’t just walk down the street, you need to find other ways around. But if that’s the point you’re trying to hammer home, let me find OTHER ways around. Put clearly, The Last of Us is an extremely linear game – there is only ever one route to take and one solution for each problem, and usually that solution is a dumpster. I want to use those garbage cans I can see sitting right over there to boost myself up onto a roof. I want to take a completely different route through the city. Hell, I want to talk to the guys trying to shoot me – they’re probably just hungry too.
And . . . that’s it for the bad stuff. I know that it seems like I’ve bashed pretty much everything that makes this a game, but trust me. It’s still one of the best games I’ve ever played.
With absolutely no exaggeration, if The Last of Us was a film, it would win some Academy Awards. The only other game like it that I can think of is Red Dead Redemption, and I think The Last of Us executes the story even better than RDR was able to.
The story is an obvious homage to The Road, and it’s only slightly less grim than that heartwarming tale of how survival is completely fucking impossible. As Joel and Ellie move from place to place, it becomes ever more clear that humanity is losing its struggle to stay alive. As Joel says, “Another city, another abandoned quarantine zone.” Things are no longer produced, only scavenged. People have become hard and vicious, isolated from one another due to fear. And all around them everything that we have built rots away. The only meaningful things left are in the relationships that form between people, which The Last of Us excels at.
All of the characters, even the ones obviously destined for a shallow grave, are accessible. Hell, even the crazy cannibal guy makes some good points (and is a creepy as shit amazing villain). The passage of time in the game allows for the relationship of Joel and Ellie to grow naturally, without any creepy Romeo and Juliet instant bonding as seen in most video games. You come to actually CARE about protecting Ellie as you travel, getting nervous every time you have to boost her over a fence on her own where you can’t protect her. And then in a fantastic twist, you get to protect Joel while he’s down and out, where all of those benevolent feelings are redoubled as you watch two characters that really care for each other try to survive.
Bah, none of this does justice to the game. It’s really something that needs to be experienced, reading about it can only do so much. I do want to call out the intro sequence as one of the most riveting I’ve ever played in any game. If you’re not sure if you want to try the game or not, play the first fifteen minutes. If you can put it down after that, you have no soul.
Go play this game. I’m not kidding. Stop wasting your time reading my article. You could be playing The Last of Us.
