The Last of Us

I was really late to the party on this one. I didn’t have a PS3 when this launched, and had really never been that interested in games like this anyway. My girlfriend got it, didn’t like it that much, and sold it pretty quickly after giving up on it. So I ignored it for three years. I wish I hadn’t.

As flawed as it is, The Last of Us is one of the most intriguing games I’ve ever played. Even the Uncharted games, which I assumed this would be similar to and which I do not like, aren’t all that comparable to this, especially in terms of narrative. Naughty Dog genuinely seemed to do something new with this game, and that’s the most surprising thing about it.
The second most surprising thing about it is how bad everything is. I mean it; everything in this game is bad. At least, everything in the gameplay parts is at least a little bad.

First, the whole game is so goddamn railroaded. Now, obviously this isn’t the worst thing in the world and there are plenty of great games that are straight-forward (like Resident Evil 4 and Metal Gear Solid 3). But, man, I wish this game had more to offer in terms of its world. To me, this is the most intriguing post-apocalyptic world to come out in video games, as far as I can remember. I was bored to tears by the worlds of Fallout 3 and The Walking Dead and this world really interested me, but you don’t have any opportunities to really explore it. As weird as it is to say, this game made me wish that it had been built more like Fallout 3. Even though I don’t like that game, there were so many moments here where I wish I could hack into computers, or break into the non-essential apartments and just see more of what had happened in this world. Instead, you move in mostly a straight line, with little diversion, for the entirely playthrough.

Building on that, the setting, though gorgeous and wholly unique, is so empty. I don’t just mean that you can’t explore most of it, which is a problem in itself. I mean that the parts you can explore are pretty much completely empty. There’s a scene where you’re hiding out in a warehouse, of all places, and there’s still nothing really of note to find. Throughout the entire game, for the most part, the only things you can find are crafting materials and weapons. Sure, there are some collectables, but there’s not very many of them, and more of them, especially non-essential ones that paint a broader picture of what this world is like and what it was like in the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse, would’ve helped so much with world-building.

That last bit brings me to my next point: the time-skip at the beginning hurts so badly. I want to see how this world came to be, but, instead, we jump right into a story, 20 years down the road, when the entire post-apocalyptic world has already settled. I didn’t like that at all.

As far as general gameplay mechanics are concerned, nearly all of them were done before, and better, in other games. The stealth is inexcusably bad and the gunplay is just awful, compared even to the developer’s own Uncharted series. If you’re looking for great gameplay, this is absolutely not the place to find it. For good stealth, play the first two Metal Gear Solid games. For good third-person shooting, play Resident Evil 4 or even Gears of War, from what I’ve heard. This game does neither of its core mechanics well.

The story is done pretty well, I will admit. There isn’t much of a natural progression (due to all of the god awful time-skipping) but there are quite a few really touching moments here. The ending is fantastic and is one of the best video game endings ever. I didn’t expect something so original and so morally ambiguous, and I was surprised. The relationship between Ellie and Joel, usually considered the best aspect of this game, could’ve been better developed (again, a result of the time-skipping) but it’s heart-warming and sweet.

That last paragraph could be enough to sell this game for some people, but I am not in that camp. It’s a game with a great story and forgettable to awful gameplay mechanics. This is one of the few games that made me wish I had just watched a Let’s Play of the entire thing.

Play it on: Youtube, if you can tolerate that. Otherwise, PS3 and PS4 versions are both fine.

Mi ricordo ancora abbastanza vivamente il momento in cui giocando a Last of Us ho guardato lo schermo a bocca aperta. Eravamo agli inizi, primo capitolo forse, al livello di difficoltà più alto possibile al primo giro, e stavo letteralmente di lato ad una guardia che aveva l'ordine di ammazzarmi a vista ma non mi vedeva. Lo sbigottimento non era di certo positivo. Non ho ancora capito come sia avvenuto ma di fatto questo è diventato quasi immediatamente il gioco simbolo di una console che ha avuto Metal Gear Solid 4 e Valkyria Chronicle ed ancora non mi capacito. Mi ricordo un altri due momenti abbastanza vivamente: il primo è un infetto che sbatte su di Ellie senza che nessuno dei due batta un ciglio ed il secondo è il nostro eroe che con il ventre perforato da mesi ed infenzione annessa passa dal letto di morte alle botte dopo una cutscene a base di antibiotico scaduto.
Non male per un gioco il cui scopo è scortare Ellie e che è stato applaudito per la scrittura profonda.

Last of Us è così: una storia da episodio filler di Walking Dead, gameplay approssimativo e l'IA peggiore mai vista in un AAA degli ultimi 10 anni. Ah, ma c'è la graficona eh.

Beyond the entertaining but gimmicky Hollywood doohickery of Heavy Rain and Until Dawn. This is a kind of post-cinematic storytelling where texture (both literal and figurative) and interactivity only embolden the foundations of character, mood, plot, setting and theme further. Calling it gaming's Citizen Kane moment is not only idiotic but extremely reductive.

I played the PS4 remaster of this game after watching the show; I'd never played it before then. It is definitely one of the best examples of well-written interpersonal relationships in a triple A game, be that between Joel and Ellie, other characters, or just through the 'artifact' notes left behind.

I've little complaints with the core gameplay. The map design for each section is very detailed and gets increasingly more complex. While the game does reward exploration fairly well, some collectibles have no functionality beyond being an item to collect, which I believe was a common game sin for the time. It's not the best feeling to find a very secluded spot only to pick up a pendant or a comic book instead of a training manual or crafting resources.

For the NPCs, the pathfinding of friendlies felt off at times, and I have this hunch sometimes the line of sight of enemies was not entirely accurate, but neither of those were total hampers to my enjoyment. The main fun of the game besides the story would be the exploration and resource management; you will not always have enough ammo or tools to get through a big fight. This becomes less of a problem especially for Joel towards the end if you've been exploring well and upgrading your weapons and stats. All in all, I would recommend the game if anyone still hasn't gotten around to it like me.

I stand by my love of this game and it hasn't aged a day since its release a decade ago; that ending is still untouchable. And playing the game on Grounded with light Permadeath options on makes you appreciate the interplay between combat, stealth and resource management, even if the second game is a bit more organic both in level design and in mechanics. A lack of interplay between the Infected and human enemies and some setpieces only showing up a few times is a bummer, but the lethality of the combat, learning all of the game's rules and adjusting as the terrain varies keeps it engaging from start to finish. That said, as a remake, Part 1 is pretty bare. The game's fidelity and post-processing are well upgraded, with some great use of lens flare, but it has a lot of trouble with local LOD and draw distance, leading to very inconsistent environmental presentation at times. And while there's a wealth of options to play with and lots of extra content, there are no truly meaningful additions to the game, and if you like multiplayer, it's actually a less valuable version. Now I love me some survival horror permadeath so I was willing to throw down with this version, but it is difficult to recommend otherwise.

The Last of Us is pretty weird for me, or at least it's very "normal" and I'm the one who is weird. I first started playing this in October of 2015, having purchased it as a "spooky" game to tide me over until the release of Corpse Party: Blood Drive later in the month, which I suppose gives some hint toward the type of thing I'm into, which is quite different from AAA gaming. Anyway, I played through Chapter 3, saw I was already ~15% complete, and felt I would end up finishing the game sooner than I'd have liked, so I... postponed it for a couple years instead(!?). I think it was October 2017 (possibly 2018) that I planned to return to the game after playing Silent Hill 3, but while I enjoyed that game I was turned off by how it felt more "cinematic" than "game-y" and I lost interest in jumping back into TLoU. The following October, I decided to play TLoU before any other games, seeking to get it out of the way, lest it get postponed again. I did end up enjoying the game a good bit, but felt maybe "underwhelmed" by the story, only really liking the choice Joel made at the end, and I guess Bill also, but otherwise appreciating the voice-acting and mocap/animation that I felt made the "execution" of the story better than the writing. That said, I was ultimately peeved that the game felt like it had twice as many skirmishes against non-infected enemies as it did Cordyceps victims, which felt strange to me because it made me think of e.g. a Resident Evil [バイオハザード] game where you fight more Umbrella mercenaries than zombies/Ganados.

After the release of the first episode of HBO's TV adaptation, I had an interest in replaying the game, I think largely to "spoil" myself on the plot beats, having assumed I'd forgotten the finer details. I first played the game on Normal, so replayed on Normal+, not realizing it was possible to fuck around and trick the game into thinking I'm allowed to play on Hard+. In the course of this replay, knowing what to expect from having played before, I was more "tolerant" of the non-infected encounters. I would soon play the expansion, The Last of Us: Left Behind, where I missed an Optional Conversation in Chapter 2, so I replayed it to finish that Trophy, as well as a couple other miscellaneous ones, and decided to take a bit of a risk by jumping into Survivor mode (I think I actually first played the DLC on Hard anyway). I felt like a badass when I kept dying to the Stalkers, decided to waste some deaths on pinpointing the locations of every brick in the area, then retried without taking any damage, stunning every Stalker with a brick so Ellie could stab the shit out of them with her knife, feeling like I'd earned myself a pat on the back for working the encounter out on my own. The final battle in the DLC was a bigger struggle, mostly because the game kept glitching and erasing enemies upon my respawn, and on completion I felt I was capable of tackling Survivor in the main game, so I did. Well, I cheated for Survivor+. The point is, playing with an increased focus on stealth and reliance on bricks/bottles over firearms made the game feel "truer" to the tone I think its apocalypse was aiming for. I imagine it'll be realer still on Grounded, but I'll save that for much later. Rarely failing against Infected encounters, and often failing against bandit/hunter encounters, I was forced to dwell more on the "sneaking around killing non-zombies" aspect of the game, necessarily making me appreciate such setpieces more than in my prior two plays. I might have ended up "overcorrecting," actually, as I had no trouble in the hotel basement, and not too much in the sewer with Sam, versus the hell of the financial district, so I'm at risk of feeling indifferent to the zombies in this zombie game. The first time I played this game, I was annoyed that there are only like six(?) Bloaters, but now I'm comfortable with only needing to kill two, so perhaps the hotel, university, and bus depot tunnel Bloaters are at risk of feeling extraneous to me? Will I be bored with zombies entirely whenever I complete Grounded? It's already true that I "fear" Runners more than anything else because if they aggro I'd have to either restart the encounter to try stealth again, or just risk damage by running around with melee. Clickers and Bloaters don't bother me because I view almost all attacks as one-hit kills on Joel; I basically only reheal through story sequences, such as some chapters restoring Joel's health meter, only using resources on health packs when I've filled my capacity for Molotovs, which I rarely use anyway.

I do really enjoy this game, but by now it's almost solely for the gameplay than the storytelling. As such, I can't see myself bumping this to a 5.0, as it gets annoying having to move ladders/dumpsters/pallet-rafts all the time, or slow scripted walk-and-talk sequences like injured Joel limping out of the science building. Druckmann and company wanted a masterpiece of "video games as cinema-adjacent," or something like that, but whether intentional or not they've ended up making a fun stealth-action game. On my Survivor+ run, my third time through the game, I skipped every prerendered cinematic without feeling bad (but largely because I'd just finished the game with cutscenes a week ago). If I happen to replay the game this year, I'll probably skip cutscenes again. But I think I do plan on getting the PS4 remaster soon-ish, mainly to try Factions, and I think I'll watch cutscenes the first time I play that version, out of respect, and if I ever get a PS5 I'll likely get the remake there. But beyond that, I'm quite hyped to finally move into The Last of Us Part II, which I really want to get to before playing the first game a fourth time, so....

The David boss fight always makes me shit my pants, which is funny because I've always thought the structure was like a "realistic" take on Jak and Daxter bosses with the "do this same thing three times to beat him."