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Monday 28 November 2016

The Last of Us Review: Endure and Survive


The Last of Us

Created by Naughty Dog and release originally for the PS3 comes the master piece that took the gaming world by emotional storm. The Last of Us. Now it's been a while since it's release however it's still got an incredibly huge following with the remasters of it on PS4

Following the story of an ordinary Texas man named Joel as he simply tries to survive in a world ruined by a (very realistic and scarily possible) fungi based infection, The Last of Us brings the player on an enormous and emotional journey across apocalyptic America in the hopes of finding a cure. Accompanied by a spunky teenage girl who only knows the world as it is, Joel suffers from memories of his past designed to tug at your fragile heart strings.

For the first time in a long while, The Last of Us brings gamers an actually fleshed out and incredibly long game, without using side quests and open worlds to make up for the lack of a story line. Very much story driven, The Last of Us still manages to incorporate some pretty great gameplay elements with fight or flight mechanics for every kind of player.

Graphics don't necessarily have to be amazing to make a great survival horror (just take a look at HellNight for example) but Naughty Dog really put their all into making The Last of Us a visually pleasing experience, alongside a genuinely terrifying one. With some of the areas of ruined city mixed with overgrown plant life being so detailed they actually leave you just taking a look around at the world as it is now whenever your given a chance.

The Last of Us uses a great mechanism to incorporate effective stealth options within it's gameplay - even if it is pretty unrealistic. The option to `listen` that suddenly turns Joel into a weird bat hybrid works pretty well at giving the player a great set of options in every situation. With the use of the listen option you can effectively gauge whether or not it's worth (or even possible) charging in guns blazing to get rid of the enemies, be they infected, clickers, or people, or whether you should slowly take them out with stealth attacks slowly but safely. It also gives you the opportunity to just nope the hell out of there and do your best to stay hidden. This means that no matter what style of player you are, you've still got a way for you to effectively play the game.

The fighting mechanics while annoying at times, do well to keep you on your toes. Ammo is genuinely scarce, and pipes and planks will break )some how even axes just break after one use) so you really need to consider your battles. Is it worth wasting your only use of a one hit kill melee on an enemy you could easily avoid? It all works in giving you the choice. Something I think is a great aspect in a game as it doesn't shun or penalise anyone who plays differently. The gun shots and cover system also works in a realistic manner, enemies aren't just going to stand there shooting at you and leaving themselves completely open to attacks - you have to lure them or trick them. Or just charge in and deck 'em.

The plot to The Last of Us is interesting and a very good development on the `mean guy turns good while doing reluctant good deed` trope. And the DLC only served to make the story more emotional from an entirely different perspective - as opposed to simply being a way to keep getting money. However, the story does have some aspects that just didn't sit right with me.

Without a doubt the first 20 or so minutes of the game are genuinely heartbreaking. But what follows comes across as a bit dis associative. We're forced into a twenty year jump to see where Joel has ended up after the outbreak initially started. Which I guess is fine, it doesn't necessarily not work or ruin the game. Nonetheless it does leave you sort of feeling left out. You've missed these twenty years, you joined in as everything went to hell and now your just... twenty years ahead. Still, it works in basically summing up `well hey look the world has basically been screwed`, but certain plot elements found later in the game display the fact that Naughty Dog had plenty of opportunity to add a nice middle part between this jump, featuring some of the horrors that Joel and his brother Tommy faced as they simply tried to survive. But that may have simply made the game too long.

While the infection is prime aspect of the game - it does feel more like a simple backdrop so that Naughty Dog could place it in some kind of apocalyptic setting. Throughout the game your mainly faced with the (far over used and frankly dry) `the humans are worse than the infected` concept. Where you mainly face off against the corrupt police who just don't know what to do anymore, or the horrendous scavengers who don't care what heinous acts they commit provided they survive and have some fun. It was a nice concept when it was first introduced, however by now it's practically in any survival horror media text that has even the slightest form of a zombie or infected plot. Honestly I'd rather they play a smaller aspect in the game, and make the horror of the Clickers and infected the main fear in the game.

Still, with that said Naughty Dog did do a great job at making very morally terrifying scenes with the remaining humans - taking full advantage of the horrors that humanity are fully capable of, to really get under the players skin and make them shudder.

Overall, despite having some unrealistic aspects that slightly bring you out of it's immersive world - and some very minor issues with plot - The Last of Us was a game that deserved every bit of fame and recognition that it received. It brought a new breath of life into the survival horror genre without skipping out on story and atmosphere for simply large amounts of gore and shock.

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