The Last of Us Review
A generation-defining story of love, hope, and sacrifice
When it comes to the acumen of developers in the gaming industry, Naughty Dog is perhaps the golden standard of maintained excellence. As a developer, they’ve shown a remarkable ability to create, improve, and evolve with each release. Starting with their superstar marsupial mascot Crash Bandicoot, to the action-platforming Jak & Daxter trilogy on the Playstation 2, and the story-driven blockbuster Uncharted series, Naughty Dog has showcased a level of maturation that few studios can match. It should come as no surprise, then, that The Last of Us not only lives up to the studio’s reputation but completely shatters the most basic expectations for how memorable, and cinematic, a video game experience can be. Thanks to its immersive gameplay, incredible visuals, phenomenal story, and all-time iconic characters, The Last of Us is a masterpiece that effortlessly outclasses other titles of its ilk by an enormous margin.
Originally released on the Playstation 3 in 2013 (and later remastered for the Playstation 4 in 2014), The Last of Us is a 3rd-person action/adventure game that takes place around 2033 in a post-apocalyptic world in which a “cordyceps” virus has turned most of the population into abominable creatures called the Infected (basically a more scientific way of saying “zombies”, although the cordyceps fungus is actually based on a real thing found with ants). The story follows Joel, a scavenger with a dark past residing in Boston, and his chance encounter with a young girl named Ellie. After a series of events occur, Joel is given the task of watching over Ellie and embarking on a journey to deliver to the Fireflies, a rebel militia group predicated on finding a cure for the virus.
On the surface, the premise is nothing particularly revolutionary; it’s your dark, society-on-fire zombie/apocalypse story with themes of both love and hate on full display. But while that may sound like a gripe, it really isn’t, because even though The Last of Us tells a narrative with clear influences from some other pieces of pop culture, it does it damn well — fantastically, in fact. The game does a phenomenal job of building a world beyond repair, a rather lawless society, and super-natural danger and hostility. It doesn’t do this by blatantly explaining how everything in the world got to this point, but by showing you.
While the game is hardly an open-world affair, there are all sorts of details that you can observe while traversing through the wide variety of environments you’ll explore. From the highly-secure quarantine zones and ominous underground sewers, to college campuses and forests, The Last of Us frequently changes up its aesthetic throughout its 12–14 hour adventure. It doesn’t deliver an overwhelming amount of exposition directly, but it instead leaves little references and relics — like notes from strangers, rundown houses, leftover supplies, and even dead bodies — all over for players to get a better understanding of what kind of world they’re exploring.
Even in the game’s sound design, which encompasses everything from moving objects to screechy noises from the Infected, is executed masterfully. You’ll often hear little cues, as well, from characters while moving about the world. Sometimes they’ll just conversate about whatever is going on, while other times they fill in some of the blanks of the story. The combat, especially, showcases how far sound can go in making you feel like you’re being chased by Infected creatures or getting shot at — with even the smallest of details, like the sounds of stray bullets whizzing by you.
But perhaps even more importantly, the game immerses you in its narrative thanks to a memorable cast of characters. You’ll encounter a fairly eclectic group of personalities despite how dire the world’s state is. Folks like Bill, a paranoid schizophrenic with a strict order and code for surviving, and Marlene, the confident and relatively idealistic leader of the Fireflies, as well as a plethora of others help to keep the story fresh.
However, the real stars of the game are Joel and Ellie. The two are interesting enough on their own; Joel is a broken, angry, and emotionally rigid older man while Ellie is an eccentric, irreverent, and hopeful teenage girl. Make no mistake about Ellie, though, as she too is capable of killing and doing anything it takes to survive, but she is someone that is from this world — one born into this kind of violence and unrest; she doesn’t know of anything else, only that things, for a lack of a better term, went to shit. Her growth as a character is something truly special.
Even more special is the bond the two share together, as their interactions change from being strictly business to camaraderie at the highest and most impact levels. The two form a sort of father/daughter bond, and that kind of character development is something you don’t often see in the video game landscape, especially with the AAA sphere of action titles. Their kind of dynamic shares similarities with other pieces of work like, say, Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 drama Children of Men or the equally as emotionally tragic comic book adaptation Logan — and it is perhaps the game’s biggest selling point. Seeing how their story unfolds and the risks Naughty Dog takes in its conclusion especially will leave an indelible mark on you long past the main campaign is complete.
While much has been said of the stellar presentational and story aspects of the game, make no mistake: The Last of Us is just as exhilarating of a gameplay experience. Playing mostly as Joel, you are going to have to face threats from both Infected and human enemies. This distinction is incredibly apparent, as most of the former segments require a more stealthy, methodical approach while the latter is more of a chaotic firefight against enemies with a wide variety of weapons and gear.
Fair warning, though, that just because this is a Naughty Dog game does not mean there is the same kind of blockbuster, over-the-top action like with the Uncharted series. In the Last of Us, supplies are scarce, and accruing an ample amount of materials, ammo, and upgrades — as well as how, and when, you choose to use them — is where the meat of its design lies. It’s a game more predicated on survival, and while the idea of meticulously managing how many shotgun shells you have left may sound boring, it actually creates combat scenarios that feel infinitely more important and dramatic.
Playing as Joel, you’ll need to monitor everything that the environment around you has to offer. He isn’t a super-soldier, but more of a guerilla, poor-man’s John Rambo kind of a fighter. You can choose to expunge the ammo of your best weapons — which range from a hunting rifle, revolver, shotgun, and even a flamethrower, among others — to eliminate the threat at hand, but doing so may leave you ill-equipped for the next confrontation you may run into. Or, you may go about things quietly, choosing a more stealthy way of taking out enemies that may include takedowns from behind or simply using your melee weapons to bash your opponent until they’re incapacitated. Sometimes, even, there are scenarios where you can perfectly maneuver yourself in a way where you avoid combat all together.
It’s a gameplay style that will leave some perturbed by how, at times, unforgiving it can be, but after practicing and getting used to the very delicate and grounded way the game operates the challenge becomes less arduous and infinity more enjoyable.
Of course, Joel does have a few abilities and upgrades at his disposal to give you an advantage, like a listen-mode action that allows you to see where enemies and allies are located based on the sound they emit. There is also the game’s crafting system, which allows you to use the materials you gather sprinkled all around the environment in order to create things like molotov cocktails, nail bombs, shivs, and even smoke bombs to escape from enemies. There are also materials you can gather like pills, which can be used to upgrade some of Joel’s abilities like the aforementioned listen-mode or the speed by which you craft items or your maximum health.
Joel himself is upgradeable, yes, but there are also machine parts you can acquire to add more features to your weapon arsenal. You might want to build an extra holster for your backpack so changing weapons isn’t as difficult, or increase the damage, accuracy, and ammo capacity of any number of your weapons. This system adds for a nice touch that offers players some amount customization and progression in an otherwise fairly linear experience.
Aside from the main story campaign, The Last of Us also offers a couple of extra modes to keep you occupied. The first is a new game plus mode that allows you to play through the entirety of the story again on a harder difficulty, but you get to keep all of the weapons and upgrades from your first playthrough. It’s a simple, but effective, way of making your next journey through the story — which I can assure you will want to do—a bit more exciting and different.
There’s also a full multiplayer, player vs. player component you can dive into. While it’s a mode that is hardly necessary given how complete the main story is, the mode is surprisingly unique and engaging with its construction. It’s still essentially your typical deathmatch mode with a couple of other variants thrown in, but it still manages to keep the grounded approach of the story intact. Ammo is still scarce, and there are materials you’ll need to try and acquire in order to take down other players.
There’s also some cool customization options with your character that you take into battle. Firstly, you can decide between either joining the scavenger or Firefly clans, which essentially becomes your permanent team, although it is possible to create more characters. As you play more matches and earn more experience points, you can unlock various perks and abilities — basically like the Call of Duty franchise—to better suit your playstyle. There are also plenty of purely cosmetic items to unlock to make your character look a bit more different than the rest of the pack, with the equipment available varying depending on which clan your character is a part of.
While I don’t usually care for online multiplayer offerings, I found myself pouring quite a few hours into the mode. It’s able to capture, albeit to a lesser extent, the same kind of tension that the single-player firefights had. You have to work strategically, as this is no Gears of War kind of explosive, run-and-gun affair you can just waltz right into.
Conclusion
The Last of Us is the epitome of why I play video games. Naughty Dog has crafted an astonishingly deep and fulfilling experience that shows exactly why they are the best studio in all of gaming. It offers a captivating story with thematical nuances and plenty or risky choices, endearing characters, painstaking detail in its sharp visual design and sounds, and thrillingly violent and layered gameplay that all culminate in a project that has gifted me with memories that I will cherish for years to come.
