The Last of Us

Review Time!

The Last of Us

The Last of Us is a post apocalyptic game with zombies and heart created by NaughtyDog. In The Last of Us you play as Joel, a gruff, hardened smuggler put into the one situation he has dreaded, delivering a little girl, Ellie, to the Firefly's. Why? She's immune. 

Along the way you are thrown in to a beautiful environment, I mean, right down to the individual pieces of grass. This game is just plain pretty, not more than pretty, it's beautiful. The sunset in the background behind all the collapsing abandoned buildings, the places where it is clear that nature has started to take the world back. When you walk through water, Joel's clothes actually get wet and gradually dry (though, I did notice that this also occurred in the Uncharted games, but this is better.)

The Last of Us, is more than just a pretty game, the graphics are amazing, the character arcs, the character interactions, oh I can go on forever about the story and character in this game. I'll try to make it brief, so this post doesn't become four pages long. 

I think I mentioned it before, but I am a writer (unpublished :( ) and when a game has such an in-depth story line I get giddy. I was very giddy with this game. Sometimes, I find that characters in games aren't as flushed out as I'd like them to be. Who were they before the disaster happened? What made them change into a smart ass? Surely they didn't just start off that way. The Last of Us does this great, right from the beginning when we find out Joel's reason for his hardened attitude toward Ellie, but it's more than that, throughout the journey little things are revealed about Joel. Little things that you might miss if you're not a story line/Character design/lore fanatic like me. 

These little things all piece together to give an understanding on why Joel is the way he is. They do the same with Ellie, and it's not too far into the journey with her that the game makes you realize how different Ellie is from Joel. How much she doesn't know about Before, because, she wasn't around before the world went to shit. 

The dialogue interaction between the characters is something else I noticed, first of all, I love the voice acting in this game, but NaughtyDog has never let me down in voice actors. The dialogue flows so easily, and naturally, that at times I found myself so invested in the characters that I couldn't stand to see anything bad happen to them.

Which leads me into the FEELS. Oh. My. God. The feels. There aren't too many games that get me this emotionally invested in the characters and the story, but the Last of Us, hits dead on. And I haven't heard very different from anyone else I know who've played it either. When the characters are tense, you're tense, when something happens to one of the characters you hesitate. There was one time I was yelling at my TV because I didn't like a particular decision Joel makes. If you've played the game, and aren't a snow troll, you probably know which one I'm talking about. 

Overall, I absolutely loved The Last of Us. It definitely lived up to all the hype around it, I think. And I'm seriously hoping that they decide to bring it back for a sequel, personally, I'd like to play through a game of the years between Sara's death and meeting Ellie.