What2Play: The last of us
Photo credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Naughty Dog
Max Radó / February 15, 2020
(2 min read)
There is a good chance that you have heard this title before, even for someone who is not a follower of the video-game culture. This game is able to give you the single greatest experience you can get from a video game for the last decade. If you will not take my word for it, take into consideration that it was crowned to be the best game of the decade by Metacritic’s users or users on the PlayStation Blog. If you haven’t played this PlayStation 3 and 4 exclusives yet, I sincerely hope that you will give it a shot once you have read this.
As most games done by Naughty Dog, it is a Third-Person Shooter, and the player will get immediately thrown into the story. The game will not explain how you got there or what you are supposed to do, you are basically confused the same way the characters are. You will play as Joel, an average guy who lives in the suburbs with his daughter. That is where an unexplained epidemic starts and they have to flee. After a couple of years, the epidemic is still at large, there are only safe neighborhoods in the major cities controlled by the military, and anything outside is at your own risk. Joel is bitter, has deeply profound trust issues and essentially gives up hope for humanity inside humanity. He spends his days smuggling and this nefarious practice will eventually lead him to Ellie. A teenager about the same age as his daughter. Joel’s main goal is to protect Ellie until they reach an important destination. That is where the story sets off, the story of grief and happiness, of loss and unexpected gain.
Photo source: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Naughty Dog
Gameplay-wise, the game is linear with little exploration of every environment you come across, usually for the purpose of finding items or collectibles. Gathering scraps or parts is a vital part of gameplay in order to improve weapons and character stats, which will gradually make the game easier and offer a lot more options when it comes to tackling difficult situations, the game will put the player into.
The game puts emphasis on the player to be as good of a ninja as he can. Stealth is definitely the way if you don’t like to feel under pressure when a horde of monsters is rushing towards you. For those who prefer being a Terminator rather than being Sam Fisher, there is an option to blast everything in your way. But be wary of the somewhat realistic sway and kickback of the gun are a feature of the game and every time you miss, you will deeply regret it because ammo is definitely a luxury in this world.
The game has its flaws, for me, the combat system in this game is sometimes clunky at some points, where you would press a button and it either did not register it properly or the animation of an opponent would take over. Nevertheless, this game being almost perfect, I can forgive anything. The story-telling, the character development, the graphics are simply stunning and are hard to compare them to any video game, movie, or TV series in the past few years. It can be experienced by anyone. My dad does not play video games, yet when I started to play it, he watched me and at the very end of the game and he was at the edge of his seat waiting for this wonderful ride to end.
