Wish I could experience this game for the first time again. The stealth and shooter gameplay is good, but not great. That is no problem at all though because the two main pros are the atmosphere from the locations, and the characters in it. This game made me feel all different emotions from sadness and anger to joy and disgust. Providing this variation makes the story more powerful throughout.

The Last Of Us is the best game ever made. Now, hold it right there with your pitchforks. I have good reasons. And so do many other people. The Last Of Us is one the few games that actually has a deep, emotional and interesting story. Joel and Ellie are probably one of the two best written and voice acted characters in video game history. The graphics are superb and make the game feel even more real and like a movie. The gameplay is solid. The stealth is fantastic and the cover system and hand to hand combat is fantastic as well. The human enemies are some of the most common enemies in the game and they are survivors like you. Apart from they will kill you for food and don’t care about anyone other than people in their group. But then there are the clickers. They’re creepy and really scared the shit out of me at some parts in the game.

The level design is where the game gets me. The game is linear, but the way the levels were designed it makes them feel really open. There are doors you can open with shiv knives and hallways and lots of buildings to enter and search through. There are also lots of surprises and really emotional scenes that i wont spoil. The characters you meet along the way are interesting but also can be quite dangerous. There are notes left behind from survivors, telling there stories of survival. They do get quite interesting. One springs to mind. Ish. A survivor who’s notes you can track down for at least an hour. It was really interesting to keep reading what happened to him, and i couldn’t wait until i found another one and really know what happened to him. I was hoping at some point you meet him. But oh well.

The soundtrack is superb and i can’t really say anymore about this game. Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog did a fantastic job. I cannot give them more praise. But. There is the multiplayer. A part of the game that really did not need to be there, but it was and it was great. Fun team based multiplayer. So much content. And you can replay this game over and over, playing the game either stealthily or you can go guns blazing. But the AI for some reason would just ignore Eliie completely. Which was slightly odd, but not game changing at all.

Conclusion: Well. It’s the best damn game ever made! An overall masterclass experience. 10/10

So first off, I’m pretty big on detail. I’m real big on the tech that goes behind these video games. Like the reflections and displacement of the water, the dynamic lighting, patterned and seamless textures, mocap and custom animations, things of that nature. And technologically, this game stands out bar none. Everything from the art and the visuals to the facial expressions. This game LOOKS incredible. Absolutely astounding. Every environment had the perfect feel and tone to it and everything fit just right. Even the sound design, while not superb, was still executed very well. I was pleasantly surprised with the effects and ambiance. Not too big on the soundtrack though. I actually thought the soundtrack was the weakest part of the game and I’m pretty big on music and soundtracks. But enough of that, let’s get down to the meat and potatoes.

The controls are somewhat simplistic. Not too fancy, not too many combination controls. Pretty straight forward. The actual gameplay is somewhat repetitive though. It’s a survival horror, I get it. But you could always tell when conflict was about to happen. Or at least when human interaction was about to happen. Ellie can’t swim? Ok, cool, just go get that convenient pallet that seems to be chilling in every single body of water around the world. Just an example of the little things like that.

The infected were relentless and brutal and felt somewhat unpredictable. They really had that unstable feel to them. But the confrontation with the infected (when I played) was a little broken. When you’re getting manhandled by a runner and you’re trying to get out of deaths grasp, there would be a clicker on standby, idling in the background, waiting to pounce. You see it in the background, and as soon as you got away, it would immediately cut to the death animation of the clicker. It went from one animation straight to the other with no in-between “air” time. And I kid you not: I couldn’t press a single button in between the two. Even the fact that I had some shivs on deck didn’t matter. It could have been because I was on hard mode, but I felt a little bit cheated in that area.

Second, were the paths of the clickers. There were times where I’d keep having to go back to a checkpoint and I’d be crouched down at one place, and the clicker would go right past me like my sneak skill was legendary. But then when I died (for whatever reason) I would reload my checkpoint and go back to that same exact hiding spot. Then MAGICALLY the thing knows where I am and I’m dead. Then, when I did it again, nothing would happen. Blended right in like JP from Grandma’s Boy. I mean, ok. A little frustrating, but not a game breaker.

As far as the story goes, I thought it was very predictable. And to be honest, I never felt the chemistry between Joel and Ellie. It just didn’t feel natural. It was like they had a good rapport. It felt very redone. Troy Baker’s performance (mocap and voice-acting) was really good. And Ashley Johnson’s voice really stuck out, definitely kid like, but just a semitone out of place but that’s purely my opinion on the voice. Anyways, I called almost all the outcomes of the scenarios (even though I played the game late, I still made sure to stay away from any spoilers). The secondary characters were my favorite. They stuck out more than the main characters did and I felt that the relationship between them and the protagonists were a lot stronger than the main two.

Conclusion: The game is good. I recommended it to people all the time when I worked in retail. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. It’s like a James Cameron film: clichéd but very well presented. Overall, it felt like a lazy river ride with a couple of rapids.

Naughty Dog once again created a fantastic, evolving story to tell. The characters are real, gameplay is engaging and fun, and amazing graphics with seamless cut-scenes (or non-cut scenes) are cinematic. But the thing that I enjoyed the most, and I feel has been very overlooked by the gaming community, is the riveting multiplayer. Easily one of my favorite online multiplayers yet. Filled with three different game modes that are very differently played, giving the player a large variety of play styles to choose from. And the SOUND is amazing. Each gunshot, shiv kill, and snow crunching footstep fills this game with superb realism. 4 on 4 battles with other players are fun, difficult, and last the right amount of time. If a player is good they can stay alive for a while. Much better than regular online multiplayers like CoD and many others, where the main task is who sees who first. In TLoU, finding another player is running into trouble, for they are difficult to kill, and your tactics come into play immensely.

Conclusion: Favorite Online Multiplayer

I’m a PC gamer, but for this game I bought a PS3 and it was worth it.
The story, the characters, the atmosphere and most of all the changing relationship between Joel and Elli leaves me with such a deep emotional immersion which no other game does it till then.
An absolutly must play for all serious gamers. So, I have to get a PS4 and the remastered version too and I’m so excited to play part 2 soon.
My one and only favorite of all games.

One of the best games exclusive to Playstation 3 and 4. Great story i almost cried several times (yes i maybe a **** but i loved the game). The game also has great gameplay.