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| The Last of Us isn't only PlayStation 3's best exclusive. It's an outright masterpiece. |
The Last of Us is a near-perfect analog for The Road, a literary
masterpiece written by Cormac McCarthy. Both present a hopeless,
post-apocalyptic situation navigated by two characters – an adult and a
child – with nothing but absolute despair surrounding them. Like The
Road,
The Last of Us is
perpetually dangerous and unpredictable, and like The Road, what
happened to get society to a point of rapid decay isn’t the focus. It’s
the story of the characters at hand, and those characters alone, at the
center of both plots. The beauty of The Last of Us when compared to The
Road, however, is that it’s fully interactive, complete with all of the
vulnerability, uncertainty and perpetual insecurity such a situation
inherently provides.
The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay
with a stellar narrative. It never slows down, it never lets up, and
frankly, it never disappoints. It’s PlayStation 3’s best exclusive, and
the entire experience, from start to finish, is remarkable. I lost
myself in Naughty Dog’s vision of a pandemic-ridden United States, in
the characters that populate this unfortunate wasteland, and in their
individual stories. The 17 hours I spent playing through the campaign
are among the most memorable I’ve ever spent with a game.
Joel remembers the world before the pandemic.
Players are cast in the role of Joel, a grizzled and tired survivor
stuck in a cycle any person could imagine finding oneself in two decades
after the collapse of society. He takes odd jobs, acquires food,
clothing, and shelter, and repeats the process endlessly, a process that
only gets more arduous and desperate as time goes on. Joel does what’s
necessary to stay alive, and in the ruined United States he travels
around, his survival often means someone else’s untimely death.
Occasionally haunted by his past but living in his dystopian present,
Joel is surprisingly easy to root for. In many ways, he’s strangely
relatable. He retains shreds of his humanity as best he can, considering
the extraordinary circumstances he finds himself in. He has a sharpness
to him, but a tenderness, too, which he occasionally displays to his
partner, a woman named Tess. In the 17 hours or so it took me to beat
The Last of Us, I came to care about Joel, and I became invested in his
story, and the stories of those he meets along the way.
The Last of Us takes place in 2033, so the regular world Joel harkens
back to on occasion is one you and I understand. It’s fascinating to
think about how he’s evolved since the world crumbled around him, and
even if he does what’s necessary to stay alive – including stealing and
murdering – it’s hard to fault him for it. In fact, one of the great
ironies of The Last of Us is that you’ll be pulling for him no matter
how dark things get, or how violent his actions are. He does what’s
required. Joel knows it’s either him or them. There’s no gray area. Joel
can be cold and ruthless, but those around him have the propensity to
be far worse.
As riveting as Joel is, he isn’t the only character of consequence in
The Last of Us. Indeed, calling him the main character is true only to
an extent, because it’s his companion, a young girl named Ellie, who
truly steals the show. Joel makes a business arrangement early in the
adventure to help transport Ellie across what remains of the United
States, a wasteland marked with boundless wildlife alongside cities and
towns ruthlessly reclaimed by nature. From there on out, the two are
virtually inseparable, even if they are at first skeptical of one
another, forced together by circumstances in a world where trust and
faith are in extremely short supply.
Joel and Ellie develop a sort of dysfunctional father-daughter
relationship as their collective experiences bind them, and rooting for
Ellie in particular is commonplace in The Last of Us. Her success means
the player is successful, and her hardened exterior is the perfect
complement to her complete ignorance of the world before it was
destroyed. Ellie was born after the collapse, and as such, she’s full of
questions and wonder, often communicated through the many contextual
conversations she and Joel share. She’ll pick through records at a music
store, become fascinated with wildlife she’s never seen before, and ask
a million questions about the past. You watch her learn, grow, and gain
meaning. It’s impossible not to become attached to her.
The interplay between Joel and Ellie, as well as the other characters
you meet on your adventure, is one of the great highlights in The Last
of Us. Voice acting is not only consistently superb, but the game’s
graphical beauty makes the events of The Last of Us overflow with
realism. Everything that happens is immediately more memorable, more
powerful, and more poignant because your surroundings are so believable.
Forests, fields and wooded trails are overgrown, dense, and lush.
Abandoned villages and metropolises alike are eerie, silent, and
crumbling. Each environment is unique, thoughtfully created, and
bursting with little details, including notes, letters, voice recorders
and more that tell ancillary stories of survivors you rarely ever meet
in person. The game took me so long to beat because I was obsessed with
seeing every inch of it. The Last of Us demands exploration, not only to
scour for needed supplies, but to satisfy your curiosity.
Joel and Ellie's endless chatter is one of The Last of Us' highlights.
The Last of Us is undoubtedly pretty to look at, but that beauty is
often overshadowed by imminent peril. Joel and Ellie will confront
enemies in all of the various locations they visit, and these battles
represent the other side of what makes The Last of Us shine. Combat is
tense and nerve-racking. Fighting is as emotionally taxing as it is
physically dangerous, because the people Joel fights are, like him, just
normal folks trying to survive. In a world where everyone has a
singular motivation to keep breathing for one more day, it’s hard to
judge even the harshest remnants of humanity you encounter.
Stealthily killing entire rooms of enemies is incredibly satisfying, so
much so that when you blow your cover, it’s hard not to feel a sense of
disappointment (especially when one of your companions occasionally
fires a gun or walks in front of an enemy, which you can’t control).
Holding down R2 while crouching lets Joel listen carefully to his
surroundings, giving him a glimpse of enemy locations in his direct
vicinity and an edge in staying away from danger. Some players may
consider this a bit cheap, but I’d merely call it gamey. Just like the
L3 prompts that tell you where to look and hints that appear if the game
determines you’ve been stuck in an area too long (all of which can be
turned off), Joel’s listening skill can simply be ignored if you feel
like it doesn’t fit. But rest assured, it’s very helpful, especially
later in your quest.
The beauty of stealth in The Last of Us is the incredible,
uncomfortable realism you’re forced to witness each and every time you
execute a silent kill. Watching a survivor fruitlessly swat at Joel’s
arms as he strangles him to death is disturbing, as is quickly shiving a
man in his neck and listening to him gurgle some parting breaths as he
collapses to the ground. The Last of Us does a phenomenal job of making
each and every enemy feel human. Every life taken has weight and each
target feels unique and alive. It’s hard not to think about some of the
older folks in particular, ones that remember the real world, lived in
it, and were once normal. There’s an emotional pang when you’re taking
out thugs that look a whole lot like you and your allies.
Of course, there are enemies that are decidedly inhuman in The Last of
Us, too. The collapse of society was instigated by the sudden prevalence
of a fungus that wreaks havoc on the human mind, and those humans –
known not-so-lovingly as The Infected – are alive, but not well. No
matter which faction of humanity a person falls on, whether he’s with
the remnants of the federal government, or rogue groups known as
Hunters, or even the mysterious resistance organization known as The
Fireflies, everyone is united against The Infected. This is simply
because The Infected can in turn infect others, further eroding
humanity’s already dwindling numbers. They are a perpetual threat to
even the slightest hope that humanity can one day step back from the
precipice of extinction, and running into them is always frightening.
Unlike your human adversaries, who often work together, audibly
communicate, plan their actions, and practice self-preservation, The
Infected attack with reckless abandon, with absolutely no regard for
their safety and with every intention of killing you. Fighting them is
terrifying, especially during your first few encounters, and feels
completely different than your engagements with pockets of humanity. The
lesser versions of The Infected, colloquially known as Runners, can be
taken out with firearms and melee strikes alike, but it’s the Clickers –
characters so infected by the Cordyceps fungus that they can’t even see
– that will haunt your dreams. They can only be killed with silent shiv
strikes or via firearm – silence is more often than not your best
weapon against them -- but if they so much as get their hands on you,
it’s game over. In this world, they are the true threat. It’s unlikely
you’ll ever get comfortable dealing with them, of being mere feet away
from them, crouching, hoping they don’t somehow sense you.
Another brilliant aspect of The Last of Us is its crafting options, all
of which happen in real-time. With the exception of actually going to a
pause menu, there’s no way to stop the action, so you need to find
lulls in order to scavenge for items, put them together and create new
goods that can be used both curatively and offensively. The system is
extra tense considering you can use, say, alcohol and rags to create
either a healing pack or a Molotov Cocktail, but not both with the same
goods. Thoroughly exploring environments nets you the components
necessary for item creation, giving you yet another reason to inspect
surroundings already begging to be rummaged. And item scarcity, a
perpetual issue in the world of The Last of Us, means that everything
you find is precious in its own way. There aren’t any factories making
more of anything you find, and that includes the greatest prize of all:
bullets.
Ellie is undeniably the star of the show.
This perpetuates real consequences based on your decisions. Will you
use those scissors and some tape to create a shiv? Or will you attach
them to the end of a pole to create a makeshift weapon of war? Will you
create a smoke bomb only because you found sugar in the environment and
can only carry more if you use what you already have? Or do you bypass
the sugar and hope you don’t need it – or what you can make from it –
later on? Will you opt for melee strikes to save ammo for another day?
Or will you walk in guns-blazing and hope you find shells on the bodies
you leave in your wake? How you choose to navigate these forks in the
road have considerable effects on how you approach future enemy
encounters, adding a special dynamic to The Last of Us not found in very
many games.
Joel can also upgrade himself with pills and other supplements hidden
throughout the adventure, though here you’ll also have to make careful
choices, as there isn’t enough medicine in one playthrough to fully
upgrade him. Likewise, all of your weapons, from pistols to shotguns and
rifles, can also be upgraded using parts and tools found on your
journey. Similarly, you won’t be able to max-out everything, so you’ll
need to make thoughtful decisions. This adds an analytical, tactical
slant to The Last of Us not found in the likes of Uncharted, though if
you really want to upgrade Joel and his goods fully, you could always
take advantage of The Last of Us’ very welcome New Game+ feature.
While the campaign is absolutely worth playing through multiple times,
The Last of Us also comes packing a robust, rich multiplayer mode that
isn’t simply a retread of Uncharted’s. In fact, The Last of Us’
multiplayer seems decidedly scaled back in order to fit it into the
context of the post-civilization United States, with small player counts
and only two modes that pay exceptional detail to the greater context
of the single-player campaign.
The Last of Us’ online functionality exists within a mode called
Factions. Once you begin, you choose one of two sides and then jump into
one of two sub-modes: Supply Raid and Survivors. Both are atypical in
their approach, especially Survivors, which presents players with a
best-of-seven series in a four-on-four match where death is brutally
permanent. Survivors forces meticulous play virtually ripped right out
of the campaign, except instead of fighting AI-controlled partners,
you’ll be dealing with even smarter humans. It’s a truly fun mode, one
where every player on the map is overflowing with nerves and afraid to
make a mistake.
Supply Raid, on the other hand, is about whittling down your team by
eroding their overall life count. It’s more generic than its
counterpart, but the idea of having a shared number of lives forces you
to strive for better play. It makes you not want to be the reason your
team loses, it makes you not want to make silly blunders. Like
Survivors, Supply Raid also allows you to craft items on the fly using
components found on the map and feels a whole lot like the single-player
game. By scaling back the modes and the player counts from the likes of
Uncharted, Naughty Dog has removed the tall barrier between single
player and multiplayer and has made the two feel interconnected, even
ancillarily.
Playing The Last of Us online is exceptionally fun.
What’s especially neat about The Last of Us’ online functionality is
the metagame that transcends everything you do. When playing online,
your character – who is fully customizable in both appearance and
loadout – is the leader of a band of survivors. Successfully navigating
online matches, collecting items and engaging in one-off challenges
called Missions helps grow your band. Of course, if you fail, your band
decreases in size. It’s a simple system in premise, but it’s undeniably
addicting when you start getting into it. It creates another, higher
level, a different way to gauge your overall success by something other
than wins or losses and your kill-to-death ratio. Like the single-player
campaign, which judges your actions based on future consequences, so
too does multiplayer in The Last of Us reward or detract based upon
performances that, at the time, may not seem entirely consequential.
Then again, The Last of Us is still all about its single player
campaign. Many players will never jump online, and frankly, they won’t
be missing out on what truly makes the overall package so incredibly
special, so exceptionally noteworthy, such a must-play experience.
THE VERDICT
PlayStation 3 isn’t only well-known for its number of exclusive games,
but for the sheer number of quality exclusives. That’s what makes
The Last of Us even
more impressive, because not only does it join the ranks of Uncharted,
Killzone, God of War, Infamous and more, but it bests them all. In
short, Naughty Dog has crafted a game that impresses in virtually every
way. The Last of Us is a true feat.
Its unrivaled presentation in particular sets the bar even higher than
the Uncharted trilogy already did, and its writing, voice acting and
layered gameplay combine to create what is very easily the game to beat
for Game of the Year 2013.
7:55 AM
By
I am GEEK
