Cpt Blackadder
New Member
Unless you’ve lived under a rock of late, it’s hard not to notice the zombie phenomena taking over the film and gaming industry right now. It’s very hip and trendy to be a zombie these days it seems. So it’s of no suprize that the developer Naughty Dog, one of SONY’s finest, wanted to get in on the act. I know, I know, ND have gone to great lengths to say these are not zombies, they are in fact “ infected” but deformed humans mutated into a zombie like trance… they are zombies to you and I, and a central part to the plot of the game “ The Last of Us.”
ND, those wonderful developers who brought us the very fluffy and safe Uncharted series, blow away any thoughts of safe within the first ten minutes of the Last of Us. No one would have been upset if ND had indeed played it safe and given us Uncharted with zombies, but to say that the opening prologue of the Last of Us was as far removed from the Uncharted world as possible would be an understatement. The prologue is gut wrenching and frankly uncomfortable viewing, that serves notice from the word go, that The last of Us is a completely different beast, and has an identity all of its very own.
The story is, for reasons unknown, ( and that irked me ) an infection has started spreading across the globe, and you play the part of Joel who is doing nothing more than trying to survive with a gang of survivors in a city that is now under martial law. Joel gets entwined on a mission to transport a girl to another side of town, but, inevitably things go drastically wrong.
In fairness to ND the enemies do not always consists of the infected, they also include humans in the shape of the Police or other surviving tribes as well.
When you start playing The Last of us, it won’t take you long to realize that this is indeed a genre defining game certainly in terms of presentation of a character driven story. The graphics are stunning and beautiful, the audio rich, but the real star here is the script and the acting. The acting is delivered with such a wonderful sense of tension and atmosphere, and is all mixed together with some very emotional dialogue, that it all becomes very believable for a non-believable situation!
But, what the hype failed to mention is the average, sometime boring gameplay. You see, you’re playing a character, in a survival game. It’s a game where every bullet, and anything you can scavenge of any scrap, in your environment matters. Resources are scarce, and because of which, you have to make decisions about how you play the game. Do you waste all your ammo clearing an area, or try the much more difficult and time consuming stealth option thereby saving the resources you have? That’s all well and dandy to have this choice to make each and every time your presented with it, and a wonderful position to be put into, but unfortunately more and more, the AI of the game ultimately makes the choice for you and where the game falters.
You can spend 5 minutes getting into position, watching the enemy patterns, plotting your route to stealth your way through a section. Whilst you’re doing this your team mates run around in total view making as much noise as a herd of elephants! Because you see them do that you think you can do the same right? WRONG! So many times you’ll be trying to be stealthy, only for you to think it’s safe to do something because your buddy just did and, your back to having a gunfight.
Add to this some enemies called clickers, can hear you fart even when your crouched out of sight about 20 yards away, yet if you manage to strangle an enemy infected, just 2 feet away from a clicker they suddenly and mysteriously can’t hear the gurgling noises right next to them! The point is here, the AI is woefully inconsistent and troublesome to get right.
You can indeed stealth your way through every section of the game, and when there are situations where your playing a character on it's own, with no troublesome friendlies to bother you, it works really well. But when you get things wrong, there sometimes wasn’t much of a clear explanation as to why. So out of frustration of not having to repeat the exercise of spending 5 minutes getting into position all over again trying to use the stealth approach, you then start to lean more and more on just gunning your way through, then scavenge for supplies in peace when the battle is over.
Add to the inconsistent AI, is the fact there is very little variety to gameplay either. Puzzles consist of nothing more than finding a ladder or plank of wood and putting it in the right position, normally just a few feet from where it fell anyway. There’s no on rail sequences, some rudimentary boss fights, and the actual gameplay doesn’t really alter from what you do in the first 1 hour to the last. It’s basically one long slog of searching every nook and cranny for items to craft into weapons and find collectables, interspersed with attempted stealth that goes wrong and ends up in gun play fight sections.
The thing is though.. knowing all that, will you care or even really notice ?? NO, not really!
Whatever games you have played before, The Last of Us takes story telling in the medium of a game to such a high level here, it will undoubtedly be nothing like you've ever experienced before, not just this gen, but maybe even for most of the next gen too. Such is the power of the emotions you endure here, you'll be thinking long about the story even when your miles away from your console. Delicate issues of guilt, remorse, conflict, rights and wrongs, and all those emotions that make most people squirm to discuss, are met head and face on. There's no soft option here, no right or wrong, it just survive by any means, turn your moral compass off or die.
The reward for being in this tough world is the sense of satisfaction and relief when things go your way. But then there is also the sense of dread and fear when they don't. Ultimately as a gamer, your taken on so many highs and lows, by the games end, your exhausted, and exhilerated all at the same time. The word epic is used far too often these days, but the last of us, and the experience you'll have with it, has raised the bar of whats possible on a PS3 so high, anything you thought of as "epic" before is now lying in this games wake.
Yes it can be monotonous at times, but then in a turgid post-apocalyptic world, it’s about surviving, and stripping down the characters to their most basic form, where things are indeed very simple. Kill or die.
Technically The Last of Us is a thing to behold. It’s graphically next gen pinch me realistic! Add to the incredible detail put into every part of the game and the cut scenes, is the smoothness of the engine running this all with no breaks for loading whatsoever. It’s a nice little touch with big rewards as with no noticeable breaks you can play for hours on end not realizing how time is passing you by! Very few games can do that, but the Last of Us does with ease.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer, in a lot of ways, mirrors the same issues the Singleplayer game has in so much as, it’s technically wonderful, gripping and with such a refreshing change of pace. Run and gunners need not apply, this is all about stealth, softly softly slowly slowly.. to the point of very campy!
But! When you only give the players 2 games modes, both being a version of team death match and just 7 maps, in this day of age, do you really think that is acceptable? It is the BAREST of minimum requirements for an online game to the point of, as good as it is, why did they even bother? You will get some fun on it, but not for long.
Conclusion
Unless I’ve missed something when it comes to reviews, games don’t get full marks for the strength of the story they tell, and the experience alone? Am I wrong? If I am, then that would mean Binary Domain, Enslaved, Spec Ops the Line and Heavy Rain should have all got top marks too as they are character driven, triple A experiences to, but they didn’t did they? There’s other factors to take into consideration for grades and that is what you actually have to do in the journey from beginning to end, which when you put a lot of hours into it, needs to be just as entertaining as the story.
For me this is where The Last of Us falters somewhat, not a lot, but it does. Sure, I was HUGELY entertained by the experience, the story, the visuals, the acting and the detail. I’ll not forget those things for a long time and it should have ENMORMOUS praise for those aspects alone. But sadly I can’t say the same of the gameplay that got me there. It’s not at all bad, but then it’s not standout either in fact I have to say at times it was indeed flat out boring!
If the Last of Us could be compared to a film series, it would be like the film the Hobbit. The Hobbit is a triple A, huge big budget title, that if you haven’t had seen the previous 3 films in the trilogy, you’d be gobsmacked and in awe like never before. But to those of us who have seen the lord of the rings trilogy, the hobbit, as good as it was, was a bit well…. meh.
In short the Last of Us is a Triple A, genre defining story telling experience, wrapped up around a triple “meh” gameplay experience, and depending on your gaming expectations will determine just how effected you'll be at the end when the credits roll.
Rating 8.75/10
Gobsmacking, genre defining story telling at its finest, but average gameplay interaction to get you to your journeys end.