The Last Of Us – Finally

Just over a year ago, Uncharted developer Naughty Dog released it’s highly anticipated The Last Of Us. I picked it up not long after and promptly proceeded to not play it, despite the universal praise and acclaim it has gathered. Fast forward to tonight and I’ve finally finished it off, after a drawn out play through over the course of several months. So what do I think? Does it live up to all the glowing reports its received?

I’m finding it hard to put into words just how I feel about it. On one hand it is most certainly a masterpiece of technical brilliance, writing, voice acting and mechanics that make sense. On the other hand I find myself asking, “Did I enjoy it?”

No. But that’s alright, simply because of how the game presents itself. The Last Of Us is a depressingly bleak world to inhabit. Set twenty years after a parasitic fungal outbreak has seemingly annihilated human civilisation, Joel is tasked with taking young Ellie on a cross-country journey of the greatest importance. As part of their journey they have to deal with the infected populations, who have mutated into several differing forms and, perhaps most dangerously of all, other humans who care only about their own interests. The game takes place over approximately a year, split up into seasons, which focus on each part of their journey.

The interplay between Joel and Ellie is easily one of, if not the best example of a relationship in all of videogames. Naughty Dog have crafted two believable, relatable characters that you want to care about and who change and grow over the course of the main game. It’s bar-raising stuff and is rightly being highly praised for it. Voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson put in excellently subtle performances for Joel and Ellie respectively. Johnson won a BAFTA for her work on the game, while both her and Baker won VGX awards.

Technically the PS3 is being pushed to it’s limits and this is one of the best looking games you’ll find on PS3. Everything about the visuals is eye-catching, from the wonderfully subtle particle effects to beams of sunlight bursting through trees and cracks. Frame rate does suffer in one or two cases, but never at critical moments.

So back to why I didn’t enjoy myself.

The Last Of Us is in many ways about surviving, very often by the skin of your teeth. Ammunition and the supplies needed to craft everything from med kits to nail bombs, are very scarce with decisions constantly having to be made. Med kits and Molotov cocktails share the same ingredients of rags and alcohol, but with a limited supply what are you going to prioritise? Joel, while an accomplished survivor, is not a one man army and is not a trained marksman, making each shot you take that much more important. Conservation of these items is vital to progression.

Then there are the infected. Coming in three distinct varieties, each of them are extremely deadly and two of them are capable of instantly killing you if they get too close. There are often far too many to take out with guns, so stealth and sneaking become primary concerns whenever enemies are near. Most infected can be taken out with a stealth kill, but these are always risky, especially with the more deadly types.

But the real bastards of the title, are other survivors. There are quite a few that you’ll encounter throughout the game and with a handful of exceptions they’ll cause trouble and grief.

I’ve said that I didn’t enjoy the game, but it’s more because the things you do in the game are harsh and hard. You are in an unforgiving world, where death is always just around the corner and everyone in it is fighting desperately and brutally to stay alive. The tension in each combat encounter is palpable and leaves me feeling drained and exhausted.

But I still savoured every minute of it. Each tense encounter as an enemy makes their way towards my position when all I have left to defend me is a piece of pipe. Each time I swung the camera around just to take in to scenery. Each time I managed to squeeze another med kit out of my supplies before the next bullet hit me. Each time I saw Joel and Ellie grow that little bit more.

The Last Of Us deserves every plaudit and award it has picked up in the last year. It deserves the be played and discussed, as a genuine step forward for the medium. It especially deserves it for coming from a developer of high-budget blockbuster games, which so often play it safe and try not to do anything which might put off those who by little else than Fifa and Call Of Duty. The Last Of Us is a genuinely moving, and thought provoking game.

You need to play it.

The Last Of Us is available now on PS3.
The Last Of Us: Remastered will be released on PS4 on 29th July 2014.

E3 2014: Ubisoft Highlights

The second of the big publishers to display their wares, Ubisoft once again recruited actress, gamer and voice of Lana on Archer Aisha Tyler to host their show. So what should we expect to see from one of the quirkier publishers within the industry?

Straight out of the gate we got Far Cry 4. Continuing it’s open-world tradition, the game once more features a mentally unstable antagonist for players to take on alone, or with friends.

For the tween-age girl in all of us Just Dance is getting a new edition. While in itself not earth shattering news, it comes with support for smartphones as well as the ability to record your own dance moves and share them around the world.

The game itself got demoed at the Microsoft show, but Ubisoft showed of a Cinematic trailer to give some more background to the post-pandemic world the story takes place in.

Driving games are surprisingly under-represented this year, but one of the biggest is Ubisoft’s team racer The Crew. Comprising a compressed version of the entire USA, it’s possible to conduct coast to coast race events that take up to two hours to complete.

The latest installment in Ubisofts biggest franchise, Assassin’s Creed Unity is the first game to be designed only for the next-generation systems and PC, meaning 360 and PS3 owners will have to upgrade if they want to experience everything it has to offer. As revealed during the Microsoft conference up to four players can take on Assassinations and other missions together, all to the backdrop of Revolutionary France. Launching later this year Unity looks to be the next major step for the series.

Returning to the fitness game trend of several years ago, Shape Up aims to bring competitive and video game elements into the mix to help give motivation to those who find traditional fitness games dull.

Perhaps the most thought provoking and interesting game to come out of any of the conferences, Valiant Hearts – The Great War delivers an experience of World War I, a conflict gaming has traditionally not visited before. Presented with reverence and based on real letters from those who fought in the trenches, Valiant Hearts looks to be a title well worth investigating more.

Easily the biggest surprise of E3 so far, it was also the most welcome. It’s been six years since we last had a Rainbow Six game and while it’s not clear exactly how the single player elements of the game will play out, the multiplayer gameplay show above looks utterly fantastic.

Overall Ubisoft had a very solid show. Some interesting new titles and some follow ups to old favourites should keep Ubisoft doing very well for the immediate future.

Coming up in the next 24 hours I’ll go over what Sony had to show, as well as the announcements and highlights from Nintendo’s Digital Event and Treehouse Live.