The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)Developer/Publisher: Naughty Dog/Sony Computer Entertainment
That’s not to say that The Last of Us is pleasant. In a world in which the parasitic cordyceps fungus has evolved to affect humans as well as insects and wiped out 60% of the world’s population, one can’t be surprised to see how dire things can get. From top to bottom, this game is bleak.
The Last of Us takes place 20 years after the initial outbreak, and we take the perspective of Joel. He’s a smuggler in Boston’s quarantine zone thrown into dismay when a weapons cache is stolen from his group and sold to an insurgent group called the Fireflies. He confronts their leader, who offers Joel twice the stolen shipment if he can deliver a girl named Ellie to some Fireflies in the city.
To go into more detail on The Last of Us’ story would be a disservice to those who haven’t experienced it, but enough cannot be said about how exceedingly well-written it is. Every interaction between the characters on screen feels utterly human, which can be frightening considering some of the scenarios depicted. There is very little as unsettling as seeing humanity at its worst — we can’t help but wonder, “Could this really be in store for us? Is this what we’d become?”
The character work here is some of the strongest that has ever been seen in a video game, well above the dreck that Hollywood puts out now. Naughty Dog elevated themselves with their Uncharted series and its bombastic setpieces, but we dare say that The Last of Us is the most cinematic game they’ve ever created. The action isn’t nearly as large in scale, but Joel, Ellie, and everyone surrounding them make for high drama that isn’t seen very often in this medium. The strongest aspect of the characters are the actors behind them. Like Nolan North before him, Troy Baker suddenly seems to be in every other video game released as of late. Also like North, though, Naughty Dog’s talent directors bring out his very best; Baker is mesmerizing as Joel, who is brash, selfish, and cold.
It speaks volumes that Ashley Johnson steals the show in her portrayal of Ellie. Having lived her entire life after the outbreak, Ellie can more than hold her own despite her young age. She’ll shoot you down in a hail of f-bombs if you piss her off, yet still provides some of the sweetest moments in the game. There’s a small moment where she picks up a joke book and reads you a pun about pizza, but she doesn’t get it because people stopped making pizza years before she was born. It’s a throwaway moment in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still a tiny bit heartbreaking. The Last of Us is filled with moments like this, where two people are doing anything that they can to cope with a world that constantly trying to kill them. And make no mistake, there’s plenty to keep you on your toes.
As a post-apocalyptic game populated by fungal monsters, The Last of Us skews much more towards survival horror than any Naughty Dog game before. Like Resident Evil games of yore, you’ll encounter plenty of gruesome creatures and will have to make do with limited resources, although there are numerous ways to deal with them. Due to the scarcity of ammo and other supplies, direct combat is often best avoided. This is achieved through typical video game stealth means — crouching and moving the analog stick at less than full tilt. Joel also has an ability called Listen Mode, which is a kind of sonar that allows him to “see” where enemies are whenever they make noise. It certainly makes for a much easier time, but it can be easily turned off in the pause menu if you’d like.
You’ll quickly learn just how vital sound is to The Last of Us. Detection is a two-way street, and no enemy is more keen to sound than the clicker, who are some of the nastiest creatures thrown at you. They’re humans that have been infected by the cordyceps for a while, and while the fungus has taken their vision, it’s been replaced by sonar of their own. If you make any sudden moves near them, your best bet is to book it; you’re as good as dead if they get their hands on you. The only two ways to dispatch a clicker is by stabbing them with a shiv undetected — which break with each use and new ones must be crafted with your limited resources — or shooting them repeatedly with your limited ammo and alerting other infected to your presence.
Going with the stealth approach is a good way to get your heartrate up, all due to enemy AI that alternates between mostly brilliant and kind of, sort of bad. At their best, they’ll find ways to flank, surround, and sometimes even surprise you if you get too careless, making it easy to realize where you went wrong. Getting through a room undetected, either stealthily taking everyone out or avoiding them altogether, is enough to fill you with a smug sense of pride. Other times you realize, when slinking around in Listen Mode, that enemy patrols are often triggered when you cross an invisible threshold; enemies will sometimes stand in one spot, suddenly breaking into patterns when you enter a new section of a large room. Throwing items you grab from the floor, like an empty bottle, in an attempt to draw their attention away from an area will also yield empty returns more often than I’d like.
The partner AI could use some work as well. Ellie and others can dart from cover to cover in a room and magically remain unspotted, which, while silly to watch, is a fair tradeoff in a stealth game in which all non-playable characters can move unpredictably. However, the amount of times that they’ll push you out of cover and into an enemy’s line of sight can compound quickly, making you wish that they’d just bugger off into the corner until you can do what needs to be done. Ellie can stab a lone attacker that grabs you by surprise to buy you time, but it doesn’t happen nearly often enough to make you forget her throwing you out into the open in the first place.
Whether you decide to sneak around or go guns blazing, crafting items such as health kits, shivs, and explosives is an essential metagame all its own. You’ll inevitably run into situations where having a molotov cocktail will be invaluable, but they use the same materials as health kits; nail bombs use the same blades used to craft shivs. The crafting materials that you can carry at once is limited as well, so you’re often making difficult decisions even when you’re not surrounded by a dozen enemies.
Since ammo is scarce, you’ll often fall back on using melee attacks, usually out of desperation. Your bare hands are good enough for human enemies and the weakest infected, but clickers will make short work of you. Picking a brick up off the ground can stun enemies, but they break easily. Items such as 2×4’s, baseball bats, and pipes are more durable, but they eventually break as well. You can attach a shiv to these blunt objects to increase its durability slightly and get a one-hit kill in, but that once again requires the materials to craft a shiv in the first place. When all of these methods fail, high-tailing it to a hiding spot where you can hopefully craft a last-ditch shiv and get your bearings can save your skin. This is where the AI is at its best, however, and they do a very thorough job of searching the area you may have run off to.
As you progress, you’ll be able to upgrade Joel’s weapons and abilities. Your guns undergo the typical upgrades to things like power and clip capacity, which all require not only finding enough parts, but a workbench to apply them. Increasing attributes such as Joel’s overall health and his Listen Mode radius work much the same way, but you can do so as soon as you’ve collected enough pills for the upgrade you want.
For better and for worse, the combat in The Last of Us helps to sell the desperation brought by a world-ending apocalypse, but it’s hardly all there is to it. Besides the hectic combat, believable characters, and well-written story, Naughty Dog has crafted a technical showpiece that shows that there’s plenty of life in the aging PlayStation 3 yet.
The Last of Us is easily one of the best-looking console games ever produced. Seeing buildings and skyscrapers not only covered in lush vegetation, but also tipped at extreme 35-degree angles, is a sight to behold. Even dark, spore-choked sewers are memorable due to how oppressive those environments are. Character animations and models are a testament to the ridiculous production values that Naughty Dog puts behind their games, with in-engine cutscenes that rival CG cutscenes in lesser games.
Sound can’t be understated, either. You know when you’re going to have to deal with a group of clickers when you hear the noise that they let out, each making unique clicking noises to feel out where you are. No two clickers really sound the same, which is equally horrifying and impressive. They’re already grotesque, malformed creatures, but hearing them makes them genuinely terrifying. The music is as somber and melancholy as you would expect, but the instrumentation and composition really set the mood. You would do well to play with a good pair of headphones or surround sound.
Before I forget — and I almost did — The Last of Us also has a multiplayer mode. Like Uncharted 2 and 3 before it, people wrote it off as unnecessary without actually getting their hands on it. It’s not a fair assessment, but it’s not exactly wrong, either. Here, Naughty Dog has again delivered a solid multiplayer that is surprisingly well-suited to the rest of the game, with crafting making its way online and dictating how the otherwise vanilla team deathmatch modes flow. There aren’t any real complaints and solid fun can be found here, but let’s be honest: You’re probably not buying The Last of Us to throw down with strangers online, and multiplayer has zero impact on this review.
The Last of Us is, by and large, an uncomfortable experience. Terrible things are constantly happening to or around Joel and Ellie, and all they can do is deal. I don’t remember the last time I was so on edge playing all the way through a game. Even during some of the lighter moments, I couldn’t help but speculate about the fresh horror that could potentially unravel them. You don’t feel good playing The Last of Us, despite its brilliance.
That’s just one of the many ways that great art can move us, though. Despite the unease one may feel playing through it, there’s no denying that The Last of Us is special. It’s certainly Naughty Dog’s finest hour, and will go down as one of the definitive titles for this console generation.
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By Joe Garcia
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