Developer: Naughty Dog LLC, Iron Galaxy Studios
Publisher: Playstation Publishing LLC
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £49.99 (Humble, Steam and Epic)
Released: 28th March 2023
Available on: Humble, Steam and Epic
Played Using: Xbox One Control Pad
Approximate game length: 30 Hours
Given that this is not only a beloved game series and a hit TV Show I doubt there’s anything I can say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. That being said, this is actually something of an experiment for me. You see, despite my best efforts, I have had every twist in this game spoiled. So now the question for me is can this game still hold my interest?
Just in case you are somehow unaware of what The Last of Us is, essentially it’s what I like to term a ‘Green Apocalypse’ meaning an apocalyptic situation where nature flourishes. In this case the apocalypse in question is caused by the cordyceps fungus (which is a real thing by the way, it just preys on ants). In this game the fungus has mutated and now infects people, first it drives them into a craze making them attack other non-infected people on sight and then as it progresses it changes them further. In many ways it’s effectively a zombie infestation, however, unlike zombies it isn’t only transmitted by being bitten, you can catch it by inhaling the spores too. Once you’ve been infected you become one of them within days or even hours and there isn’t a cure.
You play as Joel, a rather gruff man who smuggles items in and out of the safety of the quarantine zone. Joel is tasked with transporting Ellie to the secret base of the rebel group named the ‘Fireflies’. The reason for this, Ellies immune to the cordyceps fungus.
Over the course of this game Joel and Ellie will face many dangers as they travel from Massachusetts to Utah (with many setbacks along the way).
The dangers they encounter come in a variety of forms, from relatively mundane things like collapsing roads and buildings to the multitudes of infected that wander the world. Of course, the most dangerous adversary isn’t either of those but instead is other people.
Combat varies depending on whether your opponents are humans or infected. The infected will try to run directly at you and overwhelm you with sheer numbers and often the best tactic is to try and quietly remove them one by one. Human enemies will make use of cover and try to flank you. This forces you to change your playstyle and loadout regularly.
Stealth will be a tool you’ll need to employ regularly taking out enemies silently one by one. To aid you in this you can listen out for enemies. When you do this a white silhouette will appear showing where they are, assuming they’re close enough to be detected.
As you explore the various ruins you cross you’ll be able to find crafting components, scrap, tools, supplements and skill books. The scrap is used when you upgrade your weapons along with the tools you find. The more advanced the upgrade is the more scrap it requires and the higher the tool level will become.
While scrap is the material used for improving your weapons, there are other materials you can find that allow you to craft items on the fly. Such as alcohol and rags which can be used to make first aid kits or molotov cocktails.
Finding supplements allows you to learn and improve a skill once you find enough, such as increasing the distance you can detect enemies when listening. The skill books you find increase the effectiveness of your crafted items and melee weapons (depending on the skill book).
It’s a small and totally unnecessary detail but I appreciate that you can inspect your weapons while at a workbench. It serves absolutely no mechanical purpose whatsoever but in a small way it adds to the world building, allowing you to see how cobbled together some of the weapons are.
I can see why this game has gotten so much love, the way the relationship between Joel and Ellie evolves is extremely well realised. As I mentioned before, I knew all of the various twists for this game going in and wondered if the game could hold my interest. It was the dynamic between Joel and Ellie that kept me invested. Seeing Joel slowly stop treating Ellie as a barely tolerated burden and begin treating her as a pseudo-father felt like a natural progression.
I’m also impressed with how the developers were able to show Ellie’s trauma through the way she was animated and even having it affect the gameplay in small ways.
Unfortunately I can’t speak of the good parts in this game without speaking about the bad ones. The most frustrating is a recurring audio glitch. This glitch causes the sound, especially the dialogue, to become crackly. When I encountered this glitch I decided to try and run the game through two different PC setups and my Steamdeck just in case it was something to do with my rig. It’s sad to say but it would occasionally occur on all three devices. Having checked online it seems this is a known glitch that hasn’t been officially solved yet. The only way I found to fix the issue was to restart the game, which isn’t really a fix at all.
Another much smaller annoyance is that the game took around an hour to load shaders. I learned my lesson with these when I played Horizon Zero Dawn so I didn’t bother attempting to play the game until they had finished loading in.
Given what I said about the relationship between Joel and Ellie earlier I think it’s a safe statement to say that I did still find enjoyment from this game despite knowing the twists. There are some things that did surprise me about this game though, for a start I honestly thought there would be more variety in the types of infected but instead there are only four. It’s not a complaint but more an observation because those four types of infected were used to great effect.
If I’m honest though I wasn’t really feeling this game at first, it took meeting Ellie and spending a bit of time with her (about half an hour) before I found myself getting invested.
This is definitely a game that is worthy of the praise that gets heaped on it. Maybe that’s of no surprise to many of you but I’m the sort of person that has to try for myself. I highly recommend giving this game a go if you haven’t already, even if you’ve already been told the spoilers. I promise it’s worth it.
— –
The Last of Us: Left Behind
Approximate game length: 3 hours
This was originally a DLC but it has been packaged into this remake. Throughout the DLC you play as Ellie, split between two times, before the events of the game and during at a point where Joel had become very injured and Ellie had to care for him alone.
Surprisingly very little of this part of the story had been spoiled for me, though you are told what had happened in Ellies past as you play through the base game. Still it was nice to explore this element of Ellies past.
Sadly I also remember one thing about this that I must bring up, though I wish I didn’t have to. When this DLC came out there was a, well I don’t want to call it a controversy because of how stupid it is. Basically in this DLC Ellie shows romantic interest towards another woman… that’s it. Apparently at the time this caused a bit of an uproar among some fans of the game. To that I have to say “Why the hell do you care if the FICTIONAL MINOR is or is not gay/bi/pan or whatever? Grow up.” Just enjoy the very sweet and also tragic story that’s been given to you.
Anyway, mechanically speaking this works just the same as the base game and to my mind is a very worthwhile addition to the overall story. I look forward to playing the sequel… eventually.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Plague Tale: Innocence
God Of War
