- Sony PlayStation 3 / Rated M / $59.99 / released June 2013
- OFFICIAL SITE:?thelastofus.com
- PURCHASE LINK:?Amazon
- FINAL: You NEED this game. 5 out of 5 stars
You?re forgiven if you?ve tired of post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak epics. But, please, make room for just one more. Make room for ?The Last of Us,? one of the last great games exclusive to PlayStation 3.
From the team behind the stellar ?Uncharted? series, ?The Last of Us? delivers a heart-breaking narrative that continually positions little moments of charm amid the usual Fall of Mankind horror. For most of the game, you play as Joel, a reluctant scavenger in his late 40s tasked with escorting the teenaged Ellie across the country. Twenty years prior, a mostly-unexplained disease destroyed the United States, turning humans into mindless fungal zombies, and, somehow, Ellie is immune to the virus. Joel must get her to the scientists in the Fireflies, an organized survivor group that developed in opposition to the police state that represents what is left of the U.S. government.
That story drives ?The Last of Us,? which is wonderfully voice-acted and filled with excellent character animation. While cinematic cutscenes are numerous, there is no awkward filler. It remains a nail-biter from beginning to end. Even during the gameplay bits, you can uncover unexpected moments as the two get to know each other. Ellie, having never known the world before the outbreak, is often surprised by the remnants she finds, for example. In one location, she spots an old fashion billboard and remarks on why the model looks so skinny. In her mind, that calls up the ever-present threat of malnutrition and she asks Joel why, in the plentiful past, a person would be that thin. These endearing sidebars do much to build the father-daughter relationship between the two characters.
The dialogue and acting are good enough to consider ?The Last of Us? on par with modern TV shows. But like television, ?The Last of Us? has too many commercial breaks. These breaks are the kill-crazy combat zones, where you must fight-or-flight against wandering fungus-heads or packs of survivalist thugs. The game?s high drama retreats into an entirely normal video game at these points, where bullets are absorbed by enemies and city streets are filled with just enough boxes to hide behind during shootouts. Additionally, the game can?t quite figure out what to do with Ellie during combat. While she will hide when you hide, she often seems to cross right into the enemies? sight lines without them ever reacting. It?s a concession to the mechanics of video gaming, and it deflates the experience somewhat.
So when you see ?The Last of Us? reminding you that it is, after all, a video game (another one: when Joel removes his gas mask and it somehow vanishes into thin air near his backpack!), you should probably just close one eye and soldier on. You don?t want to miss the story that this game is telling.
You also should not miss the story you are seeing. Every one of the game?s diverse, cross-country environments is fantastically detailed. The game shows you what it was like for people to abandon their homes and offices in a panic. One area takes you through a sewer where a group held out as long as they could before the inevitable happened, and their tale is told by what they left behind.
?The Last of Us? is a beautiful pinnacle for PlayStation 3 as the system steps aside for the PlayStation 4. The game weds familiar zombie outbreak conventions with an affecting story that is just as good at the end as it is at the beginning. Once you complete it, you can re-play to collect hidden items ? and there is a shooty online multiplayer mode ? but you may find that one playthrough will be haunting enough for quite some time.
This review is based upon product supplied by the publisher. Image courtesy Sony Computer Entertainment America.
Source: http://fox43.com/2013/07/08/review-the-last-of-us-ps3/
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