The Last of Us is a survival horror game released only for the Playstation 3 as of June 14, 2013. This is a cool game, which is why I'm writing about it, but I'm not writing a review; I just want to make a small post about it.
The game features a character named Joel, a man who lives in a world teeming with infected and dangerous bandits, who is on an escort mission to take a foul-mouthed teenager named Ellie across the United States to a resistance group called the Fireflies. The game features Joel surviving in an apocalyptic world, fighting against the "Infected," people who have been turned to monsters by a disease, as well as humans who have turned violent to survive in the upside down world.
The game is interesting and good for many reasons. It has certainly subverted my expectations a few times where I expected one thing to be the norm only to have the game destroy whatever I expected. The beginning of the game (i.e. everything before opening credits) is a pretty good representation of this.
There is literally an armory of weapons to choose from. I was amazed by the sheer amount of weapons that can be used. One of the coolest ones that I did not expect to see is a normal bow. The large amount of weapons really helps because supplies are generally sparse, so it is not unlikely to have little to no ammo on one weapon, and a bit more on another. Having so much to choose from means that there will always be something to fight with.
The game, however, does require a lot of stealth, which has to be one of my least favorite parts of any video game. Stealth is a big part of the game. For that reason, I will be watching at least one playthrough for the game on Youtube because I'd like to see how it plays out. I just happen to be poor at stealth and dislike it a lot. Nonetheless, I like that stealth is in the game. It seems only to make sense given that the setting is in a post-apocalyptic world and, if that were a realistic situation, it would be necessary to sneak around humans and zombie-like creatures, if one could get away with it.
On the whole, I think the game is realistic to what a post-apocalyptic world would be, and that is why I like it quite a bit (also why I am still going back and forth on whether or not I should play it completely). The characters are all fleshed out at least a bit, which is always a nice thing to see in games. The plot in general is also just plain interesting.
As I mentioned, Ellie is a foulmouthed character and, again, this is a survival horror taking place in the post-apocalyptic world. As such, this game is rated M for Mature, for the language and, of course, the violence. Do not play this game if you are sensitive to violence.
I would highly recommend this game because it is one of the better examples of a post-apocalyptic setting, in my opinion. If you are not a stealth person, this one may not be for you, just keep in mind that the more weapons you have, the more you may be able to get away with fighting more than sneaking (though, I think playing much of the game that way would be impossible given scarcity of items and whatnot).
Special side note: Joel is voiced by Troy Baker, whose voice you may recognize immediately as Booker DeWitt's from Bioshock Infinite. Ellie is voiced by Ashley Johnson, who played one of my favorite characters, Terra, from Teen Titans.
You can find the game's website here: http://www.thelastofus.com/
You should be able to purchase it wherever games are sold. In fact, the website has a list of where you can buy the game. Just remember that it is exclusively for the PS3!
*On another note, I have not yet seen enough of the game to determine if it is "female friendly," so to speak, though there have been a few female characters so far, including the leader of the Fireflies, Marlene, Tess, and, of course, Ellie. I would say it is doing at least somewhat well on the friendly front so far.
Something so obvious that I cannot believe I forgot to add it, yet I did. The graphics in this game are absolutely beautiful. Some shots are so breathtaking. Many of the city shots look wonderful. Really, so far, there is nothing to complain about in the graphics department. This game is extremely polished.
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