Pray75 here with a long-awaited and much procrastinated review. I still have a few retro reviews lined up, but recently I've played through and grown to love a game that came out last month for the Playstation 3 called The Last of Us. If you don't know what The Last of Us is, you're about to come to find what an excellent game it really is. Announced in December 2011, The Last of Us presents a post-apocalyptic scenario involving zombie-like infected creatures, similar to many games, television shows, and movies that have come out in the past several years. You would think the premise would get old, but the execution of this game is what makes it so special. A little backstory: Naughty Dog, the company that gave us the Uncharted series (unfortunately, I have yet to play them - that's probably going to change), split their development team into two: One to develop Uncharted 3 and one to develop The Last of Us. At least for me, I didn't hear or see much about the game until right before it was released, but when I did a little research after seeing the excellent advertisement for it, I was excited to play it. And let me tell you, when I finally got a shot at it, it did NOT disappoint. Onto the category breakdown!

Graphics: 10

It is no secret that the Playstation 3 features some of the best graphical capabilities on the console market today, but this game outdid everything I have ever seen in a video game. Up until recently, the most beautiful games to me were the Assassin's Creed games, Battlefield 3, and Final Fantasy X, all of which are still excellent. This game, however, looks like real life. For one, the game engine is new and improved, the same one used for Uncharted 3, if I'm not mistaken. Naughty Dog also intends to use it for games that come out on the Playstation 4, which is saying something about their creation.

The engine allows for such realistic graphics, and while exploring different cities and areas in a rotting United States, I really could feel like I was looking at what my world would end up like in the event of such a catastrophe. The attention to detail in this game was spectacular, and I would often just get up in the face of my counterpart Ellie (to which she would uncomfortably look away if I was shining my flashlight on her, or my personal favorite, roll her eyes at me - AWESOME!) just to observe. The beauty of the game begs you to explore the world, and when you have the rare opportunity to catch your breath amongst infected, military, and hunters, you really find that the detail is limitless. The characters were well-designed, obviously, with protagonist Joel looking rugged, yet fit, while Ellie looks her age - 14 - though her eyes tell a story of a hard and difficult life. All around, the asthetic presentation was outstanding.

Sound: 10

It's the second category and it scores a 10 as well. I'm a fan-boy, I admit it. Now, the reason it scores a 10 isn't because it has any memorable tracks like Mario, Zelda, or Final Fantasy, but because the music that plays - no matter what it is - is perfect for the scene taking place. From time to time, you get a music track with lyrics (Ellie, at one point, steals a cassette tape and they listen to an old song that I don't recognize), but most of it sounds orchestrated. What really gets me is the intensity of the music when you are trying to avoid being seen by monsters. It's not loud, per say, but it gets the heart going. Absolute perfection.

However, while the music is perfect for the mood and feel of the game, the voice actors are even better (what is better than perfect? Apparently voice actors in this game). Joel's voice actor, Troy Baker, is outstanding in the role he plays. Because Joel is from Texas, his southern accent is perfect, and the inflections based on the circumstances kinda make me wonder if Troy was actually made to run away from infected creatures so he could really live the role of what he was speaking. Ellie's voice actress, Ashley Johnson (the waitress Captain America saves in The Avengers - funny story about that), is pretty much the same way. Ellie's foul-mouthed would be somewhat unnerving if Ashley didn't perfect the character's voice, because a 14-year old who curses just sounds weird. However, there obviously was a lot of work put into her role, and it worked to perfection.

A few more points on the sounds. On top of the music setting the scene, the sounds of the infected themselves really brought the punch. Some of the newly-infected could still be heard talking, as though the Cordyceps fungus had technically taken over their minds, their voice boxes still work and I guess they could sometimes form words. The screams really brought the creep factor, too, and definitely caused me to listen carefully at all times. The biggest fear, though, is when you heard a clicking sound... That meant clickers were in the area. And I'll talk about them when we get to the difficult part. Suffice it to say that they were terrifying.

Addictiveness: 9

Early on when I was playing this game, it was very easy to put down because I spent the first eight-to-ten hours absolutely terrified. That doesn't mean I wasn't excited to pick it back up; it means that my heart, at spots, couldn't take the stress of never knowing what was going to happen. That being said, after I got over some of my fears, I couldn't put the game down and beat it rather quickly. It's not a long single-player campaign; I got it done in just over 17 hours though I missed a lot (despite doing a lot of exploration), but those were 17 excellent hours. I started a new game immediately after that, too. My brother, who actually owns the copy of the game I'm playing, has already beaten it 3 times. And there is a multi-player mode. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to play it (don't know why my brother's PS3 wouldn't let me), but I've read reviews and watched videos, and people are liking it a lot.

Story: 10

This is the part of the game I could go on and on about, and I probably will. First, here's a little synopsis:
Twenty years after a mutated strand of the Cordyceps fungus (which, if you don't know, actually zombifies ants in certain parts of the world) infects a large portion of the human race, you begin as Joel, a man with a haunting past (you get to play part of that past in the beginning, but I'm not spoiling it. It's one of the best intros in a video game ever) who's gotten into the business of smuggling contraband in and throughout Boston's militarized quarantine zone. One of your people betrays you and tries to kill your partner, so you pay him a visit. After handling that matter, a high-profile acquantaince of yours asks you to do a major smuggling job - into downtown Boston itself. This begins a terrifying journey that is both exhilarating and emotional, in which the rugged character for Joel begins to connect with the sharp-tongued yet naive Ellie, who has never lived a day without the fear of the Cordyceps fungus.
That's the best I think I can give without spoiling the game itself, but I am going to talk about some of the themes of the game - hopefully - without spoiling too much more. One of the best themes in the story has to do with the utter sense of despair and hopelessness experienced by the characters in the story. And though you, as the player, keep searching for hope and keep thinking that eventually, things will turn out good - they always do, right? - the game does an excellent job of making that elusive to the characters and even to yourself, at times. One of the more interesting things this game does reward players who search a lot with little shreds of the past, through notes written around the time of the infection or sometime afterwards, where people were much more hopeful. Joel's reactions really solidify the hopelessness feeling.

It also deals with choices, but it's not really the choices the player makes - it has everything to do with the story the characters themselves make. One of the biggest things about this game is that it is Joel's and Ellie's story. It's not my story, it's not your story, it's not Yoshi's story. It isn't even Naughty Dog's story. This story is exclusively Joel's, Ellie's, and the unfortunate citizens that are suffering through that world. This actually bothers some players much, but that's because they've become too accustomed to making things their own. Games such as The Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft allow you to do pretty much whatever you want, but Naughty Dog brought the power of a book to the Playstation 3, and thus we, as players, have to deal with the choices Joel and Ellie make. We can't affect their decisions, just as we can't tell Sam to treat Smeagol better nor can we tell Robert Frost to take the road most travelled. And this is the beauty in the game. Story-telling has been reintroduced in an interactive form, but it's not the flawed "storytelling" some games would like you to believe they are. It's an excellently-crafted story where character decisions actually impact the story as opposed to just shoving some semi-interesting characters into a scenario and calling that a story.

But the most profound part of the story is the growing relationship between Joel and Ellie themselves. Both characters are fascinating from the get-go, and both are hard-headed and seem stuck in their ways. But through their adventures, through both saving each other's lives, they grow closer and closer together. This isn't a sick pedophile romance like many people (especially those who write Fan-fictions, GOOD LORD!) expect, but it's the beginning of a father-daughter relationship that tugs at the heartstrings constantly throughout the game. Because this is such an integral part of the game, I'm not going to say anything else. To me, this IS the real story, so you'll have to play it to find out. It's obvious, though, that I've given it a perfect score because to me, the story is the best of its generation and perhaps of all time.

Depth: 9

This one was the hardest to score, because on one hand, I haven't played the multiplayer, but on the other hand, combining what I've read/seen with the amount of detail and thought put into the story, gameplay, and game itself, I can't help but give it a high score. Even though there isn't necessarily "a lot" to do, at least in respect to minigames, game type, variety of enemies, etc., the game's graphical detail, the necessary exploration to get every collectible artifact in the game, and the placement of enemies plus the difficult A.I. (which, trust me, four infected types is enough, the way they throw these enemies at you) earn it a high score, in my books.

Difficulty: 10

The Last of Us was billed as a difficult game, and boy did it deliver. There are very few one-shot kills in this game, at least at the end of your gun. You find a pretty neat little variety of guns throughout the game and you have the opportunity to power them up, but you don't find enough things in one play-through to max pretty much one thing out much less everything, so you're never overpowered at all. The A.I. system is revolutionary in that the enemy A.I. actually works together. If you're fighting hunters and you run out of bullets, they'll notice and adapt strategies. Certain infected types still have the cognitive awareness enough to run down different sides of a desk (or climb on it) in order to get to you. They throw in the dreaded Clicker and Bloater, which can and will automatically kill you if they get to close. And there are parts where you have to fight many of these bad boys, which makes things tricky. Let's put it this way - on your first playthrough, you will die... A lot. The controls are different than most games, too (I'm not sure how they stack up with Uncharted games), so you will be struggling to grasp them for quite some time, especially if you're an Assassin's Creed and/or Battlefield player and screw up stealth-killing your enemies, instead punching them and alerting an entire room full of infected to your location. One good thing, though, is that the A.I. that works with you, especially Ellie (yay, Ellie!) is just as resourceful and can actually help you in a good way, though she won't ever do ALL the work... Yeah. And I just played this game on normal. I've read that going up to the top two difficulties changes the dynamic of the game completely. I might have to try it out once I get through my Normal Game+ mode.

Overall: 9.8

I wanted to give it an overall of 10. I really did. And maybe I should. But the thing that probably "hurt" this game the most is that I was left wanting more. More Joel, more Ellie, more Boston, more The Last of Us. 17 hours wasn't bad in terms of play time, but it wasn't enough for a story-hungry savage such as myself. However, I cannot complain, as those were some of the most fulfilling hours of any video game I have ever played. The good news is that there is DLC coming out that is actually going to add to the story, and there are already talks of sequels, which I think would be an excellent business strategy considering the massive sales of this game. With many people talking about this game and some even saying it warrants a literary discussion (a video game... warranting a literary discussion... that's unheard of!). What's crazy, though, is that though I might seem to come off like a fanboy, I gave this game a lower score than many of the big-time professional reviewing magazines and websites. My google page says they received 74 perfect scores, and that was on June 6th, before the game actually came out! Needless to say, this is without a doubt one of the best games of the current console generation and perhaps of all time, with one of the best character casts of all time, sporting one of the best stories of all time. I think this game should set a precedent to all female characters, too, because Ellie is so awesome in this game, Zelda and Peach have no excuse to get kidnapped anymore. I mean, Ellie is fourteen... FOURTEEN!

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys the review. As for now, I'm off!

This was a spectacular review. Really, this was just so well written and so greatly worded. I want to say it was almost professional work. You actually almost had me wanting to play this game, where as before, I didn't really care about it.  You also included a lot of words, well over the two-thousand mark, which shows you were really pouring your all into this. Very well detailed, very well written, grammar and all was spot on, I can't say how great this review actually is. The best I've read so far, actually. Good work, please write more.

It is good to see a post from you man. I'm definitely glad you made this and I think you just got yourself a red jersey with this!

As for your review, I think it is organized, well introduced and also very well made, you put a lot of effort and detail into making this. You broke down and executed your points for each category of your review very well and I think that is the most important thing to have in a good quality review. So overall, nice job, great detail, keep up the good work as always and I think that this certainly a very well made, through review and you cover and articulate all of the main points if the game very well. This is very descriptive and lengthy, all of the qualities that make a good review. Keep up the awesome work as always, and it is good to hear from you!

For me I wouldn't say it was a perfect 10 because sometimes the game was having some issues with loading and other things. I found the ending a bit lack luster but I do like how Naughty Dog Includes references to their other games like the escape from Pittsburgh level when you go into the bar with some enemies in it if you played Uncharted 3 that is the bar from the beginning of that game and one of  the signs say sully's bar referring to Nathan Drakes Mentor

good Super man : Oh man! I know there are some people who didn't like the ending of the game, but there are a lot of us (especially me) who think the ending was literary excellence. Without revealing too much, it wasn't your video game build up with a crazy final boss battle, but as far as the story goes, it was awesome. I will admit, on the surface, it was unsatisfying, but as I thought about it more and more, I came to love it because it shows that Naughty Dog was more interested in telling an excellent story than they were pandering to the norms of video games. As far as the loading issues were concerned, I've had problems with that with a lot of Playstation games, but it didn't take that long to load. I think we're just getting impatient with the culture!

Anyways, they announced that there is going to be DLC with more of the story. I'm not sure if they've given any more detail, but I think that they are going to do one of Joel's days as a hunter. Anyways, if I was Naughty Dog, that's the direction I would take. Since they already have a comic book set of some of Ellie's past, it would make the most sense.

WOW, just wow. This review is amazing with the detail you go into and how much you are able to give the person reading, a feeling for the game. Very well done.