The Last of Us

[jamieleng]

@Lightning Strike

 

I appreciate that you warned about spoilers in your post, but would appreciate it even more if you put spoiler tags on everything after your first paragraph. Hell, my last post in the RDR topic was completely blacked out & almost everyone knows the big spoilers in that game.

 

I know I shouldn't be coming in here until I've played it but I can't help myself.

[VCRules86]

Alright, having finished the game I now feel ready to give you guys my honest opinion of it, obviously this post is going to contain ending spoilers, so if you haven't completed The Last of Us, turn back now.

 

The first thing you notice about the game is just how damn well it is presented, from the voice acting, to the graphics, to the soundtrack everything in this game is done to near perfection and that is what makes this one of the, if not the most immersive gameworld I have ever had the joy of playing in. The graphics give off the illusion that this is a CGI film and not a videogame at numerous points during the game, I had times where I had to pause the game and take a breather, not because I was busy or I have some sort of health condition that makes me follow those guidelines, but rather because the game was so damn intense and immersive I felt myself shaking at the end of each play session.

 

The enemies in the game are nice and varied and each encounter requires a different strategy for you to be able to overcome it; for example there was one moment in the game where you are tasked with finding your way out of a very dark series of rooms surrounded with clickers. These are nasty, horrible and to an extent frightening creatures that will kill you the very moment they snuff you out, but what makes them interesting is that you can walk right in front of them and they won't notice you, you see the game has a fantastically diverse enemy system so depending on whether you're fighting infected or other humans your plans will change drastically, and that's without even mentioning when you're tasked with dealing with both of them simultaneously. Anyway I digress, these clickers are a fairly advanced form of infected that can't actually see you, instead they rely on sound to find you, their clicks help these infected map an area based on acoustic echoes, essentially using echolocation like a bat.

 

This is then is a situation where stealth, subtly and speed is required. Luckily for our protagonists Joel and Ellie, Joel has this in abundance; he may not be as spry as Naughty Dog's other leading men Drake and Jak (one who can quite literally jump and then jump again while still in the air) but that certainly doesn't make him any less apt to survive in The Last of Us' twisted, dark and insanely complex world. You see to capitalise on the situation at hand Joel too can use sound to his advantage, a quick press of the R2 button allows the player to focus Joel's hearing allowing him to see around the environment detecting and avoiding enemies as the situation requires. So, needless to say in this encounter there was going to have to be an obstacle to overcome, a way to escape this dark and deadly series of rooms. This obstacle quickly reveals itself to be a clicker located very close to where a conveniently placed ladder lies, the only issue is that the noise involved with bringing down the ladder would surely attract not only the attention of just one clicker, but also the attention of all other infected in the room with you at that time.

 

This might seem a tad restrictive, having to follow a set path and end up in this room with no other choice but to kill off the clicker silently and be done with it. Well it would be if we weren't talking about The Last of Us, you see this situation demonstrates perfectly one of The Last of Us' finest features. Freedom. Not necessarily the freedom to go anywhere and do anything like a Grand Theft Auto-esque game, but rather the freedom to tackle any situation in the game the way you want to; that clicker that we were talking about earlier is actually a pest to deal with. You see you can't just go straight in and beat it to death with your bare hands as clickers are one of the few enemy types in the game that will instantly kill you unless you have the right tools to take them down with. With that in mind let's say you want to take out this clicker without making a sound, that's good and that's fine but have you been a good scavenger and explored a lot of the map? If so you might just find that you have just the right amount of materials to craft yourself a shiv.

 

"What use is a shiv in this situation?!" I hear you cry, well early on in the game you're shown that shivs (just like any item in The Last of Us) have multiple usages; for example they're the only tool that'll allow Joel to stealth kill a clicker without getting his jugular torn out of his neck, but they also allow the player to breakthrough locked doors that might contain valuable loot and materials that can be used at a later date to help you further progress. The only problem here is that Joel can only use the shiv once (at least in the early game) before it breaks so the usages of your crafted items become quickly cobbled together strategies that sometimes play out brilliantly and other times leave the player running for their lives using every bit of their carefully assembled and scarcely available resources to escape almost certain death. So here it'd make more sense to lure the clicker away from the ladder, right? Well partly, the only problem being that clickers, much like bats are blind and see with sound so if you were to throw a glass bottle in one direction and make it shatter that won't just attract the one clicker you want it to, it will attract all of the infected, clickers or not to the location that you threw that bottle, you'd best plan your throw out before you do it, otherwise you too may well be forced to scramble for survival.

 

It's at this point then that the you start to wonder "Wait a minute, what if Ellie or another one of my companions gets caught or spotted by one of the Infected?" Have no fear, Naughty Dog have come up with a rather ingenious solution to this problem by having friendly AI remain all but undetectable as long as you too remain hidden to the enemy AI. What do I mean by this? Well if we continue using the room filled with clickers scenario then it means that as long as you don't get spotted by the clickers they won't either. This solution isn't perfect however, as it can occasionally break the player's immersion to see Ellie, Tess or any other companion run out in front of a bandit group and not even see the bandits flinch as a result. Other than that though, there seems to be no real downside to the AI as itself is another one of the game's technical marvels, they will hunt for you and react dynamically to the way that you decide to play the game. Hell the detail of these responses is what causes the game to be so damn immersive, the fact is that if the player chose to shoot a bandit in the leg then his leg would actually be wounded, he'd react to it and it'd actually be a hindrance to that particular enemy and a beneficial thing for the player to do. They also dynamically respond to the player, trying all sorts of tactical strategies making sure that the game never loses its fast-paced, ruthless and deadly combat, they will try to flank you, flush you out of hiding places and even engage your friendly AI so you'll be forced at times to go out and help them in combat.

 

In short the AI in the game is incredibly intelligent and apart from that tiny issue with the enemy AI being unable to detect the friendly AI it really shines and stands out as one of the game's finest features and greatest achievements.

 

Now, time to focus a little on the story, which is arguably the best part of the game. The characters feel alive, you actually care for Joel and Ellie, wanting to keep both of them safe as you guide them through the post-apocalyptic wasteland known as North America. You see they develop much like normal people, there isn't one big action that draws the player closer to the relationship between these two characters and the world around them, no it's a combination of small, little, tiny things that the player might not even notice when they're on their first playthrough of the game. These small touches can be anything from Ellie being dazzled at the sight of seeing real fireflies and losing her self for a moment or two to her trying to learn how to whistle. Though these little instances may be small, there's a plethora of them that help to further immerse the player in The Last of Us' world and it's moments like these that the player actually starts to cherish.

 

This game actually makes you feel relieved when you're not in constant danger and you actually start to appreciate the little things in life; for example he time Ellie picks up a toy for another young survivor when they're told not to take it is really rather touching and the game does it in such a wonderful way, in which she'll only pick up the toy when the camera moves away from her allowing her the quick moment she needs to carefully slip the toy into her backpack. This actually allows the player some personal time with Ellie, learning her quirks and mannerisms, she's a pleasant character to be around at first but later on in the game she starts to symbolise so much more. She's the perfect symbol of innocence and hope in The Last of Us' dark and hopeless world, her very presence makes the game's world more bearable and the way that she connects and reacts to the world also allows you to react accordingly, this is the first time either of you have ever had to embark on such an endeavor but you as Joel start to feel the need to protect her ergo, you might sometimes try to hide her or protect her from the dark things in this world.

 

 

 

One of those, "special moments".

 

Now, we get to the slightly more spoiler filled section, so I gave you and am now giving yet another ample warning to stop reading this if you do not wish to have the game spoilt for you early on. Since this section mainly contains my person views on some of the factions in the game and the game's ending overall. You have been warned.

 

There are certain facts that need to be established before I go on.

• Joel was unconscious at most for a few hours before waking at the Fireflies hospital in Salt Lake City. It would be ridiculous to think that a thump on the head would keep him out for much longer than that and the fact that they arrive at the hospital in what appears to be early afternoon and depart at what appears to be evening supports this.

• Marlene's journal states that her men asking for her permission to proceed with the surgery was purely a formality, and she didn't really have a choice but to agree to it as the potential for a vaccine was too important.

• Ellie wakes in Joel's car after being taken from the hospital and asks what it is she's wearing, having been dressed in a surgical gown by the Fireflies, seemingly without any memory of what had transpired prior to being dragged unconscious from the water by Joel.

What does this all add up to? Any experimentation that the Fireflies performed on Ellie must have been cursory to the extreme prior to deciding that they needed to remove Ellie's brain and they never asked Ellie's permission to proceed with the operation or even informed her of the consequences. Ellie likely remained unconscious the entire time from the moment she and Joel arrived.

 

After performing what could've only been the most basic of tests, the Fireflies had already committed to killing the Golden Goose in their desperation to find a vaccine. This makes me feel like the Fireflies didn't truly appreciate her as anything more than a scientific curiosity--a means to an end--instead of as a little girl. Even if Marlene felt conflicted about it, she was still complicit in the murder of the girl she had practically raised on nothing more than the flimsiest of rationalisations and the hasty assumption that it was the only way.

 

To make matters worse, they were fully prepared to sacrifice an innocent little girl who had been through hell to reach them without even so much as the respect of giving her time to prepare or say her goodbyes. And while Marlene and the Fireflies would've had no way of knowing how closely Joel and Ellie had bonded in their time together, it's not incorrect to say that Joel had taken on the responsibility of her guardianship in the ~9 months since they had left Boston. What the Fireflies were doing was effectively no different than abducting a child from her guardian and performing fatal experiments on her without parental consent. Any way you look at it, that's monstrous.

 

It's ironic that one of the surgeons calls you an animal, while they were about to rip her brain out after a few hours of studying her, and without her consent. An even crueler irony is who they were willing to sacrifice. Ellie is the closest things this messed up world has to a paragon of virtue. Aside from frequent swearing and stealing some magazines and old tapes, she is all but perfect. She more or less represents the best of humanity. They fireflies were willing to sacrifice what makes us different from animals to save mankind. We are only worth saving because we are so much more then that. She is proof that humanity, and basic human goodness are not completely gone. Even though she doesn't get to save mankind, her life proves that there is a chance that not everyone is a sh*tty person.

 

I don't want to make Joel appear to be a saint, but he is far from evil. What half decent father would abandon his daughter? Joel acted on a paternal instinct in him. It could have gotten him killed, but his survival wasn't his first priority anymore. Ellie was. He is a human being. Filled with flaws, but not without goodness in him. He hasn't lost the capacity to care for Ellie.

 

But the real irony in the ending of The Last of Us is that the Fireflies brought their ultimate downfall on themselves. Everything that happened could've been avoided if they hadn't been so goddamn hasty. If they had simply waited a few hours for Ellie and Joel to wake, explained what needed to happen to both of them, gotten permission from Ellie (as Marlene even said, it's almost certainly what Ellie would've wanted if she had been given the choice) and let her and Joel say their goodbyes, they would've had their vaccine; or at least known one way or the other whether a vaccine was possible. Instead, they practically forced Joel's hand by not giving either of them a choice. Joel wasn't going to let them murder Ellie, and the only way for Ellie to give her consent was to stop the operation, which the Fireflies weren't going to let him do; going so far as to threaten to shoot him if he didn't walk out the door right then and there. Maybe it was malice, maybe it was greed or maybe it was simply desperation, but the simple fact is that the operation was unbelievably rushed. What would giving them one more day before deciding to end Ellie's life have cost them?

 

While it's almost certain that Ellie would've chosen to sacrifice herself for a possible vaccine, Joel was correct when he told Marlene that it wasn't their choice to make. It was Ellie's choice, and they never gave her the opportunity to make it. Ultimately, that's why my Joel walked out of that hospital without a single Firefly still drawing breath. Being able to talk about a videogame in that manner is something that I've not been able to do for a long, long time and as a direct result of that The Last of Us to me at least has become one of the, if not the most impressive game this generation. Oh and if you've taken the time to read this little tangent of mine thank you, I appreciate it.

Wow, this is one hell of an amazing post lightning. I can't help but agree with you on pretty much every point.

 

No father, which is what Joel had essentially become, would stand by and let his daughter be murdered regardless of the circumstances. Not only that but Ellie had confided in him, on the verge of tears, that she was terrified of him abandoning her and that everyone she cared about had died or left her except for him. How terrible would it have been for Joel to just sit there and not lift a finger as Ellie was murdered.

 

Furthermore, I can understand what Joel was thinking at the moment he decided to slaughter the fireflies and save Ellie. I get it because I felt pretty much the same thing at that moment. I didn't think about whether the surgery was for the greater good or if it's what Ellie would've wanted. All I thought was "These f*ckers are trying to take Ellie away and I'm not going to let them." I was angry, truly angry, and I executed all 3 doctors with a M16 burst when I barged into the surgery room.

 

I was so relieved when the game cut to Joel driving away and Ellie lying in the back seat. And I'm glad Joel put a slug into Marlene's face.

 

Never before has a game elicited this kind of emotional response from me and it really is astounding how amazing of an experience Naughty Dog has crafted. I just can't stop thinking about this story and how amazing it was to play through it.

[burner12]

I have to say The Last of Us has some of the best water visuals. The water is so clear and you can see the bubbles from Joel breathing. Very realistic.

[Freakorama]

I have to say The Last of Us has some of the best water visuals. The water is so clear and you can see the bubbles from Joel breathing. Very realistic.

But do the fish move away from you when you get close?

 

That's the important thing.

[Corndawg93]

Alright, having finished the game I now feel ready to give you guys my honest opinion of it, obviously this post is going to contain ending spoilers, so if you haven't completed The Last of Us, turn back now.

 

The first thing you notice about the game is just how damn well it is presented, from the voice acting, to the graphics, to the soundtrack everything in this game is done to near perfection and that is what makes this one of the, if not the most immersive gameworld I have ever had the joy of playing in. The graphics give off the illusion that this is a CGI film and not a videogame at numerous points during the game, I had times where I had to pause the game and take a breather, not because I was busy or I have some sort of health condition that makes me follow those guidelines, but rather because the game was so damn intense and immersive I felt myself shaking at the end of each play session.

 

The enemies in the game are nice and varied and each encounter requires a different strategy for you to be able to overcome it; for example there was one moment in the game where you are tasked with finding your way out of a very dark series of rooms surrounded with clickers. These are nasty, horrible and to an extent frightening creatures that will kill you the very moment they snuff you out, but what makes them interesting is that you can walk right in front of them and they won't notice you, you see the game has a fantastically diverse enemy system so depending on whether you're fighting infected or other humans your plans will change drastically, and that's without even mentioning when you're tasked with dealing with both of them simultaneously. Anyway I digress, these clickers are a fairly advanced form of infected that can't actually see you, instead they rely on sound to find you, their clicks help these infected map an area based on acoustic echoes, essentially using echolocation like a bat.

 

This is then is a situation where stealth, subtly and speed is required. Luckily for our protagonists Joel and Ellie, Joel has this in abundance; he may not be as spry as Naughty Dog's other leading men Drake and Jak (one who can quite literally jump and then jump again while still in the air) but that certainly doesn't make him any less apt to survive in The Last of Us' twisted, dark and insanely complex world. You see to capitalise on the situation at hand Joel too can use sound to his advantage, a quick press of the R2 button allows the player to focus Joel's hearing allowing him to see around the environment detecting and avoiding enemies as the situation requires. So, needless to say in this encounter there was going to have to be an obstacle to overcome, a way to escape this dark and deadly series of rooms. This obstacle quickly reveals itself to be a clicker located very close to where a conveniently placed ladder lies, the only issue is that the noise involved with bringing down the ladder would surely attract not only the attention of just one clicker, but also the attention of all other infected in the room with you at that time.

 

This might seem a tad restrictive, having to follow a set path and end up in this room with no other choice but to kill off the clicker silently and be done with it. Well it would be if we weren't talking about The Last of Us, you see this situation demonstrates perfectly one of The Last of Us' finest features. Freedom. Not necessarily the freedom to go anywhere and do anything like a Grand Theft Auto-esque game, but rather the freedom to tackle any situation in the game the way you want to; that clicker that we were talking about earlier is actually a pest to deal with. You see you can't just go straight in and beat it to death with your bare hands as clickers are one of the few enemy types in the game that will instantly kill you unless you have the right tools to take them down with. With that in mind let's say you want to take out this clicker without making a sound, that's good and that's fine but have you been a good scavenger and explored a lot of the map? If so you might just find that you have just the right amount of materials to craft yourself a shiv.

 

"What use is a shiv in this situation?!" I hear you cry, well early on in the game you're shown that shivs (just like any item in The Last of Us) have multiple usages; for example they're the only tool that'll allow Joel to stealth kill a clicker without getting his jugular torn out of his neck, but they also allow the player to breakthrough locked doors that might contain valuable loot and materials that can be used at a later date to help you further progress. The only problem here is that Joel can only use the shiv once (at least in the early game) before it breaks so the usages of your crafted items become quickly cobbled together strategies that sometimes play out brilliantly and other times leave the player running for their lives using every bit of their carefully assembled and scarcely available resources to escape almost certain death. So here it'd make more sense to lure the clicker away from the ladder, right? Well partly, the only problem being that clickers, much like bats are blind and see with sound so if you were to throw a glass bottle in one direction and make it shatter that won't just attract the one clicker you want it to, it will attract all of the infected, clickers or not to the location that you threw that bottle, you'd best plan your throw out before you do it, otherwise you too may well be forced to scramble for survival.

 

It's at this point then that the you start to wonder "Wait a minute, what if Ellie or another one of my companions gets caught or spotted by one of the Infected?" Have no fear, Naughty Dog have come up with a rather ingenious solution to this problem by having friendly AI remain all but undetectable as long as you too remain hidden to the enemy AI. What do I mean by this? Well if we continue using the room filled with clickers scenario then it means that as long as you don't get spotted by the clickers they won't either. This solution isn't perfect however, as it can occasionally break the player's immersion to see Ellie, Tess or any other companion run out in front of a bandit group and not even see the bandits flinch as a result. Other than that though, there seems to be no real downside to the AI as itself is another one of the game's technical marvels, they will hunt for you and react dynamically to the way that you decide to play the game. Hell the detail of these responses is what causes the game to be so damn immersive, the fact is that if the player chose to shoot a bandit in the leg then his leg would actually be wounded, he'd react to it and it'd actually be a hindrance to that particular enemy and a beneficial thing for the player to do. They also dynamically respond to the player, trying all sorts of tactical strategies making sure that the game never loses its fast-paced, ruthless and deadly combat, they will try to flank you, flush you out of hiding places and even engage your friendly AI so you'll be forced at times to go out and help them in combat.

 

In short the AI in the game is incredibly intelligent and apart from that tiny issue with the enemy AI being unable to detect the friendly AI it really shines and stands out as one of the game's finest features and greatest achievements.

 

Now, time to focus a little on the story, which is arguably the best part of the game. The characters feel alive, you actually care for Joel and Ellie, wanting to keep both of them safe as you guide them through the post-apocalyptic wasteland known as North America. You see they develop much like normal people, there isn't one big action that draws the player closer to the relationship between these two characters and the world around them, no it's a combination of small, little, tiny things that the player might not even notice when they're on their first playthrough of the game. These small touches can be anything from Ellie being dazzled at the sight of seeing real fireflies and losing her self for a moment or two to her trying to learn how to whistle. Though these little instances may be small, there's a plethora of them that help to further immerse the player in The Last of Us' world and it's moments like these that the player actually starts to cherish.

 

This game actually makes you feel relieved when you're not in constant danger and you actually start to appreciate the little things in life; for example he time Ellie picks up a toy for another young survivor when they're told not to take it is really rather touching and the game does it in such a wonderful way, in which she'll only pick up the toy when the camera moves away from her allowing her the quick moment she needs to carefully slip the toy into her backpack. This actually allows the player some personal time with Ellie, learning her quirks and mannerisms, she's a pleasant character to be around at first but later on in the game she starts to symbolise so much more. She's the perfect symbol of innocence and hope in The Last of Us' dark and hopeless world, her very presence makes the game's world more bearable and the way that she connects and reacts to the world also allows you to react accordingly, this is the first time either of you have ever had to embark on such an endeavor but you as Joel start to feel the need to protect her ergo, you might sometimes try to hide her or protect her from the dark things in this world.

 

 

 

One of those, "special moments".

 

Now, we get to the slightly more spoiler filled section, so I gave you and am now giving yet another ample warning to stop reading this if you do not wish to have the game spoilt for you early on. Since this section mainly contains my person views on some of the factions in the game and the game's ending overall. You have been warned.

 

There are certain facts that need to be established before I go on.

• Joel was unconscious at most for a few hours before waking at the Fireflies hospital in Salt Lake City. It would be ridiculous to think that a thump on the head would keep him out for much longer than that and the fact that they arrive at the hospital in what appears to be early afternoon and depart at what appears to be evening supports this.

• Marlene's journal states that her men asking for her permission to proceed with the surgery was purely a formality, and she didn't really have a choice but to agree to it as the potential for a vaccine was too important.

• Ellie wakes in Joel's car after being taken from the hospital and asks what it is she's wearing, having been dressed in a surgical gown by the Fireflies, seemingly without any memory of what had transpired prior to being dragged unconscious from the water by Joel.

What does this all add up to? Any experimentation that the Fireflies performed on Ellie must have been cursory to the extreme prior to deciding that they needed to remove Ellie's brain and they never asked Ellie's permission to proceed with the operation or even informed her of the consequences. Ellie likely remained unconscious the entire time from the moment she and Joel arrived.

 

After performing what could've only been the most basic of tests, the Fireflies had already committed to killing the Golden Goose in their desperation to find a vaccine. This makes me feel like the Fireflies didn't truly appreciate her as anything more than a scientific curiosity--a means to an end--instead of as a little girl. Even if Marlene felt conflicted about it, she was still complicit in the murder of the girl she had practically raised on nothing more than the flimsiest of rationalisations and the hasty assumption that it was the only way.

 

To make matters worse, they were fully prepared to sacrifice an innocent little girl who had been through hell to reach them without even so much as the respect of giving her time to prepare or say her goodbyes. And while Marlene and the Fireflies would've had no way of knowing how closely Joel and Ellie had bonded in their time together, it's not incorrect to say that Joel had taken on the responsibility of her guardianship in the ~9 months since they had left Boston. What the Fireflies were doing was effectively no different than abducting a child from her guardian and performing fatal experiments on her without parental consent. Any way you look at it, that's monstrous.

 

It's ironic that one of the surgeons calls you an animal, while they were about to rip her brain out after a few hours of studying her, and without her consent. An even crueler irony is who they were willing to sacrifice. Ellie is the closest things this messed up world has to a paragon of virtue. Aside from frequent swearing and stealing some magazines and old tapes, she is all but perfect. She more or less represents the best of humanity. They fireflies were willing to sacrifice what makes us different from animals to save mankind. We are only worth saving because we are so much more then that. She is proof that humanity, and basic human goodness are not completely gone. Even though she doesn't get to save mankind, her life proves that there is a chance that not everyone is a sh*tty person.

 

I don't want to make Joel appear to be a saint, but he is far from evil. What half decent father would abandon his daughter? Joel acted on a paternal instinct in him. It could have gotten him killed, but his survival wasn't his first priority anymore. Ellie was. He is a human being. Filled with flaws, but not without goodness in him. He hasn't lost the capacity to care for Ellie.

 

But the real irony in the ending of The Last of Us is that the Fireflies brought their ultimate downfall on themselves. Everything that happened could've been avoided if they hadn't been so goddamn hasty. If they had simply waited a few hours for Ellie and Joel to wake, explained what needed to happen to both of them, gotten permission from Ellie (as Marlene even said, it's almost certainly what Ellie would've wanted if she had been given the choice) and let her and Joel say their goodbyes, they would've had their vaccine; or at least known one way or the other whether a vaccine was possible. Instead, they practically forced Joel's hand by not giving either of them a choice. Joel wasn't going to let them murder Ellie, and the only way for Ellie to give her consent was to stop the operation, which the Fireflies weren't going to let him do; going so far as to threaten to shoot him if he didn't walk out the door right then and there. Maybe it was malice, maybe it was greed or maybe it was simply desperation, but the simple fact is that the operation was unbelievably rushed. What would giving them one more day before deciding to end Ellie's life have cost them?

 

While it's almost certain that Ellie would've chosen to sacrifice herself for a possible vaccine, Joel was correct when he told Marlene that it wasn't their choice to make. It was Ellie's choice, and they never gave her the opportunity to make it. Ultimately, that's why my Joel walked out of that hospital without a single Firefly still drawing breath. Being able to talk about a videogame in that manner is something that I've not been able to do for a long, long time and as a direct result of that The Last of Us to me at least has become one of the, if not the most impressive game this generation. Oh and if you've taken the time to read this little tangent of mine thank you, I appreciate it.

Damn lightning, I never though of it that way and if the IGN fags stated that in there Spoiler cast it would make them look a lot better as there views on the ending are just stupid, Greg Miller says he's the bad guy, Mitch Dyer says Joel's the most despicable character ever and Brian Altano says he's one of the top ten hated people in a game, hey lightning do us a favor and send this reveiw to them.

[burner12]

I have to say The Last of Us has some of the best water visuals. The water is so clear and you can see the bubbles from Joel breathing. Very realistic.

But do the fish move away from you when you get close?

 

That's the important thing.

True

[JOSEPH X]

snip

Nope.

 

Just finished and Joel does what he does for selfish reasons, even to the point of telling a pack of lies to Ellie. I suppose Naughty Dog couldn't let either or both die, after we'd become so emotionally attached to them

 

Both Ellie and her mother were all for the procedure, so the success of that narrative strand is what the writers should have been aiming for. I would be all for Joel trying to take Ellie away, but it would have been more impactful had he been killed trying, followed by Ellie dying to save mankind

[Eminence]

 

Both Ellie and her mother were all for the procedure, so the success of that narrative strand is what the writers should have been aiming for. I would be all for Joel trying to take Ellie away, but it would have been more impactful had he been killed trying, followed by Ellie dying to save mankind

That ending would be such a cliche, though - that's where everyone and their mother thinks the narrative is going.

 

Do you not see the beauty in Joel's selfish decision? It illustrates how flawed his character is - how flawed this world makes people - and yet makes perfect sense according to the logic established by his character. He couldn't go through that loss again. That's the narrative strand they should've been aiming for (that they were clearly building from minute one). And they nailed it.

 

The very fact that he's selfish, that he acts in the opposite manner to a 'hero', is what makes the ending so effective. That the potential of mankind is at stake is vital to this; that he makes this decision in spite of Ellie's potential wishes, in spite of a potential vaccine, is what makes it so tragic.

 

What's even more beautiful is how the argument is wholly balanced on both sides. It's stirred up such a debate: what would you do in this situation, was Joel right or wrong? And the truth is, there's no real answer. That's what makes the ending so poignant.

[tuareg]

Joel dying would have been the biggest f*cking cop out cliché ending ever. It's awesome that for once we have a game where the main characters don't die. I honestly never thought it was possible in todays world of vidya gaems.

[VCRules86]

 

Joel dying would have been the biggest f*cking cop out cliché ending ever. It's awesome that for once we have a game where the main characters don't die. I honestly never thought it was possible in todays world of vidya gaems.

I agree with this. The whole ending sequence, I was expecting and dreading a moment where Joel took a rifle round to the back while trying to escape. Looking back at it now, it really would've been incredibly cliche and woefully out of place in a game such as this. I think it was really more surprising and more impactful for both Ellie and Joel to survive and under the circumstances that they did.

[FullMetal]

I have to say The Last of Us has some of the best water visuals. The water is so clear and you can see the bubbles from Joel breathing. Very realistic.

But do the fish move away from you when you get close?

 

That's the important thing.

The last of us sucks it doesn't have that. Most retarded and not even interesting AI ever. Whoever bought it trade it in and pre order CoD Black Ghost Dawg Warfare...

 

75%, 97 ish collectables I thought and roughly 13 hours into the game. A great f*cking experience thus far. Minor gripes and enjoying every damn second of the game. Certainly going to replay it again for kicks and trophies. I really hope the DLC is going to be worthwhile. MP is great too (as been said the scavenging/survival of the fittest feeling is well done). I just hope there's going to be more diversity in the maps, somewhat bigger maps, different and more engaging gamemodes and comprehensive arsenal with more interesting weapons.

 

 

[cp1dell]

From what I've read, the DLC is going to be a side-story or something.

[Dnero]

So what's this New Game Plus thing supposed to do? Just finished it on Hard, so cray

 

Also aren't I supposed to get Survivor mode if I end the game? or do I have to do it again with the new game plus to get Survivor?

[Guest]

 

So what's this New Game Plus thing supposed to do? Just finished it on Hard, so cray

 

Also aren't I supposed to get Survivor mode if I end the game? or do I have to do it again with the new game plus to get Survivor?

New game plus is basically playing the game over again with all your upgrades carrying over. The thing about new game plus is that, you can either play the game again on the same difficulty or a lower one. You can't play it on a higher difficulty, so if you want to play the game on survivor you have to start from scratch.

[Dnero]

So what's this New Game Plus thing supposed to do? Just finished it on Hard, so cray

 

Also aren't I supposed to get Survivor mode if I end the game? or do I have to do it again with the new game plus to get Survivor?

New game plus is basically playing the game over again with all your upgrades carrying over. The thing about new game plus is that, you can either play the game again on the same difficulty or a lower one. You can't play it on a higher difficulty, so if you want to play the game on survivor you have to start from scratch.

Ah crap, I just realized that I could start on Survivor mode in the beginning. I thought it was greyed out lol, so I went for Hard instead

[Algonquin Assassin]

I just finished the game. Just wow. I'll be playing again for sure.

 

To be honesy I din't find the game that scary, but there were parts that made me nervous. I must've used listen mode about 100 times lol. Every time I was in a building before entering a room I used it to make sure there weren't any nasty suprises on the other side.

 

Arguably I think the Pittsburgh hotel lobby basement was the most unnerving part in the whole game since visibility was poor and catching glimpses of runners in pitch black was unsettling. Not to mention after turning on the generator and trying to escape the bloaters .

 

Nothing really made me jump like The Walking Dead, but it was quite tense. Absolutely wonderful atmosphere.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Miamivicecity

[meta187]

Just finished this as well.

 

Incredibly well written, easily in my top 5 for the year would probably be my lead for GoTY if V and Watch Dogs weren't on the horizon.

 

Still that's a story that will be hard to beat, unflinching and uncompromising. Joel does not f*ck around.

[Corndawg93]

I unlocked Survivor difficulty, and I never even played on hard

[meta187]

Also, Lightning Strike that was a nicely written review. I would have totally allowed that as a separate topic as an independent review since you went to a pretty good effort there.

[Vercetti42]

Alright, having finished the game I now feel ready to give you guys my honest opinion of it, obviously this post is going to contain ending spoilers, so if you haven't completed The Last of Us, turn back now.

 

The first thing you notice about the game is just how damn well it is presented, from the voice acting, to the graphics, to the soundtrack everything in this game is done to near perfection and that is what makes this one of the, if not the most immersive gameworld I have ever had the joy of playing in. The graphics give off the illusion that this is a CGI film and not a videogame at numerous points during the game, I had times where I had to pause the game and take a breather, not because I was busy or I have some sort of health condition that makes me follow those guidelines, but rather because the game was so damn intense and immersive I felt myself shaking at the end of each play session.

 

The enemies in the game are nice and varied and each encounter requires a different strategy for you to be able to overcome it; for example there was one moment in the game where you are tasked with finding your way out of a very dark series of rooms surrounded with clickers. These are nasty, horrible and to an extent frightening creatures that will kill you the very moment they snuff you out, but what makes them interesting is that you can walk right in front of them and they won't notice you, you see the game has a fantastically diverse enemy system so depending on whether you're fighting infected or other humans your plans will change drastically, and that's without even mentioning when you're tasked with dealing with both of them simultaneously. Anyway I digress, these clickers are a fairly advanced form of infected that can't actually see you, instead they rely on sound to find you, their clicks help these infected map an area based on acoustic echoes, essentially using echolocation like a bat.

 

This is then is a situation where stealth, subtly and speed is required. Luckily for our protagonists Joel and Ellie, Joel has this in abundance; he may not be as spry as Naughty Dog's other leading men Drake and Jak (one who can quite literally jump and then jump again while still in the air) but that certainly doesn't make him any less apt to survive in The Last of Us' twisted, dark and insanely complex world. You see to capitalise on the situation at hand Joel too can use sound to his advantage, a quick press of the R2 button allows the player to focus Joel's hearing allowing him to see around the environment detecting and avoiding enemies as the situation requires. So, needless to say in this encounter there was going to have to be an obstacle to overcome, a way to escape this dark and deadly series of rooms. This obstacle quickly reveals itself to be a clicker located very close to where a conveniently placed ladder lies, the only issue is that the noise involved with bringing down the ladder would surely attract not only the attention of just one clicker, but also the attention of all other infected in the room with you at that time.

 

This might seem a tad restrictive, having to follow a set path and end up in this room with no other choice but to kill off the clicker silently and be done with it. Well it would be if we weren't talking about The Last of Us, you see this situation demonstrates perfectly one of The Last of Us' finest features. Freedom. Not necessarily the freedom to go anywhere and do anything like a Grand Theft Auto-esque game, but rather the freedom to tackle any situation in the game the way you want to; that clicker that we were talking about earlier is actually a pest to deal with. You see you can't just go straight in and beat it to death with your bare hands as clickers are one of the few enemy types in the game that will instantly kill you unless you have the right tools to take them down with. With that in mind let's say you want to take out this clicker without making a sound, that's good and that's fine but have you been a good scavenger and explored a lot of the map? If so you might just find that you have just the right amount of materials to craft yourself a shiv.

 

"What use is a shiv in this situation?!" I hear you cry, well early on in the game you're shown that shivs (just like any item in The Last of Us) have multiple usages; for example they're the only tool that'll allow Joel to stealth kill a clicker without getting his jugular torn out of his neck, but they also allow the player to breakthrough locked doors that might contain valuable loot and materials that can be used at a later date to help you further progress. The only problem here is that Joel can only use the shiv once (at least in the early game) before it breaks so the usages of your crafted items become quickly cobbled together strategies that sometimes play out brilliantly and other times leave the player running for their lives using every bit of their carefully assembled and scarcely available resources to escape almost certain death. So here it'd make more sense to lure the clicker away from the ladder, right? Well partly, the only problem being that clickers, much like bats are blind and see with sound so if you were to throw a glass bottle in one direction and make it shatter that won't just attract the one clicker you want it to, it will attract all of the infected, clickers or not to the location that you threw that bottle, you'd best plan your throw out before you do it, otherwise you too may well be forced to scramble for survival.

 

It's at this point then that the you start to wonder "Wait a minute, what if Ellie or another one of my companions gets caught or spotted by one of the Infected?" Have no fear, Naughty Dog have come up with a rather ingenious solution to this problem by having friendly AI remain all but undetectable as long as you too remain hidden to the enemy AI. What do I mean by this? Well if we continue using the room filled with clickers scenario then it means that as long as you don't get spotted by the clickers they won't either. This solution isn't perfect however, as it can occasionally break the player's immersion to see Ellie, Tess or any other companion run out in front of a bandit group and not even see the bandits flinch as a result. Other than that though, there seems to be no real downside to the AI as itself is another one of the game's technical marvels, they will hunt for you and react dynamically to the way that you decide to play the game. Hell the detail of these responses is what causes the game to be so damn immersive, the fact is that if the player chose to shoot a bandit in the leg then his leg would actually be wounded, he'd react to it and it'd actually be a hindrance to that particular enemy and a beneficial thing for the player to do. They also dynamically respond to the player, trying all sorts of tactical strategies making sure that the game never loses its fast-paced, ruthless and deadly combat, they will try to flank you, flush you out of hiding places and even engage your friendly AI so you'll be forced at times to go out and help them in combat.

 

In short the AI in the game is incredibly intelligent and apart from that tiny issue with the enemy AI being unable to detect the friendly AI it really shines and stands out as one of the game's finest features and greatest achievements.

 

Now, time to focus a little on the story, which is arguably the best part of the game. The characters feel alive, you actually care for Joel and Ellie, wanting to keep both of them safe as you guide them through the post-apocalyptic wasteland known as North America. You see they develop much like normal people, there isn't one big action that draws the player closer to the relationship between these two characters and the world around them, no it's a combination of small, little, tiny things that the player might not even notice when they're on their first playthrough of the game. These small touches can be anything from Ellie being dazzled at the sight of seeing real fireflies and losing her self for a moment or two to her trying to learn how to whistle. Though these little instances may be small, there's a plethora of them that help to further immerse the player in The Last of Us' world and it's moments like these that the player actually starts to cherish.

 

This game actually makes you feel relieved when you're not in constant danger and you actually start to appreciate the little things in life; for example he time Ellie picks up a toy for another young survivor when they're told not to take it is really rather touching and the game does it in such a wonderful way, in which she'll only pick up the toy when the camera moves away from her allowing her the quick moment she needs to carefully slip the toy into her backpack. This actually allows the player some personal time with Ellie, learning her quirks and mannerisms, she's a pleasant character to be around at first but later on in the game she starts to symbolise so much more. She's the perfect symbol of innocence and hope in The Last of Us' dark and hopeless world, her very presence makes the game's world more bearable and the way that she connects and reacts to the world also allows you to react accordingly, this is the first time either of you have ever had to embark on such an endeavor but you as Joel start to feel the need to protect her ergo, you might sometimes try to hide her or protect her from the dark things in this world.

 

 

 

One of those, "special moments".

 

Now, we get to the slightly more spoiler filled section, so I gave you and am now giving yet another ample warning to stop reading this if you do not wish to have the game spoilt for you early on. Since this section mainly contains my person views on some of the factions in the game and the game's ending overall. You have been warned.

 

There are certain facts that need to be established before I go on.

• Joel was unconscious at most for a few hours before waking at the Fireflies hospital in Salt Lake City. It would be ridiculous to think that a thump on the head would keep him out for much longer than that and the fact that they arrive at the hospital in what appears to be early afternoon and depart at what appears to be evening supports this.

• Marlene's journal states that her men asking for her permission to proceed with the surgery was purely a formality, and she didn't really have a choice but to agree to it as the potential for a vaccine was too important.

• Ellie wakes in Joel's car after being taken from the hospital and asks what it is she's wearing, having been dressed in a surgical gown by the Fireflies, seemingly without any memory of what had transpired prior to being dragged unconscious from the water by Joel.

What does this all add up to? Any experimentation that the Fireflies performed on Ellie must have been cursory to the extreme prior to deciding that they needed to remove Ellie's brain and they never asked Ellie's permission to proceed with the operation or even informed her of the consequences. Ellie likely remained unconscious the entire time from the moment she and Joel arrived.

 

After performing what could've only been the most basic of tests, the Fireflies had already committed to killing the Golden Goose in their desperation to find a vaccine. This makes me feel like the Fireflies didn't truly appreciate her as anything more than a scientific curiosity--a means to an end--instead of as a little girl. Even if Marlene felt conflicted about it, she was still complicit in the murder of the girl she had practically raised on nothing more than the flimsiest of rationalisations and the hasty assumption that it was the only way.

 

To make matters worse, they were fully prepared to sacrifice an innocent little girl who had been through hell to reach them without even so much as the respect of giving her time to prepare or say her goodbyes. And while Marlene and the Fireflies would've had no way of knowing how closely Joel and Ellie had bonded in their time together, it's not incorrect to say that Joel had taken on the responsibility of her guardianship in the ~9 months since they had left Boston. What the Fireflies were doing was effectively no different than abducting a child from her guardian and performing fatal experiments on her without parental consent. Any way you look at it, that's monstrous.

 

It's ironic that one of the surgeons calls you an animal, while they were about to rip her brain out after a few hours of studying her, and without her consent. An even crueler irony is who they were willing to sacrifice. Ellie is the closest things this messed up world has to a paragon of virtue. Aside from frequent swearing and stealing some magazines and old tapes, she is all but perfect. She more or less represents the best of humanity. They fireflies were willing to sacrifice what makes us different from animals to save mankind. We are only worth saving because we are so much more then that. She is proof that humanity, and basic human goodness are not completely gone. Even though she doesn't get to save mankind, her life proves that there is a chance that not everyone is a sh*tty person.

 

I don't want to make Joel appear to be a saint, but he is far from evil. What half decent father would abandon his daughter? Joel acted on a paternal instinct in him. It could have gotten him killed, but his survival wasn't his first priority anymore. Ellie was. He is a human being. Filled with flaws, but not without goodness in him. He hasn't lost the capacity to care for Ellie.

 

But the real irony in the ending of The Last of Us is that the Fireflies brought their ultimate downfall on themselves. Everything that happened could've been avoided if they hadn't been so goddamn hasty. If they had simply waited a few hours for Ellie and Joel to wake, explained what needed to happen to both of them, gotten permission from Ellie (as Marlene even said, it's almost certainly what Ellie would've wanted if she had been given the choice) and let her and Joel say their goodbyes, they would've had their vaccine; or at least known one way or the other whether a vaccine was possible. Instead, they practically forced Joel's hand by not giving either of them a choice. Joel wasn't going to let them murder Ellie, and the only way for Ellie to give her consent was to stop the operation, which the Fireflies weren't going to let him do; going so far as to threaten to shoot him if he didn't walk out the door right then and there. Maybe it was malice, maybe it was greed or maybe it was simply desperation, but the simple fact is that the operation was unbelievably rushed. What would giving them one more day before deciding to end Ellie's life have cost them?

 

While it's almost certain that Ellie would've chosen to sacrifice herself for a possible vaccine, Joel was correct when he told Marlene that it wasn't their choice to make. It was Ellie's choice, and they never gave her the opportunity to make it. Ultimately, that's why my Joel walked out of that hospital without a single Firefly still drawing breath. Being able to talk about a videogame in that manner is something that I've not been able to do for a long, long time and as a direct result of that The Last of Us to me at least has become one of the, if not the most impressive game this generation. Oh and if you've taken the time to read this little tangent of mine thank you, I appreciate it.

Lightning, that is a wondeful review indeed, true I didn't read it all since I don't want to risk the spoilers so I advise you to use spoiler tags so that I can atleast read a bit, but great post man, you have my vote for the Gaming Chat Award in the Annual Awards.

[Freakorama]

People including me are having their The Last of Us let's plays blocked on YouTube from false copyright claims.

 

This is pissing me the f*ck off.

[Corndawg93]

People including me are having their The Last of Us let's plays blocked on YouTube from false copyright claims.

 

This is pissing me the f*ck off.

Can you mention me, omen and several other people who frequent this topic

[Freakorama]

No because I can't even f*cking post videos longer than 15 minutes now.

[Corndawg93]

So I get up the Giraffes and then head down to the tents and Joel starts talking about medical centre and Ellie mentions Sarah and then I start to tear up, never has a game done that.

[Freakorama]

I like that we never learn their surnames.

 

It's kinda better this way in a way.

[Rebel]

Just noticed the other day you can buy new outfits for Joel and Ellie? Do you unlock more cash or something when you play on hard mode or find collectables?

[Guest]

Just noticed the other day you can buy new outfits for Joel and Ellie? Do you unlock more cash or something when you play on hard mode or find collectables?

You get more cash by doing certain things, like using stealth on a stalker (which is near impossible). There is a list section of things you can do to earn more cash somewhere on the main menu.

[Freakorama]

I made a shirt logo. It's teh cools.

 

 

I will probably make it available to buy on a shirt prolly.

But there are lots of others out there already.

[Cosmic Gypsy]

^Decent t-shirt logo man. That on it's own on a t-shirt will get buyers i reckon, as long as the t-shirts themselves are the same colour red as the background of the logo.

[Freakorama]

It is a transparent .PNG but I made it .JPG for showing people so they don't go and steal it like naughty ninnies.