Did this remake need to exist? No. Is it worth paying £70 for a beat-for-beat retelling of a story that most of us have probably replayed multiple times over the last decade? Definitely not. But for someone who prepped themselves to see the flaws in The Last of Us having not played it in a few years (years where the values I look for in a video game have changed and evolved dramatically), I was shocked to find that this was maybe my favourite playthrough of The Last of Us to date. It's not a hot take, I know, but this game is seriously something special.
And what's wild about that is that The Last of Us ostensibly doesn't have the gameplay components you'd expect from a world-class video game. It's a rollercoaster of interlinking set pieces, keeping you on rails for the majority of its runtime and never really evolving its mechanics past their base implementation. You shoot people, you choke people and you boost Ellie over a million walls. It tries to disguise that simplicity through thrilling moments, but as Nakey Jakey said in his excellent TLOU 2 video, Naughty Dog's levels are like water slides. The first time down they're exciting, but every subsequent ride when you know the slide's every turn, it begins to lose the novelty.
But the thrill of The Last of Us never fades because Joel and Ellie refuse to let it. These two characters are just such rich, engaging and interesting personalities. Joel is this cold, calculated monster; arguably the villain of the piece if you ask me. But beneath his 'survive no matter what' mentality, he's a broken, traumatised shell of a man that's so desperate for a purpose that he'd doom the world to find it (and eventually does).
Meanwhile, Ellie is an abandoned orphan conditioned to losing everyone she loves. She's longing to find any place, no matter how unhealthy, amongst the ruins of a world she never got to truly live in. In ways, they're both stereotypical post-apocalyptic protagonists, but the quality of writing, character depth and motion-captured performances mean these two protagonists are some of the greatest I've ever seen in a video game. It may seem like an apocalyptic action/horror blockbuster (and, in a lot of ways, it is), but more than anything, The Last of Us is a surprisingly thoughtful character study.
It means that I never got tired of moving Ellie across the water on ANOTHER wooden palette or clearing out a room full of clickers while she spins around in front of them breaking my immersion entirely. I happily did the video gamey stuff because it always came with a funny dialogue exchange or a meaningful glance into Joel and Ellie's ideologies.
When I remember The Last of Us, I remember the tragic finale of the Bill's Town segment, Ellie fighting David to the death in a game of cat and mouse in a burning diner and the absolutely phenomenal ending, which might well be among my favourite finales of all time. People are always going to complain The Last of Us is too cinematic and that it holds your hand too much to be considered a great game. But regardless of whether or not they're right, who cares? It's entertaining, it's emotionally resonant, it's scary, it's funny, it's compelling and, most importantly, it's one of the most memorable stories ever told in this space.
Naughty Dog has always made fantastic games and I imagine they always will, but I highly doubt they'll ever be able to top how seamlessly this all came together.
And what's wild about that is that The Last of Us ostensibly doesn't have the gameplay components you'd expect from a world-class video game. It's a rollercoaster of interlinking set pieces, keeping you on rails for the majority of its runtime and never really evolving its mechanics past their base implementation. You shoot people, you choke people and you boost Ellie over a million walls. It tries to disguise that simplicity through thrilling moments, but as Nakey Jakey said in his excellent TLOU 2 video, Naughty Dog's levels are like water slides. The first time down they're exciting, but every subsequent ride when you know the slide's every turn, it begins to lose the novelty.
But the thrill of The Last of Us never fades because Joel and Ellie refuse to let it. These two characters are just such rich, engaging and interesting personalities. Joel is this cold, calculated monster; arguably the villain of the piece if you ask me. But beneath his 'survive no matter what' mentality, he's a broken, traumatised shell of a man that's so desperate for a purpose that he'd doom the world to find it (and eventually does).
Meanwhile, Ellie is an abandoned orphan conditioned to losing everyone she loves. She's longing to find any place, no matter how unhealthy, amongst the ruins of a world she never got to truly live in. In ways, they're both stereotypical post-apocalyptic protagonists, but the quality of writing, character depth and motion-captured performances mean these two protagonists are some of the greatest I've ever seen in a video game. It may seem like an apocalyptic action/horror blockbuster (and, in a lot of ways, it is), but more than anything, The Last of Us is a surprisingly thoughtful character study.
It means that I never got tired of moving Ellie across the water on ANOTHER wooden palette or clearing out a room full of clickers while she spins around in front of them breaking my immersion entirely. I happily did the video gamey stuff because it always came with a funny dialogue exchange or a meaningful glance into Joel and Ellie's ideologies.
When I remember The Last of Us, I remember the tragic finale of the Bill's Town segment, Ellie fighting David to the death in a game of cat and mouse in a burning diner and the absolutely phenomenal ending, which might well be among my favourite finales of all time. People are always going to complain The Last of Us is too cinematic and that it holds your hand too much to be considered a great game. But regardless of whether or not they're right, who cares? It's entertaining, it's emotionally resonant, it's scary, it's funny, it's compelling and, most importantly, it's one of the most memorable stories ever told in this space.
Naughty Dog has always made fantastic games and I imagine they always will, but I highly doubt they'll ever be able to top how seamlessly this all came together.