The Right Trigger: "The Last of Us" Review

So, by a few fortunate twists of fate, I bought a ps3 a few days back.
And given the massive amount of hype, I decided that the first game to play on my new consol would be "The Last of Us"
Here is what may be my longest, and most impassioned review yet.
The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic game that ultimately takes place 20 years after the apocalypse, an outbreak of a virus, occurred, and the game takes place over the course of a year.
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And so it begins (1)

The game starts off with the most heartbreaking beginning to a game I've ever experienced. It is a haunting, gut-churningly depressing beginning, and because of my tastes, this was an incredible start.
I've heard this game referred to as "The Video Game equivalent of Cormac McCarthy's 'The road'." Given McCarthy's standing as my second favorite author, and "The Road"'s standing as possibly the greatest post apocalypse book written, this set a pretty darn high bar for the game. This bar was met, and then some.
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Ellie, the driving force of the game (2)

The real driving force of the game is Ellie, the little girl who accompanies the protagonist, Joel, throughout the game. Given the fact that I've already played "The Walking Dead," and experienced the character of Clementine, I had high expectations for Ellie. Ellie is not adorable, like Clementine is, and she is much more mature, which isn't surprising given that Clementine was alive before the apocalypse, and Ellie was born into all of the chaos. But despite Ellie's lack of "cute" factor, repeated use of swear words, and making jokes about the pages of a porn magazine she stole being stuck together, she still turned out to be a traveling companion to rival Clementine.
My first night playing the game, I didn't notice much of a relationship forming between Joel and Ellie, yet another side effect of The Walking Dead, where the relationship is basically formed within the first 10 minutes. So, the first night I played, despite the amazing gameplay and immersion factor, I wanted more.
And the second night, I got just that.
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As always, Naughty Dog makes the unspoken words stand out (2)

As the game progresses, the bond between Joel and Ellie becomes the most beautifully crafted, heartbreakingly-in-an-indirect-way sweet, driving relationship I have ever experienced. It goes beyond the Gordon and Alyx, the Booker and Elizabeth, and even, as much as I hate to admit it, the Lee and Clementine.
Not only that, but the Ellie AI is a lot like the AI of Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite, in that she is never just standing around. If you need to swim around some blockage to find something to help her cross on, then she will walk around and examine things, or hop up on a ledge and sit down, or pull her knife out and start cleaning it, or adjust her hair ties. She is an incredibly intelligent AI who doesn't get herself into trouble.
In addition to the bond that is formed, the immersion factor is particularly high. Joel is voiced by Troy Barker/Baker (I forget which), a fantastic voice actor who I am glad to hear voice the protagonist of a game that doesn't completely suck this time (*cough* Bioshock Infinite *cough*). I forget who voiced Ellie, but ultimately I thought that she was voiced by Ellen Paige (or however you spell it) the entire time. Even though she wasn't, it is a huge compliment to her actual voice actress. The game also includes voice acting favorites such as the girl who played Alyx in Half-Life 2 and Nolan North.
The surroundings are always appropriately destroyed and reclaimed by nature, and everywhere you turn it seems like nothing quite goes as planned when it comes to reaching places, as the world is always crumbling around you.
The score is also worth noting. It is nothing complex, in fact it is pretty simple, but the simplicity of it is beautiful and it works incredibly well with the hopelessness of the world these characters live in.
Human enemies are incredibly intelligent, at first going where you want them to go if you throw a bottle to distract them, but after a while they realize there is something going on here, and then they head in your direction, and the time in which that happens varies.
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Joel and a Clicker (3)

The Zombies are always a terrifying encounter, not because they are scary, but because they are potent. There are essentially three kinds: the runners, the clickers, and the bloaters. The latter two are blind and use echolocation to find you if you are too loud, and if they attack you once it is game over, no matter what. So you have to be careful around these packs of sometimes five or more blind zombies and be sure not to make too much noise if you take one of them out. But it gets better. The runners are not blind, and make a lot of noise, and sometimes they get included in clicker or bloater packs, so if they see you, the one-hit-killers will follow them.
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Stealth is sometimes the best option (4)

There is just an intense amount of strategy involved in this game, and stealth is an important factor to surviving. But unlike lots of stealth games (*cough* Deus Ex *cough*) if you are seen you can handle the fight. It will be intense, and you may only make it out by the skin of your teeth, but being seen is not an immediate death sentence. But regardless, if you want to survive, it is better to remain unseen, and this adds an element of desperation to every encounter. As you detect enemies and you see a whole lot of them, you go "oh, no" and grit your teeth together as you think about how in the world you are going to go about doing this.
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Supplies are limited, so you need to make decisions (5)

Indeed, survival is a big theme of this game, and part of what makes that atmosphere so immersive is the crafting system. There are bits of stuff scattered throughout the areas, and you can only carry limited amounts of them, and you use these to craft things such as small bombs, health kits, molotovs, shivs, and weapon enhancements. The catch? A lot of these require the same kinds of things to make. So at any given moment you are forced to ask yourself what you think you're going to need to survive in the next encounter. Should you make a health kit, or a molotov? A shiv, or an enhancement? A bomb of an offensive kind, or a strategic kind? These decisions can make life easy or difficult.
As I mentioned before, the game takes place over the course of a year: It begins in Summer, and goes through spring in "Chapters" of the seasons. And each chapter becomes a bit more intense both in difficulty and in the emotional weight.
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Summer (6)

The Summer chapter is relatively light in the emotional sector and in the overall difficulty, and it ends on a gut-wrenchingly depressing note, leading the game into Fall. Fall takes place mostly in the piney mountains of Wyoming, in an area that brings me back to Alan Wake. Here it is a bit harder to survive, and the emotional strings begin to get tugged on, and it ends on a HOLY CRAP depressing note.
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Winter (7)

Then comes Winter, a season long tease of your emotions that keeps you in the dark as to the certainty of life the entire time. This is by far the most hopeless, sleep-depriving, gut-wrenchingly depressing season in the game, and also the most violent, and hosts the most vomit-inducing, "oh..oh...oooh my," just pure evil events of the game. It is also at this point where the Joel-Ellie bond is made so beautiful. In the wake of something truly horrible, Ellie rushes into Joel's arms with tears in her eyes: the bad things have passed, but she can only feel safe with her friend. And it is at this point that Spring begins and the emotional weight switches from depressing to almost happy and beautiful, like the actual season. This season is home to my favorite moment in the game: something so doggoned simple, but that I just did. not. want to leave. It is a chapter that is there specifically for the people who have been wanting a relationship the likes of which Lee and Clementine had. And that leads to the ending.
I will not spoil anything, and I want this to be entirely spoiler free. But the ending to this game is one that is satisfying, and at the same time emotionally...complex? That is most likely the best word to describe the ending. It is one that you feel unsure about, but in a positively thought-inducing way...not like some games with thought-inducing endings (*cough* Bioshock Infinite *cough*) where it is confusing, but more like the kind of thought-inducing that has you thinking about characters and what is right.
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"But I'm not even tired!" (8)

The Last of Us is a game that is very different from others of its genre. There are no tire/leather/junk wearing bandits who roam a wasteland, the characters change clothes, there is a different outfit for both Joel and Ellie in each season. It is just a game that redefines what it means to be a post-apocalyptic game.
It is also not a game for people with weak stomachs, it is very mature. There is torture, attempted rape, gunning down of innocents, cannibalism, pedophilic villains, and suicide, as can be expected when humanity goes completely to hell. So needless to say, it is a game for adults with strong stomachs. But ultimately the game is a story of hope and perseverance in the face of such trials. These things, while truly awful, are part of what makes the utter hopelessness and depression of this game, and the beauty of the rare happiness that sometimes exists so immersive and grand.

10/10
Nice work, Naughty Dog, nice work.