A compelling story with a lot of character. Can't say much more than what was said by others for nearly a decade. A decently interesting take on zombies. The road trippish aspect and the depth given to the spaces the characters are passing through were executed perfectly and brought it all to life. The gameplay is in the backseat to the cinematic aspects, but I felt like it was challenging without being a turn off to advance the story, along with a lot of settings to aid you in progressing. maybe a little overrated, but extremely good. Edit in 2024: Was late to this, and am still late to 2 now but luckily they'll rerelease the fucker a dozen times

Before the horrible sequel, retcons and remakes by someone within Naughty Dogs' whose ego could not be contained in a skyscraper, there was The Last of Us.
The Last of Us is a good game, with a good start, a good finish, and a good (perhaps a bit long, but necessary) middle.
It makes you care about the characters and the world feels real enough, so if you can play it as it was originally intended it's still a great game and equally visually impressive.
But for the love of God stay away from everything else that came after.

I'm not really a fan of the Zombie genre in media, and Survival Horror is not my cup of tea either, but the Last of Us is such a great game, I played it years ago so I don't really have it fresh, but i remember it was quite an adventure.

In the Last of Us you play as Joel, a man who has also everything in life and is one of the few survivors in this zombie post-apocalyptic world, later on, he finds a girl called Ellie, who presents traces of the sickness but seems to be immune to it, so the plot consists on him taking her on a journey to a far away lab to try find to the cure for the disease and the key to mankind's salvation.

In a general view, the setup is really well done and Naughty Dog makes a great use of the colors to guide you through your trip, the survival horror aspect is pretty cool, the zombies are really scary, the main theme is pretty iconic and the gunplay feels fine, and it runs at a good framerate (on ps4).

It's really interesting how as the story advances, Joel and Ellie seem to trust eachother more in a really realistic way, and somehow feel like a family.
The game is also presented in grey tones, and i really like that neutral point of view, the main characters will face truly horrible situations that will make you realize that zombies arent nearly as terrifying as us humans when we have lost all hope.

With all due respect, I don't know how would I ever put The Last of Us in a pedestal where games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Half-Life 2 or DOOM stood. These games are milestones hit by the game industry, honoring them because of their impactful innovation, most of which are difficult to recreate, that makes each and every entry unique. The Last of Us being billed as one of the best written video games of all time is hilarious, as it invalidates the past twenty years of well-written, and interestingly written video game narratives that have predated this game.

Game-design is tolerable and serviceable, with people telling you to play it at the highest difficulty to achieve what it offers best. Why can't it offer it at the intended difficulty, then?

I have nothing to say more about The Last of Us. Not an inch of praise, and not even a foot of criticism would I even spare for this game. Dozens and dozens of creative, quirky, soulful games get pushed year in, and year out. What makes you ignore them and herald this game instead?

4 stars because the graphics are incredibly beautiful for the time, but gameplay is a bit strange/weak, the enemies are very scripted, for example, there are times when you go to kill an enemy, which is the last one in your field of vision and appears 5 more behind from him because you entered the spawn area, or when there is an enemy that only looks forward, even if you stand still for 10 hours looking at him, but if you try to pass by the side he turns 'out of nowhere', the enemies seem to have a sixth It makes sense to go after you, there are times when there are 5 houses in the same place, with 2 floors, but they go exactly where you are. Among other script problems, like, there are parts where you could just open a door and continue on your way, but the option simply doesn't appear until you kill the enemies.

Mechanically it's a pretty bad game, which isn't a problem for casual players, but like, a game where you have secondary weapons (Molotov, spike grenade, smoke bomb) and you need to pick them up, open your inventory, and equip them, It's bizarre, among many other problems that I could mention.

About the story, the story is very beautiful, the narrative is good, but it has deep characters, but it is also a very simple story, simple enough for you to be able to tell the story of the game with all the characters that appeared in 10 minutes.