The Last of Us combines the worst aspects popular in games of its time with a mediocre story that pulls from other better, or just as mediocre but in different ways, apocalyptic plots with a world that only stands out due to not being another drab wasteland setting (we go with the Russia/Eastern European green style not the US/Australia Mad Max brown kind) and the zombies being plant zombies instead of normal slow brain devouring or violent charging horde zombies.

The few decent moments the game has are at odds with the constant obvious turns the plot takes, fairly limited combat against human enemies and dull combat against other enemies, a ridiculous ending goal due to the badly written to make everyone incompetent groups you work with, and almost every generic bad design trope of its time including a bad crafting system, dull simplistic stealth focused sections, slowly walking through areas while the "important" conversations play out, and a constant variety of nonsense busywork like finding generators, dragging objects, and moving planks around because one of the characters refuses to swim. Made during the weird time where a lot of lead developers apparently became dads and wanted to make dad games, maybe for all the time they spent not seeing their own kids while being forced to work long overtime hours making garbage for major studios.