I have conflicting feelings on TLOU 1. On one hand, the gameplay, while being fun, can be really fucking annoying sometimes, causing me to waste almost an hour on some parts trying to find the solution to a problem. While some of this I will admit was me potentially not using ALL of my accessible resources with me, I still found it just really fucking annoying having to repeat sections that I found tough from annoying checkpoints with barely any resources in the hope that I might make it to the next if I do something slightly different. For the 13 hours it took me to beat this game, There was at least 4 hours of gameplay that I genuinely was just not enjoying in the game.

On the other hand however, the story is one of the best I've ever seen told in a video game, and is definitely this game's biggest strength. I really became connected to the journey of Ellie and Joel, and while I was spoiled on some major plot events (specifically relating to the beginning and ending of the game) I still found myself engaged throughout my playthrough in where their journey would go next. On top of this, while I'm not usually one who cares about it that much, this game looks incredible, and the graphical quality has aged so well I genuinely think it could have come out today and nobody would bat an eye.

I think it is a game that everyone should play once in their life, as it has some of the best acting and writing i've seen in a game, but the gameplay sections at times are definitely a bit rough around the edges, which holds it back for me as being one of my favorite games ever.