Gameplay is fine, the "puzzles" are repetitive and boring. It's a video game that thinks it's too good to be a video game and that's it's biggest problem because the writing isn't' THAT GOOD.
It also is responsible for my least favorite trend in video game history which is "hold up on the analog stick for ten minutes after 10 minutes of gameplay while these characters talk" instead of you know, directing an actual cut scene and using visual storytelling aside from "see the bright green nature juxtaposes the gritty violence WOW" it's laughably juvenile.

baby's first apocalypse narrative matched with the worst gameplay elements of the Uncharted series. the last of us released at the peak of gaming media's obsession with finding validity as not just a medium for adults to enjoy, but one on par with cinema and literature. for whatever reason, this game was heralded as gaming's 'Citizen Kane' for a while. it's a third person shooter with zombies and it's one of the many pieces of media that spawned from a boring dude who saw Children of Men and decided he could also do that. everyone's angry and tense all of the time and there's lots of violence, which is how you know it's for adults (serious). but there's a dad and a daughter, so it's sorta heartwarming af tho. nothing about the game part of the game is very fun to play in a conventional sense - large parts consist of just walkin' around while you listen to dialogue. maybe you move a ladder. maybe you collect materials and craft a knife. maybe you crouch walk around enemies and press triangle to view the killing cutscene. i love games that aren't conventionally "fun", but the last of us makes no statement with its mechanics and design. more than anything, it feels like a game that is embarrassed to be a game and decides to entirely ignore any of the medium''s advantages and possibilities in favour of being completely conventional. and like, obviously there's a place for conventional stories but i just don't find this particular one interesting - especially as a game. naughty dog's uncharted series at least face the player with spectacle and dozens of enemies but tlou doesn't evolve much over its runtime, aside from having more guys. it's a culmination of the 7th gen's most boring elements distilled in one package that might as well just be the TV show it became.

this is also a game that was so successful it set the standards for what most big narrative driven triple a releases would be for the next couple generations. very much not a fan of that and the impact it had on the industry as a whole - it's the final turning point for PlayStation going from a system with a diverse library of colourful games to mostly just games like this. wide appeal titles very-normal narratives that are just like some other thing tonally and narratively but slopped up into a game that plays like a million other games. boring!!!! it's just boring.

looking back to the miserable state of the games industry in the seventh generation, i have to say that the feverish cries to find the citizen kane of gaming - basically paltry, philistine shorthand for the holy grail of the medium, a work that legitimizes the practice and is enshrined in the canon - were super funny, not only because of the obvious nod to that works strengths with relation to filmmaking (which cant be replicated in games wholesale), but also way more specifically because that movie is the direct result of several contextual, social, and political factors that basically 100% mean games will literally never, ever get their own citizen kane. the last of us, for a time, was that 'citizen kane', in the eyes of many. which is insane because this title introduces literally nothing new in the AAA environ through either storytelling, mechanics, or structure (even when it was released it was patchwork pastiche of everything that came before it) and on top of that it was heavily corporate funded focus-tested prestige slush which in effect fully betrays the idea of this game being a ‘citizen kane’ type. a citizen kane of the medium would have to do more than be soulless and perfunctory interactivity Big Video Games decide for you has artistic merit - i'd even go one step further to say that if anything, Big Video Games would probably frown on the citizen kane of video games, similarly to how orson welles legacy was attacked and dismantled by hollywoods vanguard again and again, and again and again and again. it amuses me this is happening yet again with god of war but what can i say i guess it's tough being a sore winner