TLOU is an undeniable masterpiece of a game, and it pushed the medium’s story-telling forward in incredible ways upon its release in 2013. While the Remaster for PS4 quickly became the gold-standard of early-gen graphics, the game has not aged well in a graphical sense. Also, the first half of the game feels very dated to the PS3 era, simply dragging players through random arenas to fight enemies because video games. Nevertheless, the back-half of this game is perfectly paced, and it deviates its gameplay in significant narrative ways. In 2013, this game absolutely earned every 10/10 score it received, but in our contemporary video game landscape, the game hurts for how close it comes to brilliant game design without achieving it.