A quality game for people who want a narratively driven high budget zombie survival game. I appreciate Naughty Dog's ability to create a video game story that surpasses most movies. I have no qualms with the narrative, it's fantastic. It's the cover based combat and environment puzzles that have me mixed on whether or not the actual gameplay is something that really pushed any boundaries or stood out as even being notable?
Survival games with crafting mechanics aren't exactly my personal favorite types of games, but I actually found the crafting to be pretty intuitive. It's a system based around 6 items you have to scrounge around to find in the linear levels to combine to make useful items. 7 if you include the ability to upgrade a melee weapon. It seems rudimentary and simplistic (and it is honestly), but you can combine the items in different ways to get different uses out of them. Explosives + blades will give you nail bombs, something that's useful against infected, or you can use explosives + sugar for smokebombs, something that's more useful for human encounters. Usually, I'd criticize it for lacking any kind of depth, but I found the on-the-fly quality of the crafting to be something that enhanced the pace of the game. You aren't bogged down with cross-map scavenge hunts for just the right item. You gather what you can, and keep moving. It's a system that crafting enthusiasts will probably scoff at, but if you're someone with little patience for crafting, it's solid.
Where the game breaks down is with the puzzles and lack of variety in the encounters. If you've done one environment puzzle in the Last of Us, you've done them all. They're mind-numbingly simple and they mostly serve to give Ellie and Joel time to banter and bond with each other. Beyond the puzzles, you'll be in a usually one-floor level filled with enemies. There are 4 types of zombies. Runners, stalkers, clickers and bloaters. Runners, stalkers and clickers are effectively the same thing except clickers kill you if you enter melee with them and don't have the shiv perk that lets you defend yourself. All the enemies attack in the same way, if they hear you, they run at you, except bloaters who do an annoying aoe attack and then run at you. They're supposed to be the boss encounters in the game, but my hope for a boss fight would be that it's interesting and makes you utilize game mechanics in new way. There's none of that in these fights and it's a colossal letdown that this is what the game has to offer for half of the combat. In fact, that probably describes all of the combat. The human encounters are effectively the same except they have ranged attacks i.e they use guns and other craftable weapons. Every single one is similar except in the endgame level when the enemies are given armor and assault weapons, and you're meant to blast your way through rambo-style, but the enemies are so well-equipped that you can hardly leave cover or strangle someone without having the whole of the post-apocalyptic legion lighting your ass up with guns that do more damage to your character than a literal machine gun strapped to an armored car from halfway through the game.
It's not that the Last of Us's combat is bad per se, it's mostly balanced and focuses on a more rewarding methodical approach. You get a great sense of satisfaction for utilizing a shiv you crafted or a well placed smokebomb that allows you to use your upgraded melee weapon to easily take down blind enemies, saving you ammo. Its biggest crime is that it isn't interesting enough to support a 15 hour campaign on its own. There's a severe lack of enemy variety and a COMPLETE lack of real bosses.
I can however, recommend this game to anyone looking for one of the best written stories in any medium, but I don't think that the actual gameplay is enough to justify it as anywhere close to a perfect game. When I think back on whether much would be lost if this story were turned into a movie or tv show, I can't think of anything that it does that is unique to video games that would ruin the transition. In fact, if you wanted to watch this story as a movie, there are several that give you a similar emotional weight (Logan, Children of Men, The Walking Dead). Despite that, the story of a reluctant father figure and his surrogate daughter navigating an apocalypse where the real trauma often comes from how people treat each other when pushed to desperation, rather than from the infected themselves, is just plain good story-telling and I would be remiss to put it down for that.
Survival games with crafting mechanics aren't exactly my personal favorite types of games, but I actually found the crafting to be pretty intuitive. It's a system based around 6 items you have to scrounge around to find in the linear levels to combine to make useful items. 7 if you include the ability to upgrade a melee weapon. It seems rudimentary and simplistic (and it is honestly), but you can combine the items in different ways to get different uses out of them. Explosives + blades will give you nail bombs, something that's useful against infected, or you can use explosives + sugar for smokebombs, something that's more useful for human encounters. Usually, I'd criticize it for lacking any kind of depth, but I found the on-the-fly quality of the crafting to be something that enhanced the pace of the game. You aren't bogged down with cross-map scavenge hunts for just the right item. You gather what you can, and keep moving. It's a system that crafting enthusiasts will probably scoff at, but if you're someone with little patience for crafting, it's solid.
Where the game breaks down is with the puzzles and lack of variety in the encounters. If you've done one environment puzzle in the Last of Us, you've done them all. They're mind-numbingly simple and they mostly serve to give Ellie and Joel time to banter and bond with each other. Beyond the puzzles, you'll be in a usually one-floor level filled with enemies. There are 4 types of zombies. Runners, stalkers, clickers and bloaters. Runners, stalkers and clickers are effectively the same thing except clickers kill you if you enter melee with them and don't have the shiv perk that lets you defend yourself. All the enemies attack in the same way, if they hear you, they run at you, except bloaters who do an annoying aoe attack and then run at you. They're supposed to be the boss encounters in the game, but my hope for a boss fight would be that it's interesting and makes you utilize game mechanics in new way. There's none of that in these fights and it's a colossal letdown that this is what the game has to offer for half of the combat. In fact, that probably describes all of the combat. The human encounters are effectively the same except they have ranged attacks i.e they use guns and other craftable weapons. Every single one is similar except in the endgame level when the enemies are given armor and assault weapons, and you're meant to blast your way through rambo-style, but the enemies are so well-equipped that you can hardly leave cover or strangle someone without having the whole of the post-apocalyptic legion lighting your ass up with guns that do more damage to your character than a literal machine gun strapped to an armored car from halfway through the game.
It's not that the Last of Us's combat is bad per se, it's mostly balanced and focuses on a more rewarding methodical approach. You get a great sense of satisfaction for utilizing a shiv you crafted or a well placed smokebomb that allows you to use your upgraded melee weapon to easily take down blind enemies, saving you ammo. Its biggest crime is that it isn't interesting enough to support a 15 hour campaign on its own. There's a severe lack of enemy variety and a COMPLETE lack of real bosses.
I can however, recommend this game to anyone looking for one of the best written stories in any medium, but I don't think that the actual gameplay is enough to justify it as anywhere close to a perfect game. When I think back on whether much would be lost if this story were turned into a movie or tv show, I can't think of anything that it does that is unique to video games that would ruin the transition. In fact, if you wanted to watch this story as a movie, there are several that give you a similar emotional weight (Logan, Children of Men, The Walking Dead). Despite that, the story of a reluctant father figure and his surrogate daughter navigating an apocalypse where the real trauma often comes from how people treat each other when pushed to desperation, rather than from the infected themselves, is just plain good story-telling and I would be remiss to put it down for that.