The Last of Us has always been on my to-get list ever since it was announced. A game from Naughty Dog? the creators of Jak and Daxter and the Uncharted games? Count me in! However what really got me off guard was the reviews. Almost every review out there called the game a pure Masterpiece and consider it the one truly great exclusive that the PS3 will ever have. Wow, now Naughty Dog's games have always been successful with reviews but the greatest game ever for the PS3? That is a very BIG claim my friends! However there have been the very small minority of reviews, like Polygon, who have lowered the rating due to some minor technical problems (which many games will have anyways so what's the big deal???)
In short, I knew this game would be good but I wanted to personally play it myself to see if it really was the "Masterpiece" that so many reviewers have claimed it to be:
THE STORY
For many gamers it is the gameplay that matters most to them when it comes to getting something entertaining, but I personally consider the story to be the strongest aspect of many games. Why? Because the story is what everything else has to build upon.
For the Last of Us, the story starts off very strong with a very huge impact! Throughout the rest of the tale it keeps up the attention that the beginning impact basically scars you with through the entire thing. Nothing really felt like a side story or pointless mission that took you away from the main plot, literally everything stayed fluid to the big picture and nothing was out of place. I can't really say much about the ending though. I will say that the ending ends strong to a similar impact as the beginning, not as strong but good enough. I will also say that when it comes to the ending, if Naughty Dog wanted to, they could easily make a sequel to this bad boy! In short: No dumb redundant Zombie Boss Battle at the end to ruin the whole game. Speaking of Zombies, the Zombies in this game aren't exactly Zombies at all really! Is this really the first game ever to come up with a Fungus disease as a cause for an apocalyptic end??? if so Naughty Dog needs to give themselves a hug cause that was a brilliant idea!
Also the ending was especially an Impact to me when the characters go to a particular "City"...
THE GAMEPLAY
This game plays out quite similar to the Uncharted games, the big difference however is that Last of Us seems to have more gameplay moments while Uncharted seems to have more cutscene moments. It is as if they took the gameplay of Uncharted and gave it M rated steroids to add blood, gore, language, and horror.
I really loved how different the gameplay seemed to change when dealing with certain situations or different enemies. To me it seems really realistic to how human enemies would actually react to a world like this, it's where the game starts to feel more realistic and challenging. The third person shooting is great and it's easy to hide in cover and avoid being overwhelmed. I really enjoyed the melee weapons and the ability to upgrade them by using believable items like scissors and tape. The infected enemies are each much different from the last which makes it fun to make decisions and figure out how to get past them.
The gameplay also works effortlessly with the story and never feels out of place...
THE CHARACTERS
Now to me, with every game or movie or book, there is always 1. the character you love 2. the character you hate 3. the character you don't care for and 4. the character you never really think about until they do something crazy.
The character I love, or should I say character"s", is Joel and Ellie. I normally don't end up liking the main characters, I usually end up liking the goofy or cool guy, but Joel and Ellie really get to you in a good way. When both of their origin stories are fully revealed they become incredibly understandable and enjoyable, especially Ellie who is interesting for being born in a world like that to begin with. Joel reminds me a lot about how some older guys I know of as father figures, which was really cool.
The character I really didn't like was Tess, Joel's smuggling partner. Now it's not because she sucks or because she was pointless, in fact I started to kinda enjoy her more after Ellie joined the team, I dislike her because while she was a strong and tough woman I kind of thought they overplayed the toughness a bit too much at times. Now I'm not being sexist in anyway, I think women should be tough and awesome, but for some reason she seemed to be a wrong kind of tough, something way different from the toughness of female characters like Lara Croft or even Nariko from Heavenly Sword.Oh well, my opinion I guess.
The character that caught me off guard for doing something crazy was David, I will not spoil why exactly but let's just say that I didn't expect him to become what he became. This character was also voiced by the Man-with-many-voices Nolan North which was pretty cool too since I never heard of him having an involvement with this one.
There wasn't really a character that I didn't care for, Bill comes close but I liked his smirk remarks to Ellie.
Also I should point out that Tommy, Joel's brother, was a cool character too, I just wished he was in it more...
THE GRAPHICS
When it comes to graphics, this game easily has, currently, the greatest and most amazing graphics that I have ever seen on these current gen consoles, period. I would even consider this game the true stepping stone into the the Next generation of graphical detail. I know that Graphics don't make the game but these graphics sure as heck make the experience!
THE SCARE FACTOR
This game is considered to be a Survival Horror game, while I do see all the Survival Horror elements I personally see this as an Adventure game more with added Horror elements. However, the parts that are horror elemented are definitely, absolutely, very very Horrifying!!!!
I have never freaked out at a scary moment in a game other than the likes of Silent Hill and even Dead Space, until now. Possibly the most memorable moment is turning on the generator and hearing the scream of an infected, then getting attacked by various infected, including the most difficult of them all! I also especially love the Clickers! What makes the Clicker infected so scary is how they sound. To me they sound like a mix between a mutated Elk and a dying bird, the moments where you can quietly sneak past them so you hear nothing but their clicking really gets to your spine, in a shivering way.
THE RATING
Now is this really the masterpiece game that many reviewers believe to be the one great thing to come to the PS3? A part of me really wants to say that because it truly is that good of a game, but the PS3 has so many other good and amazing exclusives that I also really can't say. So for now I will say that the Last of Us is definitely one of those MUST GET games if you have or ever get a PS3.
Now I personally believe that no game deserves a perfect ten out of ten score, to me no matter how detailed and amazing a game can be culturally of personally it will still not be a perfect game to everyone as a whole. I have not yet heard of anyone complaining about this game, which is really outstanding to me, even this game can't get a perfect ten out of ten but at the same time this game really is an incredibly Damn Good Game! So while it doesn't get a perfect ten out of ten it will get:
9.99 / 10
This is the first time I've given a die-hard serious score like this for a game that is really worth it and not just
a dumb angry birds, call of duty whatever. We usually give perfect scores to corny app games and mini games because they are rated by their addicting factors. But games like this and other console made games are rated by their appeal and impact to us as dedicated gamers! So really this is the first game ever to recieve a rating that i've never been so serious about in my life before, and I thought Bioshock infinite was going to be my game of the year for 2013!
Reviews for Bioshock Infinite, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and more soon to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment