"The Last of Us is not just the finest game that Naughty Dog has yet crafted and an easy contender for the best game of this console generation, it may also prove to be gaming’s Citizen Kane moment," reads the review, "a masterpiece that will be looked back upon favourably for decades."
I sniffed out the full review for your olfactory pleasure.
A fungal plague has devastated humanity, reducing the infected to brutal, mis-shapen wrecks. Two decades on from the outbreak, you play Joel, an emotionally haunted survivor as he guides the young Ellie to a safehouse on the other side of wasteland America. On the surface, the set-up could be pitched as Ico meets The Walking Dead but the execution makes it so much more than that.
The world you'll be travelling is fraught with danger, more often from other humans than from the Infected, but is unerringly beautiful. Nature has reclaimed urban spaces, and the results are stunning. Colour and lighting change with the seasons as the story progresses, and characters' appearances become worn and tired with time. This is easily the best-looking game on PS3.
The gameplay could easily have been a disappointment - broadly a mix of stealth and action, with innumerable sections of waist-high cover shooting, it doesn't immediately offer anything new. Played with a shooter mindset, it doesn't. However, it's in avoiding combat when possible, incapacitating foes and only killing when absolutely, unavoidably necessary that the game stands apart. You'll pause, consider options, listen, always aware that a mis-timed charge into action will prove fatal. You're not playing a superhero, or even anyone as tough as Nathan Drake from Naughty Dog's earlier Uncharted games. You're playing a human, as fragile and vulnerable as any of us. When you are forced to fight, it's short, sharp, shocking, and the game treats violence with almost disgust.
At the heart of the game is the almost parental relationship between Joel and his charge, one brought to life through the best vocal performances yet heard in a video game. The production quality of the game is spectacular but the actors are working at another level. The score, the first Brokeback Mountain's Gustavo Santolalla has composed for games, is also superb, ratcheting up the tension and underscoring the solitude of the world through use of silence as much as bold orchestral moments. There are many cinematic influences at work throughout the game, but it avoids feeling like an interactive movie.
The Last of Us is not just the finest game that Naughty Dog has yet crafted and an easy contender for the best game of this console generation, it may also prove to be gaming's Citizen Kane moment, a masterpiece that will be looked back upon favourably for decades.
5/5
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.
I'm not sure what you find so amusing. Perhaps it is the fact that high end games look fantastically better and play more flexibly and fluidly on the PC than on any old console. Bioshock Infinite is an excellent example. I've seen it on console and it looks pretty plain compared to it on my PC with a shit hot graphics card.
As much as this looks interesting, to compare a game nowawadays to Citizen Kane is a bit dumb. Citizen Kane is a ground breaking movie not because of it's emotion impact or story but because it introduced so many new techniques to cinema from camera angles to non linear, multi-point perspectives. Games had it's Citizen Kane during the eight bit age at latest, I'm hoping for games "Star Wars".
"What started as a legitimate effort by the townspeople of Salem to identify, capture and kill those who did Satan's bidding quickly deteriorated into a witch hunt" Army Man
Animavore wrote:It's a PS3 exclusive. That's why I find it amusing.
I find it kind of sad though that that is all Sony seem to have going for them on the PlayStation any more, - the power to pay for exclusivity in an attempt to monopolise their corner of the market.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]
Animavore wrote:It's a PS3 exclusive. That's why I find it amusing.
I find it kind of sad though that that is all Sony seem to have going for them on the PlayStation any more, - the power to pay for exclusivity in an attempt to monopolise their corner of the market.
Lol! What? All platforms, including PC, have exclusives.
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.
Animavore wrote:It's a PS3 exclusive. That's why I find it amusing.
I find it kind of sad though that that is all Sony seem to have going for them on the PlayStation any more, - the power to pay for exclusivity in an attempt to monopolise their corner of the market.
Lol! What? All platforms, including PC, have exclusives.
According to an article I glanced over in Edge, Microsoft will not be supporting any PC games or having exclusives once X-Box one is released.
"What started as a legitimate effort by the townspeople of Salem to identify, capture and kill those who did Satan's bidding quickly deteriorated into a witch hunt" Army Man
Animavore wrote:It's a PS3 exclusive. That's why I find it amusing.
I find it kind of sad though that that is all Sony seem to have going for them on the PlayStation any more, - the power to pay for exclusivity in an attempt to monopolise their corner of the market.
Lol! What? All platforms, including PC, have exclusives.
According to an article I glanced over in Edge, Microsoft will not be supporting any PC games or having exclusives once X-Box one is released.
Eh? How so? It's not like they can stop people producing PC games
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.
There is a big difference between a developer making a game only for one platform, and a publisher paying for exclusive rights so the developer can't make their game for other platforms.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]
PsychoSerenity wrote:There is a big difference between a developer making a game only for one platform, and a publisher paying for exclusive rights so the developer can't make their game for other platforms.
They all do it so I still don't know why you are singling out Sony.
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.
No they can't stop people making games for PC's, not at all, but they can develop (and by all intents, intend to) operating systems which are not tailored to support games, which means that it might make it more and more inconvenient to play games on a PC. The way things are looking at the moment with tablets, phones etc, it seems to me that with the new wave of consoles the idea is to try and move away from people in their homes even having PC's.
Seems like a tactical move by big business concerns, adapt the hardware, control the software.
"What started as a legitimate effort by the townspeople of Salem to identify, capture and kill those who did Satan's bidding quickly deteriorated into a witch hunt" Army Man
