Sunday 9 March 2014

The Last of Us Review: It's the End of the World as we Know it

There's a certain poignancy about the end of the world that I think everyone can relate to; deep down inside we all wonder what would happen if we were alone in the world and didn't have to take part in the regular 9-5 routine. This is what The Last of Us seeks to tell a story about; survival at it's utmost rawness, kill or be killed, live to carry on living, and oh boy does it get that oh so right.

The atypical video game seeks to wrap a great story around great gameplay and form a balance that allows users to feel immersed in the world - creating an interactive movie of sorts that people can lose themselves in. In the best of cases, it is difficult to separate these two dynamics, you enjoy both and shouldn't feel a disconnect between what you're controlling and what you're watching.

Sadly, for me, The Last of Us made me wish every step of the way that it was more of a 'Heavy Rain' esqué game, where you could get from A to B at your own whim without being dogged by repetitive and sometimes what felt like artificially difficult mechanics.

And yes, most of the time, the enemies are incredibly stupid.

Without delving too far into the story as to avoid spoilers, The Last of Us revolves around Joel; a man who lost everything, like many others when a fungal infection broke out and turned the majority of the world's population into murderous monsters, as well as facing people against each other gradually due to the need for resources. Joel is then given a task to transport Ellie, a young and very real character across the transformed United States for purposes unknown. Cue one of the best stories ever explored by an entertainment medium and a showcase of why video games are one of the fastest growing and most exciting art forms in existence.

Having been released towards the end of the last console generation, The Last of Us is quite impressive visually; normally when you think of how a dead planet looks in these kind of titles, you think of greys, browns and blacks. This game paints a colourful and believable repertoire of scenery, characters and objects that have all been aged to perfection and assembled in a way that frames Joel's quest in city streets, sewers, decrepped buildings, forests and other outstanding places, making you wish you could wonder freely, rather than being constrained with the industry's current obsession with funnelling the player in a set route and putting blinkers on what you can see and do.

Cities have quite literally become an urban jungle.

Another complement to the story is The Last of Us' OST; an emotional and breathtaking set of melodies that really set the scene and evoke feelings on demand. As a tool they could not have done any better, when the credits rolled and the final song played, I felt empty and drained but with the remnants of happiness from the memories I had that this song was drawing from me. The composers and musicians are to be complemented and regardless of whether you will play the game, you should take a listen to the music and hear the brilliance for yourselves.

The main gameplay mechanics in this title revolve around sneaking, shooting and platforming, normally in that order and in a cyclical fashion. This is due to the apparent obsession the game designers have with enemy encounters - you'll be wandering around and gathering supplies; reading letters from suitcases with a skeleton still grasping hold of it, detailing a person's frantic attempts to find his family and get home - feeling empathy and being drawn into this desolate world when predictably, you'll hear voices, or the clicking sound that indicates that your fungal friends are ahead.

Please do not mistake me in thinking that I'm saying that they never get it right, as Naughty Dog have proven that they are the masters of creating atmosphere in this game; quite a few scenes had me frantically running and sneaking around enemies to get to the objective before I was found, and had me backed into a corner with a shotgun, rapidly spamming R1 to kill everything coming my way in a fear that truly gripped me. But unfortunately most of the actual game revolves around you either killing or sneaking around X amount of enemies to get an object or to get through a door before the game forces you to kill them anyway. It's extremely sad as it's so noticeable, in some scenes, it slightly ruined my experience, although it others it added to it, it's quite hit and miss and based heavily in the context of what is happening in the story at the time.

Sometimes the game leaves you with no option other than to panic and waste ammo. Clever.

This is not to say that the designers haven't tried to make the actual game sequences more fleshed out; there is a crafting mechanic for weapons that has you searching for scrap in the scenery and an upgrade system that can improve Joel's powers, even if this is just by taking large amounts of pills found lying about. Ultimately however, these feel slightly redundant as resources are so scarce and enemies are so many, in some cases I literally just sprinted past all the enemies are ran through the door with no consequence and a feeing that they were supposed to feel more sinister than they were. In fact after a while, due to the repetitiveness, enemies stop feeling like genuine threats and start feeling like barriers to your end goal, either worryingly bad for this type of story based title, or extremely clever on the writers side - forcing you to kill or avoid enemies to survive. I'll leave that to your interpretation.

I actually found that for most of it, I was butting my way through the actual game just to get from cutscene to cutscene, something that imbalanced the gamer in me slightly as I felt that the two elements should work in unison, not fight with each other or encourage one to be worse or superior than the other.

But it's this theme of duality that works beneath the surface of the story itself that I think the game is trying to put across. Joel is a broken man; fighting internally between his need for survival and his need to feel something, the part of him that makes him human rather than a psychopathic murderer - something I think the game actually approaches very well, even at one point showing that murdering literally hundreds of people has an effect on how people see you.

The eyes of a psychotic killer, or the eyes of a desperate survivor?

The gameplay is the survival aspect of Joel's personality; necessary, rough and repetitive - showing the fact that humans need to do certain things in this world on a regular basis to stay alive. Survive this situation, survive that situation. Rinse and repeat. Whereas the cutscenes represent Joel's emotional side; his capacity to feel is emphasised through the emotions conveyed to the player, performed in a way I've never seen done before in a video game, varied experiences, intense and emotional dialogue and gorgeous framing that shows another need for humans in this post-apocalyptic world.

It truly sets a standard for how amazing stories can be for the industry, and it's writing like this that will allow this art form to be taken seriously in the future, rather than simply being something with certain negative stigmas and stereotypes. Characters you favour are ripped from you, characters you hate aren't bought to proper justice, you laugh, you cry, you feel happy, angry and every emotion under the spectrum, leaving you gasping for more by the time each cutscene ends; something that is somehow pulled off so much better than most AAA blockbuster movies have been in modern times.

As I finish this quasi-review, I can't help but think to myself that this is exactly why I set out to finish my backlog; to experience the stories and new worlds video games can offer, in a way that many other forms of entertainment can't. I came back to this title after becoming so frustrated with it that I couldn't bring myself to play any more; now relieved as I have ever been that I saw fit to come back to it and push my way through. No matter how bad some parts of the experience were, I will always remember The Last of Us as part of my gaming renaissance; the title that reminded me why I play video games and why the games I finish are the ones with an amazing story versus gameplay gimmicks.

8/10

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