The Last of Us Remastered (PS4 - 1st completion)
When I received a PS4 console for Christmas in 2014, it was bundled with a download code of The Last of Us Remastered. I haven't really opened the box and had the console still brand new for over 4 years until I decided to get a PS4 Pro last April. This wasn't a bundle so after picking up the console from EB Games at Willowbrook Mall, I bought a copy of the game for $20 at the nearby Toys "R" Us to replace the one I had to give up via trade-in of the original PS4. The original PS3 release of The Last of Us was in late-spring of 2013 and about one year later, the PS4 remaster with the included DLC chapter, Left Behind, was released and is considered the current definitive version of the game. Both versions have received critical acclaim and coming late May, a sequel will finally be released. I beat the game earlier this week on Normal difficulty in 23 hours and 9 minutes. While I found every artifact, training manual, comic, and tool, I missed two or three optional conversations. The included Left Behind DLC took about a few hours completed on Hard with all trophies obtained (except for not playing on Survivor difficulty).
In September 2013, an outbreak of a mutant Cordyceps fungus ravages the United States, transforming its human hosts into aggressive creatures known as the Infected. In the suburbs of Austin, Texas, Joel (Troy Baker) flees the chaos with his brother Tommy and daughter Sarah. As they flee, Sarah is shot by a soldier and dies in Joel's arms. Twenty years later, civilization has been decimated by the infection. Survivors live in heavily policed quarantine zones, independent settlements, and nomadic groups. Joel works as a smuggler with his partner Tess in the quarantine zone in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. They hunt down Robert, a black-market dealer, to recover a stolen weapons cache. Before Tess kills him, Robert reveals that he traded the cache with the Fireflies, a rebel militia opposing the quarantine zone authorities. The leader of the Fireflies, Marlene, promises to double their cache in return for smuggling a teenage girl, Ellie (Ashley Johnson), to Fireflies hiding in the Massachusetts State House outside the quarantine zone. Joel, Tess, and Ellie sneak out in the night, but after an encounter with a government patrol, they discover Ellie is infected. Full infection normally occurs in under two days, but Ellie claims she was infected three weeks earlier and that her immunity may lead to a cure. The trio make their way to their destination through hordes of the infected, but find that the Fireflies there have been killed. Tess reveals she has been bitten by an infected and, believing in Ellie's importance, sacrifices herself against pursuing soldiers so Joel and Ellie can escape. Joel decides to find Tommy, a former Firefly, in the hope that he can locate the remaining Fireflies.
To see the opening gameplay, go here or below:
Click to viewPart 2 is here and has the handsome bear, Bill.
Graphics/Art-10
+ Excellent, near photo-realistic character models and environments. The world and characters seem pretty believable.
+ Great animation. The motion capture acting is pretty convincing.
+ While it originated on the PS3, the remastered PS4 graphics are a definite step up. No slow down and a higher frame rate, good draw distance, and no strange graphical glitches.
- Very occasional drawing can be seen but it's thankfully not common.
Sound/Music-10
+ Music fits the atmosphere.
+ Excellent voice acting and dialogue, especially between Joel and Ellie.
+ Great sound effects and ambiance that help create tension.
Control-9
+ Controls take a little practice at first but you do get the hang of it.
+ Remastered uses the DualShock 4's touchpad to navigate inventory items, and the light bar signals health, scaling from green to orange and red when taking damage. In addition, audio recordings found in the game world can be heard through the controller's speaker; the original version forced players to remain in a menu while the recordings were played.
- While Joel can hold multiple weapons, you have to cycle through some of them from his backpack, which can make you vulnerable as you're fighting off enemies.
Gameplay-9
+ The Last of Us is an action-adventure survival horror game played from a third-person perspective. You traverse across post-apocalyptic environments such as towns, buildings, forest and sewers to advance the story. You can use firearms, improvised weapons, and stealth to defend against hostile humans and cannobalistic creatures infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus. For most of the game, you take control of Joel, a man tasked with escorting a young girl, Ellie, across the United States.
+ In combat, you can use long-range weapons, such as rifles, shotguns, and bows, and short-range weapons such as handguns and short-barreled shotguns. You'll be able to scavenge limited-use melee weapons, such as pipes and baseball bats, and throw bottles and bricks to distract, stun, or attack enemies. You can upgrade weapons at workbenches using collected items. Equipment such as health kits, shivs, and Molotov cocktails can be found or crafted using collected items. Attributes such as the health meter and crafting speed can be upgraded by collecting pills and medicinal plants. Health can be recharged through the use of health kits.
+ Though you can attack enemies directly, you can also use stealth to attack undetected or sneak by them. "Listen Mode" allows you to locate enemies through a heightened sense of hearing and spatial awareness, indicated as outlines visible through walls and objects. In the dynamic cover system, you can crouch behind obstacles to gain a tactical advantage during combat. The game features periods without combat, often involving conversation between the characters. You can solve simple puzzles, such as using floating pallets to move Ellie, who is unable to swim, across bodies of water, and using ladders or dumpsters to reach higher areas. Story collectibles, such as notes, maps and comics, can be scavenged and viewed in the backpack menu.
+ The game features an artificial intelligence system by which hostile human enemies react to combat. If enemies discover the player, they may take cover or call for assistance, and can take advantage of the player when they are distracted, out of ammunition, or in a fight. Player companions, such as Ellie, can assist in combat by throwing objects at threats to stun them, announcing the location of unseen enemies, or using a knife and pistol to attack enemies.
+ The Last of Us: Left Behind is similar in basic gameplay involving gunfights, melee combat and a cover system. You control Ellie for the whole experience. An added feature in combat is the ability to focus the attention of the Infected towards human enemies, by throwing objects to distract them. This results in a lower number of enemies to encounter, giving you a tactical advantage. Throughout the game, you'll encounter locations and activities around the mall, such as a carousel, photo booth, video arcade, mask store and water guns. All of these locations and activities have some level of interactivity, allowing you to use them in different ways; for example, the photo booth allows you to select different mannerisms in which to pose for a picture, while using the water guns prompts you to soak Riley.
- There are times things can feel repetitive and always searching for items slows things down considerably.
- While the checkpoint system is pretty good, it can be frustrating in longer enemy encounters. This is especially true in the final gun battle in Left Behind. I tried saving my game separately from the autosave file and the game bypassed it, effectively forcing me to start the battle at the beginning every time I got killed or screwed up instead of at the mid-point. Very frustrating.
Fun/Story/Misc-9
+ The game's atmosphere and setting seems quite possible in reality. In general, the game felt "believable" for the most part. If you like The Walking Dead, very likely you'll enjoy this game too.
+ I'm surprised at how long this game was, despite it being linear.
+ The game has a couple of gay/bi characters in it. The best is Bill (pic above), a handsome bear but he's quite a jerk though. In Left Behind, we find that Ellie and Riley were in a relationship.
+ While I never bothered with it, the online multiplayer allows up to eight players to engage in competitive gameplay in recreations of multiple single-player settings. The game features three multiplayer game types: Supply Raid and Survivors are both team deathmatches, with the latter excluding the ability to respawn; Interrogation features teams investigating the location of the enemy team's lockbox, and the first to capture such lockbox wins. In every mode, players select a faction-Hunters (a group of hostile survivors) or Fireflies (a revolutionary militia group)-and keep their clan alive by collecting supplies during matches. Each match is equal to one day; by surviving twelve "weeks", players have completed a journey and can re-select their Faction. Killing enemies, reviving allies, and crafting items earn the player parts that can be converted to supplies; supplies can also be scavenged from enemies' bodies. Players are able to carry more equipment by earning points as their clan's supplies grow. Players can connect the game to their Facebook account, which alters clan members' names and faces to match the players' Facebook friends. Players have the ability to customize their characters with hats, helmets, masks, and emblems. The multiplayer servers for the PlayStation 3 version of the game were shut down on September 3, 2019.
+ Remastered has a "Photo Mode" you can turn on in the pause menu and by pressing R3 anytime during gameplay, will freeze the action and you can use different options to snap a photo through the PS4's share function. I got a number of shots and posted them on my activities. It's recommended you shut off Photo Mode after you're done as pressing R3 by accident is common during combat due to quick reflexes.
Total: 47/50 (Grade Level: A)
The Last of Us main website is here though is quite minimal. The Gametrailers.com video review is here plus their review of Left Behind is here. The Wikipedia article is here and for Left Behind is here.
Next Game: Metroid: Other M (Wii)
Currently playing: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (3DS Virtual Console - GBC)
