The Last of Us was released 10 years ago on PS3 and has recently been remastered for PC. I've never been a fan of zombie games but this FPS/RPG is quite good. Developed by Naughty Dog this title really is like an interactive movie, so much so HBO has recently made it into a successful tv series following the game's plot exactly. To be honest the excellent story holds up some very weak gameplay, and had it not been the for the narrative it is one of those games I would have uninstalled a few hours in. There have been times when I thought I've had enough of this (overly long) game, when a wtf moment happens and I decide I want to carry on playing.
The story follows protagonist Joel a single parent with a daughter. A mysterious virus causes people to turn into zombies which results in a military state where the army kill anyone who appears to be infected. Whilst trying to escape the city, the military kill Joel's daughter. The story then fast forwards 20 years where Joel hooks up with an old acquantaince Tess a member of the resistance who introduces him to a 14 year old girl Ellie who has been bitten by a zombie but doesn't exhibit any symptoms. Joel and Tess are tasked with taking Ellie across country to a facility where her blood can be extracted to use as an anti-dote to the virus. Essentially the game involves travelling and killing and zombies or human gangs that get in the way.
The characters are fantastic, brilliant voice acting, everyone in the game is likeable and you can grow a bond with them. The character of Ellie is done particularly well.
The game has a lot of puzzles which are reasonably easy to solve but there are odd occasions where you can be walking around in circles for ages and have to look up on you tube what to do/where to go next.
This is pretty good for a console port but some of the controls are horrible on PC with mouse and keyboard and have been quite badly thought out. It has a "Plus" menu system which is obviouly optimised for using a gamepad. For example when encountering enemies it can be difficult to equip your gun or change weapons, or quickly heal yourself. This is a massive bugbear for me as swapping weapons in the heat of battle is so clumsy and ill thought out I have died many times because of it, even though I have played through on easy story mode. The game also has aim assist that doesn't work very well and also a hint system that is quite poor.
Sound is very good but there is a problem with the volume. It is so low that I can only really play using headphones to hear the game properly.
The graphics are very good but I wouldn't go as far to say cutting edge compared to other games that have been recently released and event the PC version looks so much better than the recently remastered PS5 version. That said, remastering a 10 year old console game for next gen PC must have been a massive task.
The PC release was terrible with many people saying the game is unplayable (although I have had no problems) but in the last 3 weeks since release there have been patches almost every day, with the latest patch being 75gb in size.
Overall its a great RPG which I recommend playing it just has quite a lot of minor niggles like the sound volume, in game controls, slow movement and checkpoint saves. The game is a minimum of 15 hours which feels way too long.
To sum up a fantastic story holds up weak gameplay.
The expansion called "Left behind" follows the story of Ellie and jumps forward and back in time between chaptes. The expansion is rather short at just under 3 hours, but this is not a problem as many games are too long these days and this 3 hour wrap up feels just right. This DLC has some rather good puzzles and it is more story than fighting zombies. Again Ellie is done briiliantly and I quite enjoyed playing this additional content.
I get 75fps at 4k max settings
Graphics 9
Sound 8
Gameplay 6
Story 10
Stability 10
Value for money 10
Fun Factor 9
Overall 8 - Great
Review Deck:
4k 120Hz 55" Samsung Q95T QLED screen
Ryzen 5800X3D CPU
Noctua NH-D15 Cooler
Zotac RTX 4070ti Trinity 12gb gfx card
MSI B450 Pro Carbon mobo
32gb DDR4 Patriot Viper 3200mhz CL16 Ram
2TB WD SN770 NVME
Razer Nari Ultimate wireless headset
Logitech G13 Gameboard
Logitech G604 15 button wireless mouse
Drevo 60% wireless RGB mechanical keyboard
EVGA 650w GQ 80+ Gold PSU