A lot of people have heard about zombie ants that get infected by Cordyceps fungi, a fungi whose sole purpose is to reproduce and spread its spores and infect more ants. It invades an ant's body and takes it over and makes it become a spore producer that infects the rest of the ant colony. Well, imagine if there was a Cordyceps fungus that used HUMANS as a host. That is the premise of The Last of Us. It's 2033 and a majority of humanity has succumbed to the Cordyceps infection and the rest are trying to survive the best they can. You can either live under strict martial law in quarantine zones or you can take your chances out in the wild. If this sounds all very Walking Dead that's because it is.
The Cordyceps are basically zombies. If they bite you, you get infected and start to transform within a couple of days. At first you're really active running around and blindly attacking people, but as the fungus takes over your body more and more you get slower and slower and then lay against a wall and flower. I guess one difference from other zombies is that if you inhale their spores once they are in their final stage you can also get taken out that way. It always struck me a bit funny that the humans in this game only put on their gas masks when they SEE spores. to me, it would be a bit too late at that point.
Joel is a middle aged guy that lost everything in the apocalypse 20 years ago and lives day to day within one of the military zones. To survive he also does some smuggling on the side with his friend/lover (?), Tess. They are convinced by the leader of a resistance group called The Fireflies to smuggle a young girl named Ellie out of the city in return for a shitload of weapons they can sell on the black market.
Why is this girl so special? She was bitten by a cordyceps and has not turned! She could be the cure for the blight that has wiped out most of mankind! Embittered and hollow because of someone he lost long ago, Joel wants to skip the deal, but Tess, who believes in the story she is told, convinces him to take the job.
This was my second time playing The Last of Us. I played and completed the original game on PS3 when it originally came out back in 2013. I know it is seen as one of best games of ALL TIME, but at the time, I thought it was vastly overrated. Was it good? Yes. Was it the alpha and omega of videogames? The Second Coming of Christ? Nope.
The relationship that developed between Joel and Ellie was really what made the game special. I mean, essentially its a buddy road trip game. The voice acting by Troy Baker as Joel and Ashley Johnson as Ellie were REMARKABLE! I will say this, the voice ACTING in this game IS probably some of the best I've ever heard. It's been so long since the game came out I thought Ellen Page was playing Ellie. I seem to remember that Page caused a bit of a stink saying the game was using her likeness.
While the acting was first rate, the gameplay, to me at least, was basic. Stealth survival with as much combat as you chose to participate in. You sneak up behind people and choose to strangle or stab them without anyone noticing. I had some humorous moments where I would lead bandits into a room and kill one after another silently so there would be like 5 bodies stacked up in the room. To me, the AI was about dog level. "Oh, did I hear something, nah, its nothing" as you proceed to murder another one of their friends. I like stealth games so I was all in.
The survival aspects of the game, at least on normal, were not very demanding. Or maybe because I stealthed so much, I always had plenty of first aid kits, molotovs, etc on hand, even though you're limited to 3 of each. If you go full on tilt shooting everything up, yeah, you're gonna have some resource issues. And you have INFINITE flashlight batteries so all you have to do is shake the controller a little when they start running down. You can adjust the difficulty level if you don't feel challenged enough.
One of the problems I had with my original playthrough years ago was that I thought the game went on too long and started to drag. Like in my mind, I felt like the game was close to ending and then when I got there, it wasn't the end. I got tired I guess. I enjoyed this second playthrough a lot more because I didn't have any expectations or false inferences about when it would end. I remembered most of the major plot points so I knew how far along in the game I was.
To me, one of the things that took me out of the story were that you could tell when you got to a "setup" environment. Like, as soon as I drop off this ledge, mutants are going to run out at me. Or as soon as I press this button I'm gonna get bum rushed. When I start heading down this hallway, marauders are going to appear at its end. I had the same issues with the first Dead Space game. After playing for a while, you begin to recognize trigger points and actions so the game becomes less suspenseful.
I've had this remaster since it came out but had never played it. What spurred me to do it was that I wanted to play The Last of Us Part 2 so I wanted to go back and play the original. All I've heard about the sequel is how awful it is, but I watched the trailer and it looked interesting so I bought it.
I had never played the Left Behind DLC included on the disc and found it a bit boring seeing as how its main purpose was just to reveal Ellie's sexuality. If Part 2 is going to be more along those lines, I probably won't finish it. Maybe I shouldn't play it because it might ruin the newfound respect I have for this game after a second playthrough. If it's going to tell a story, fine. If it's trying to make a political statement, I'm out.
Whichever way Part 2 turns out, I'm glad it made me take a second look at the original game.
My Grade: A
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