The Last of Us tells a very deep story of life that is worth living in such turbulent times. Set in a post-apocalyptic USA, the world was hit with a massive epidemic. The population was being infected, being highly contagious when being bitten. The prologue of the game starts with Joel and his daughter Sarah while they were living peacefully at home at night while chaos began to occur when Joel slipped out the door, they both found out that there city was being infected. The saddest part of this prologue was when a police or as I say a modern-day Gestapo like enforcer shot at Joel and her injured daughter and fell down the hill to avoid the bullets flying towards them. Unfortunately, Sarah got hit in the stomach and seconds later she dies in the arms of her father, her uncle also witnessed her death. That is the scene where it hits you the most to the point that you want to tear your heart out. 20 years later Joel is a man struggling to survive this post-apocalyptic world. He runs into a feisty teenage girl named Elle who he teams up with in his adventures. Little does he knows, Elle was the key to possibly vaccinate the population from this rapidly spreading infection. Therefore, she is to be brought to an underground survival group called the Fireflies. They end up sharing a bond through their ups and downs when Elle looks up to Joel as a father figure she never had.
The game is an open-world adventure/action game which has its influence from other 3D platforms such as Jak and Daxter Precursor trilogy, Tenchu series, The Mark of Kri and Rise of the Kassai to a name a few. You get to roam around city ghettos finding important items and what not. To upgrade your items, collect weapons and so forth. You get to fight a variety of foes from outlaws, the Gestapo police and the infected. You get to use different weapons, and you get to collect more weapons as you progress, you get to use a variety of firearms, bow and arrow to melee weapons such as a shiv (knife) and weapons you get to pick up on the ground to use such as beer bottles or a brick. You can craft explosives such as lighting up a bottle to burn up foes to a crisp, a bomb to blow up many foes, or throw a powder bomb which will cause dust explosion around multiple foes to blind them so they can have a hard time looking for you. The combat system is very well done. Joel does not display fancy Asian style Martial Arts, but has Reality Base Martial Arts with combat influences from Keysi fighting method and Krav Maga. The game puts heavy emphasis on teaching you how to survive and use your resources wisely, which separates the rest of the 3D platforms. Instead of straight forward attacks on multiple foes, you can use stealth to sneak around them and stealth attack them – shades of the Mark of Kri and the Tenchu series. You can smash or throw a projectile weapon at them to temporarily stun them and move into the attack, or throw a projectile somewhere in order to distract them and to stealth your way through the area or to move in on the kill. Tougher foes such as Clickers can be tricky to kill, punching them out will not be effective. Firearms can work. I find using 9mm pistols and revolvers to be a little bit effective because you have to shoot them a million times in order to kill them. Using heavy duty firearms such as shotguns, hunting rifle can be more effective. Using bow and arrows to kill Clickers can work but it is tricky since it is better to shoot them in the head, although which I find better is to sneak up on one and kill them with a shiv. When fighting multiple attackers Elle can be helpful by jumping on one attacker and stabbing them with her trusty knife when in trouble. There are no major boss battles except for those blotted Clickers that pop up in various stages and the one creepy man that butchers people, which Elle faces.
The stages are set through four seasons and in order it is summer, fall, winter and spring. You get to run into other allies that accompany Joel and Ellie in their perilous journey. There is also a side story in the Remastered version called Left Behind, which tells the story of Elle and her best friend, which takes place just before the actual game. That part of the game also goes into the interim story of the Last of Us when Elle goes out to find the First Aid kit to heal Joel from his injuries. The graphics are rich, although I haven’t played the PS3 version of this game, I felt like the game was more than a movie delivering hi-tech video gaming of the 21st century. The Last of Us is a story fueled game that teaches you survival skills and tactics to such a high degree that sets the standard in Action/Adventure games, no matter if you already played the game on PS3 or playing for the first time on the PS4 console which is the Remastered edition, this is a game worth owning.