So having never owned a Playstation 3 and making the switch from a 360 to a Ps4, it was inevitable that I must try the game that has won over 200 awards and is placed so high from its fans. That being said I don't understand how this game can be considered perfect by any true gamer.
Let me start off by saying the plot and the atmosphere are trying so hard to be realistic. But the problem is you are taken right out of the realism by absolutely shocking AI among other things. So for those of you who don't know, stealth is a large part of this game and it's weak as far as stealth games are considered. At almost every point in the game you will have a companion. Now you must sneak around enemies while your companion follows you. As long as an enemy does not spot you, you remain hidden. Your companion however can literally walk directly in front of an enemy and you both still remain hidden. This seems like a cheap way of fixing the obvious that your companion would get noticed and you both would be spotted, which would be huge problem since you can't control which path your idiot partner will run. The game would be broken this way so now it just feels unrealistic and removes you from the immersion. AI will talk loudly and stomp all around directly in front of threats during parts where silence is supposed to be part of your survival.
The enemy AI is also not the brightest. Human enemies after spotting you and then you sneaking off to hide once again, have one method of finding you... The person who first spotted you will tell their other goons "you go this way and I will search over here". Then they literally just walk in separate directions aimlessly. Infected enemies only come in three forms, runners (which are just fast humans with no weapons that just charge at you), clickers (which are blind and just wander aimlessly until they hear a sound), and bloaters (which throw large clumps of toxin at you and just take a lot of damage to destroy). Once you figure out exploits on how to take infected down, you never really fear them like you should. Combat is still fun however, but a lot of your survival simply depends on what items you have crafted on hand.
This is another problem I have with TLOU. Crafting is fine in the sense you have smoke bombs and shivs for the stealthy players, and nail bombs and molotovs for the more aggressive players. But as far as exploring the world goes to find the items you need to craft these, it's extremely limited. This game is strictly linear and the "puzzles" you will need to solve to advance are absolutely a joke. There is a bus that you can't climb until you find a trash can and move it over to the truck. Why not just avoid a lame "puzzle" and just let you climb the truck that anybody would clearly be able to do in a realistic setting?
The environment though very detailed and beautiful at times really took me out of the immersion as well. There are notes and audio logs you find along the way that are very interesting and leave an interesting back story to the people who where there before you. This is ruined to me when I read a note of somebody who lived in house I am raiding before the outbreak happened and then the house itself has the same pictures on the wall as the one I was in before it, not to mention three of the same family pictures hanging on the same wall! Any chance the game had of bringing life into the world of TLOU is brought way down by seemingly lazy design choices.
The story as you may have heard is the games strong point. The story is OK. It is your typical post apocalyptic themed scenario, which in my opinion is really starting to get over used in media. Where it shines above it's cliches and how predictable it can be, is in the bond between the two main characters Joel and Ellie. It's a hit or miss on some of the other characters that come along the way. The cut scenes, facial animations, and voice acting are all spot on though. From beginning to end this was a very story driven game, and was satisfying in those regards.
Overall The Last of Us is an average game, I can go on for hours talking about where it's disappointments are, I didn't even touch on its pay-wall multiplayer or the expansion. The Last of Us delivers in its story and the gameplay is fun enough to keep going. There were parts of the game I really liked and parts that really frustrated me. This game is nowhere close to perfect, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I really enjoyed my first play through of The Last of Us. That why I give it 7 out of 10.