The new standard of story driven action games. Spoiler free inside.
This game is just mind blowing in every way. Games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Enslaved, Heavy Rain, and other more recent story & character driven games have been raising the bar with each new title. With motion capture technology and excellent voice acting, characters have really come to life over the last few years. The Last of Us has surpassed all expectations and honestly has epitomized what a story driven game should be like in this day and age. Every detail is captured right down to the way people's eyes look during experiencing a certain emotion. Paired with amazing voice acting and excellent animation, it's like playing a movie.
The story itself starts out generic and actually has been done many times before. It's like The Walking Dead (for more recent comparisons) or any other zombie apocalypse that has lead to the destruction of humanity minus some survivors that have paired up in times of need. The story has some really nice twists and turns (especially the end), but the strongest point is the relationship between the protagonist Joel and his sidekick Ellie. I thought the relationship between Monkee and Trip (from the game Enslaved for those who have played) was done very well but was rushed and could have used more cutscenes and moments of bonding. In The Last of Us, this bonding is perfect. The transformation of personalities as the game progresses needs to be experienced. I'll go as far as say this game has managed to capture moments that would take 1000's of pages in a novel to describe and elicit the same response.
The gameplay itself is standard 3rd person shooter with some minor formula tweaks. As you play, you feel not like a killing machine but a vulnerable human. Your aim isn't perfect, your melee attacks are wide and sloppy at times, and it really coincides with the character you play as. I was happy with the controls overall.
The problem (and only one I can comment on) is the AI is absolutely retarded/buggy at times. While your character and sidekicks will be very observant of the world around them, there are times they hide in plain sight (likely a texture bug), talk too loud when sound is supposed to trigger enemies, and the enemies see their fallen comrades and flat out ignore them sometimes. However, these are minor and for me did not take away from the overall immersion.
I will come back to review multiplayer as I have not experienced it enough to write a review, but please thumb up if you found my review helpful and I will be sure to update it when I can. Thanks for reading.