The Last of Us (

2013

) ½

If not for Bioshock Infinite [2013], The Last of Us may be the most overrated game of all time. Seriously, when this thing dropped you would have thought that Christ himself had returned and was developing Playstation exclusives. It was welcomed with a bevy of 10/10 scores from the media and proclaimed as an instant classic. It's from the bygone era of games where professional critics were so desperate to have the medium be taken seriously, and acknowledged as “real art” by mainstream society that they hyped up every mediocre offering as a revelation. Browsing through some of the reviews for The Last of Us you would think it was the first game to have things like characters and plot.

Of course, we weren't dealing with a Gone Home [2013] scenario where the rapturous critical praise was accompanied by the scorn of the mass audience. Indeed, with a few exceptions, it seemed like everyone loved The Last of Us. As anyone who reads this site will expect, I'm a bit more critical. This game is not a perfect 10/10, even by my system of scoring where the highest rating does not mean perfection but rather mere greatness. There are too many issues with the AI, checkpoints, interface, and the story to warrant such a generous rating. However, there is a world of difference between overrated and bad. Indeed, as it turns out the most overrated game of all time still has a chance to be pretty good, and The Last of Us (despite its numerous flaws) is a pretty good game. Hell, it's a lot better than Bioshock Infinite [2013] and Gone Home [2013], the other grossly overrated games from 2013.

The story picks up in (then) present day with a rather striking sequence of a young girl, Sarah, awakening in the middle of the night to discover that the world has gone mad. News reports warn about some unspecific catastrophe, sirens wail in the background, and your father, Joel, is nowhere to be found. Your first task is to wander through your suburban domicile, looking for him while jumping at every unfamiliar shadow. The scene is tailor-made to invoke feelings of childhood dread and uncertainty and accomplishes its goal admirably. I'm sure that I wasn't alone in being brought back to dark, stormy nights where I awoke in my childhood bed only to be grabbed by a sudden inexplicable terror. It's cut short rather abruptly when Joel turns up, kills the neighbors who have already turned into zombies, and rushes you into a car with uncle Tommy.

Of course, it seems like all media with zombies wants to desperately pretend that their mindless, shambling creatures are not actually zombies because these have some superficial differences. The zombie infection is spread by fungal spores that override the victim's nervous system, like the real-life spores that can infest and control ants. The difference between these fungal-based infected and traditional zombies is minimal. They still shamble along looking for prey, and any human bitten by them is transformed into a zombie in short order. The only real change of any significance is the aesthetics of the monsters, with the mushroom zombies being covered in weird stalk-like growths. Late-stage infected look like they wandered out of Matango (1963).

In any event, the plan to flee town in the car quickly falls apart when Joel gets stuck in traffic and attacked by a horde of infected. The trio is forced to make their escape on foot, making their way through panicking mobs and swarms of infected. The player switches control to Joel, and carries Sarah through the disaster, toward the checkpoint the military has set up. Unfortunately, the guards at the checkpoint have understandably itchy trigger fingers after fending off not-zombies for the past few hours, and they light up Joel and Sarah as they approach. Joel gets off ok, but Sarah is shot through the abdomen and quickly dies.

From there we jump 20 years into the future to pick up with Joel who now lives in post-apocalyptic Boston, one of the last active quarantine zones in the United States. The mushroom zombies have taken over most of the world, and only a few isolated pockets of mankind are left standing. Some, like Boston, are still run by the remnants of the government, while others are ruled by gangs of cannibals and bandits. There's also a rebel organization, called the Fireflies that are devoted to toppling what little governmental authority remains, which seems a bizarre goal given the state of the world. Vast swaths of the country are left to the mushrooms, so there's ample room to establish a break-away nation-state free from any governmental reprisal. Hell, the authorities in Boston can barely deal with keeping infected out of the city, they have no time or resources left to hunt down rebels who install themselves in the woods of Maine or the ruins of Burlington Vermont. As it stands, all the fireflies are accomplishing is squandering the world's dwindling manpower in useless internecine conflicts. I would like to say that the fireflies are unrealistic, as no rebel group would be so idiotic as to start a conflict in the middle of Armageddon... Unfortunately, I've read too much history to think this kind of idiocy is beyond the pale.

We can tell that in the intervening years Joel has aged considerably and that he's made his living in rough and violent work. In a bizarre move, the game shoves Joel out of the spotlight for the next hour or so, to focus on his tough-talking female partner Tess. This is probably the most baffling decision that The Last of Us makes, as Tess is little more than a plot device. She is going to die at the end of the tutorial segment, after pushing Joel into the game's main plot. This would be a great opportunity to get to know Joel and understand how his life has changed in the intervening decades, but sadly it is squandered.

Tess accepts a job for the pair (because she wears the pants in the partnership) of transporting a girl named Ellie to a patrol of Fireflies in exchange for some guns, gear, and ammunition. Initially, the pair have no idea what's so important about the brat, and neither is especially interested in finding out. It's only by accident that they discover that Ellie is immune to the zombie mushrooms, as she was bitten some weeks before and still hasn't turned. The fireflies are desperate to use her to synthesize a cure. It's too bad then that the whole group of fireflies Marlene brought to Boston to collect her have gotten themselves killed. Worse yet, in the process of getting Ellie to their rendezvous point, Tess becomes infected, meaning that Joel will have to go back to making his own decisions and being the main character. Of course, there's a problem with this, as if left to his own devices there is no way that Joel will voluntarily drag Ellie across the country looking for the firefly base, so before she dies Tess makes him promise to do just that.

The basic setup of the story is a bit rough, there are a lot of coincidences and contrivances needed to get Joel into the position where he is the reluctant guardian of mankind's last, best hope. However, if you're going to add a lot of coincidences the most acceptable place to do so is in the inciting incident, so at least we're dealing with one of the venial sins of writing as opposed to the mortal variety. With the characters in place, it's time for The Last of Us to start its main plotline in earnest, with Joel and Ellie traveling across the ruins of America intending to bring the only human being immune to the zombie infection to the only people who can use her to make a general cure. Joel quickly demonstrates that he is not exactly the touchy-feely type, and regards the job of babysitting Ellie as an annoyance and a dangerous one at that. Obviously, he's trying to protect himself emotionally, he already lost one daughter at the start of this mess and if he keeps an emotional distance from Ellie he figures that he can avoid the pain of losing another one. Joel's arch consequently is one where he goes from being a miserable bastard who actively holds Ellie at arm's length, to a doting surrogate father figure.

The game has more than a few issues with logical progression and characterization that I will happily describe at length below, but even someone like me who delights in finding new nits to pick will find themselves forced to admit that the emotional core of The Last of Us is quite solid. The premise of seeing a sullen, embittered character gradually warm up to the charms of a spunky youngster may not be the most original idea in fiction (it's the plot of every tsundere anime), but it is a solid arch on which to hang a game on. The acting and animation are superb, so even when the writing falters the game can keep you invested in its characters and story. Even better, while there is the occasional plot hole and contrivance, the big emotional payoffs, with few exceptions, land effectively.

Of particular note is the game's ending. When Joel reaches the fireflies the pair is knocked conveniently unconscious and separated. The fireflies thank Joel for his help and tell him that the only way they can make a cure is to cut out Ellie's brain. In retrospect they should have probably kept this secret from him because when Joel hears that he goes ballistic and cuts a bloody swath through the firefly facility, killing everyone who tries to stop him including the doctor operating on Ellie and Marlene, the leader of the fireflies. The player is required to kill the former to progress, and this feels a bit like railroading, especially if you're like me and tried to shoot him in the foot to incapacitate him only to see the poor bastard rag-doll instantly. I refuse to accept responsibility for this guy's death, it was only a matter of time before this poor bastard stubbed his toe on a coffee table and instantly died.

Joel's decision is morally suspect and ultimately motivated by selfish desires. He would rather see the whole world burn than sacrifice the adopted daughter he has come to love, even when he knows full well that she would gladly give her life for the greater good. Yet, it is a feeling that is perfectly in keeping with his character, and even if the players don't necessarily agree they will at least be able to sympathize with his perspective. Certainly, those lucky enough to have been in ever been in love or raised kids of our own can understand that there is sometimes love so strong you'd gladly say “screw the world” if it meant holding onto the object of your affection.

Ellie was unconscious for the whole ordeal, so she has no idea what happened, but she's not entirely convinced by Joel's cover story of “they have found dozens of people immune to the virus and haven't been able to make anything work, so they've given up on finding a cure.” Joel may be the sort of person who will tell convenient lies rather than force those he loves to face difficult truths, but that doesn't make him a good liar. In the final scene of the game, Ellie confronts him directly, makes it plain that she's willing to die if it saves mankind, and implores Joel to tell her the truth about what happened in the firefly base. Joel swears that he's telling the truth, and Ellie accepts this while showing more than a trace of doubt in her expression. Joel lies to her because he's afraid of losing her, and Ellie accepts his lie despite her reservations because she loves him too. What a perfect place to leave these two characters.

This ending is so good, that it makes me cringe a bit that somebody at Naughty Dog saw this and said “Yeah, this is a game that is ripe for a sequel.” I understand the desire to make Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money as well as the next guy, but this is a story that has clearly reached a satisfying conclusion. Leave it be and come up with a new IP, you can even advertise it as being “from the creators of The Last of Us.” Hell, if you must make a direct sequel (presumably because the shareholders are demanding it) just set it elsewhere in the same world. Now that I've finally broken down and bought a Sony console I will eventually get around to playing The Last of Us Part II [2020] and see if that game warrants all the hate it gets.

There is of course one, rather conspicuous, plot hole in all this: Why does Joel think he has to get Ellie to the fireflies in particular? There is another large, well-equipped, well-funded, and capable organization at hand: The remnants of the government that is still running the scattered quarantine zones in Boston and elsewhere. Surely, it would be easier to hand the girl over to them rather than make a 2000-mile trek from Boston to Salt Lake City, looking for a firefly facility that may not even exist anymore. I would be fine with the characters deciding to go to the fireflies for ideological reasons, but Joel at the start of the game is openly contemptuous of both the fireflies and their mission. Sure, he thinks the government is a bunch of bastards, but he thinks the fireflies are a bunch of bastards too, so why play favorites? It could be explained in part by his promise to Tess, but as I noted above, Joels's relationship with Tess is not exactly depicted in great detail and is a shoddy thing to hang an entire plot on.

The game seems to have copied the mission from Children of Men (2006), where the main character, Theo, is trying to bring the world's last pregnant woman, Key, to a neutral scientific organization called the Human Project, while the government and rebel forces try to snatch her for political gain, without really understanding it. The fireflies are a politically involved organization that will almost certainly use a cure for infection as a means to bolster their cause. As we see once we get to the firefly hospital, they are not the sort of starry-eyed idealists who would balk at such a move. Hell, they are prepared to murder children if it gets them what they want. It would be like if Theo risked life and limb to cross England on foot, risking untold dangers only to drop Key off with the rebels that want to use her and her baby as a rallying cry to overthrow the government.

The rest of the story is hardly free from minor contrivances, absurdities, and impossibilities. The most annoying of these is the sewer level that you go through after escaping from Pittsburgh. Here, an NPC you're traveling with suggests that you should cut through the sewers to save time. This is stupid, he has no idea where the sewers go, how fast they will be compared to an overland route, or even if the sewers actually connect to the military installation you are traveling to. In a sane world, Joel would tell the NPC to fuck off and lead you overland where there is plenty of space to maneuver, avoid wayward infected, and hide from any unfriendly people you may encounter. Instead, Joel shrugs and heads down into the sewer where he can easily be cornered and ambushed. The writers were at least somewhat aware of this stupidity, so they have Ellie ask something to the effect of “do we really have to go through here?” To which Joel replies “We don't have much of a choice.” This line of dialog would work if it were true for the characters. The problem is that they had a choice not to head through the sewers. Indeed, the “fix” here only serves to exacerbate the problem it's trying to cover up.

Then there are the issues that are so mild, they have little impact on the plot or game but still, stand out as impossibilities. The most notable of these is the way the game handles the infected. We're told that the longer a person is infected, the more deformed and fungal they become. First, they're just a regular zombie, after a few weeks they gradually transform into a stalker, in a year or so they transform into a clicker, and if enough time passes they eventually become a bloater. With each phase, they become more powerful, dangerous, and less human looking. The issue with this is that if it's true, then the world should be positively teaming with bloaters, as the bulk of the infected would be from the initial outbreak 20 years ago. Fresh infected should be a rare sight, even if they stayed in the initial phase of infection for a few years.

Of less impact than even this, is the game's bizarre insistence that African wildlife free from the zoos of North America would not only survive for 20 years after leaving captivity but continue to thrive. I'd be willing to accept that the monkeys in the ruins of the University of Eastern Colorado might be able to eke out a living during the long, cold winters. However, there is no way that herds of giraffes can adapt to the winters of Utah. These things are from the tropics! An elephant would be more believable.

Aside from these plot holes, contrivances, and assorted writing idiocies, the largest issue with the game's story is the character of Ellie herself. I simply don't believe that a person with her life experiences would talk and act the way she does. She seems like a modern-day teenager who was dropped into the post-apocalypse and forced to survive for a couple of years, rather than someone whose whole life has been raised after the end of the world. The generation gap between the pre and post-apocalypse should be immense, with the kids having fully adopted the semi-tribal survival lifestyle. Her values and thought processes should be alien to the player's own, just because the world she was raised in was so vastly different from the one we are accustomed to.

I first noticed this issue when, in the Pittsburgh level, you reach a bookstore, and Ellie remarks how she wishes she could take more books with her. While it's certainly possible that a girl could be a bookworm in the post-apocalypse it seems far more likely that she would not know how to read much beyond warning labels. Indeed, how much formal schooling children get in this world is not something the game addresses at any length, though the DLC does mention that Ellie was a student at some sort of military academy. In any event, this constitutes a missed opportunity for the game to facilitate some bonding between Joel and his young charge, as he begrudgingly teaches her how to read. This would also add some impetus to the side-quest where you collect comic books after Joel gets frustrated with Ellie's slow progress with books and opts for something easier instead.

The worst instance of Ellie's characterization comes at the end of the game when Ellie describes a nightmare where she's trapped in a crashing plane and discovers that there is no pilot. How the hell does this girl know what the inside of a plane looks like, much less have enough familiarity enough with them to dream about one? This is a world where a functioning car is an unusual sight. The game even acknowledges this and hand-waves the issue away with a “dreams are weird.” The fact that the writers tried to papier-mâché over this issue with a throwaway line only underlines how the whole exchange should have been excised from the script. Either come up with a different metaphor for impending doom caused by the lack of a competent authority figure or cut it out entirely. Half measure only makes it worse.

The reason for this strange characterization of our deuteragonist is obvious, the game developers want you to like Ellie, and making her a normal teenage girl in a dangerous situation is more likely to do that than forcing you to protect a sullen, ill-tempered savage for sixteen hours. It is the same reason why Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite [2013] is a well-adjusted, cheerful girl despite being held in complete isolation since infancy. While the issues with Ellie are nowhere near as immersion-breaking as those with Elizabeth, they are more frustrating in a way because it would not require significant changes to the game's plot to fix them. All you would need to do is change the time in between the prologue and the main game from twenty years to five. This would allow Joel to be suitably embittered and disillusioned about the world following the death of his daughter, while also giving Ellie a chance to have a normal childhood. Very little in the game's world of dialogue would have to be changed to accommodate this, indeed some of the more idiosyncratic moments (like Ellie's airplane dream) would make more sense.

Then there are, of course, political issues. Make no mistake, The Last of Us is a fine game, well worth playing, however, I cannot help but look at it and despair at what could have been. The original idea that would eventually grow into The Last of Us, was a game called Mankind and the core of the game was much the same: An older male survivor protects a young girl from the dangers of a post-apocalyptic world. The difference was, in this world the zombie virus only affects women, and the little girl is the only human female in the entire species that will not been transformed into a horrible monster. The older man protecting her was not then just safeguarding an innocent creature with great potential significance, he was protecting the next Eve who holds, in her undeveloped cunt, the future of all mankind.

It cannot be understated how much better this premise is than the one we got. As it stands the world of The Last of Us is a bog-standard post-apocalypse that was already boring ten years ago. I can only play so many games and watch so many movies where the last remnants of humanity eke out a pitiful existence in a zombie-infested wasteland. Having the zombie virus be gender-specific would go a great deal of the way towards making the world of The Last of Us unique in a sea of Dawn of the Dead and The Walking Dead knock-offs. What would a society consisting only of men look like? A monastic brotherhood? A military unit? A tribe of savage nomads? An ongoing homosexual orgy? There are plenty of answers all of which could be depicted in the game in some capacity if it were to follow the existing framework of a journey across America. Obviously, we cannot judge what was not made but this approach is potentially much richer and more interesting than what we got.

Moreover, a female-only zombie apocalypse would add a dimension of existential dread to the proceedings that is otherwise lacking. As it stands it always feels possible for a small group of survivors to band together and form a fortified settlement where they could outlast the infected and the bandits. They could tend their own crops, raise their own children, and thrive as the world slowly goes back to normal. Hell, it seems like Tommy and his allies in Jackson are well on their way to doing just that. Sure, it may take a couple of centuries but I can't imagine that mankind would be undone by the zombies of The Last of Us. No such hopeful vision is possible in a world without women though, as without women there will be no children, and with no children, there really is no future. The premise offers all the despair of Children of Men (2006) with the physical destruction of an average zombie film.

More frustrating than all this though is the fact that the superior idea was abandoned seemingly for no good reason. According to The Last of Us' creative director, one employee at Naughty Dog found the concept sexist, so the entire project had to be scrapped. Remember, the feminists are not coming to take your games away, they just want to infiltrate the industry and ensure that the games you would love are never made in the first place. Even if one is willing to concede that the concept of Mankind was sexist, which I am of course not willing to do, to abandon the more interesting idea in favor of the safe and boring is a crime. Hell, if the premise is really so disgusting then why not flip it, so it's the last boy in the world being looked after by an embittered woman rediscovering her maternal instinct? Thank god that we at least got Lisa: The Painful [2014], an indie RPG that managed to do the concept of a single-gender post-apocalypse justice. Still, as I noted in my review of Lisa: The Painful [2014], while I'm glad it exists and was not required to compromise on its artistic vision, it's still just an RPG-maker game cobbled together by a talented and dedicated amateur. With The Last of Us, we had the chance to see an arresting artistic vision delivered with the most sophisticated technology.

Combat is where things shine for The Last of Us. You're usually dropped into a large area with multiple paths, a lot of cover, and a few enemies that are patrolling around looking for you. Ammunition, especially for a gun that is actually useful, is always scarce, so you're incentivized to avoid combat or stealthily kill enemies with melee attacks whenever you can. When shit does hit the fan you'll find things get chaotic very quickly, usually resulting in you making a mad dash for a hiding spot while bullets whiz overhead. Fighting humans and zombies feels significantly different. When alerted zombies will swarm against you, rushing towards you in whatever is the shortest distance, while human opponents with use some form of tactics and try to out-flank or corner you.

That said, the enemy AI, whether it's human or zombie, is spotty, at best. Sure, they do a good job of flanking you, and flushing you out of cover. There were even times when I saw enemies armed with melee weapons turn and run when they saw I was pointing a gun at them. However, they will also sometimes just run back and forth between two positions or even stand around like they've forgotten what to do. There are times when you can chain stealth-kill a whole patrol of these mental midgets in one go. Still, however bad the enemy AI is, the friendly AI is much worse. I lost count of how many times I saw a friendly NPC just stand around with their mouth hanging open as a zombie rushed them.

The guns are absurd. Pistols hit with all the force and impact of a summer breeze, and the assault rifle would probably be better used to brush tear drops from a maiden's face. The only weapons worth a damn in the whole game are the shotguns, the hunting rifle, and a magnum pistol called El Diablo. Sadly the latter is the most immersion-breaking weapon in the game, it's a pistol with a revolving cylinder that holds exactly one shot. Seriously, what the hell did the developers think a revolving cylinder is for if not to hold more than one shot? If they wanted to have a super-powerful handgun but wanted to nerf it by only allowing it to hold a single round there are plenty of single-shot pistols they could have used as a model. I'm not a firearms expert, but if even I can see how ridiculous the weapons are it must be bad. Naughty Dog, I'm begging you, please hire a weapon designer who has actually seen a gun in real life. I know that may be a tall order in Santa Monica, but if you can't find anybody local, then hire a redneck from Arkansas and let him telecommute.

Bad as the AI and firearm design is, the biggest issue with The Last of Us' combat is the checkpoint system the game uses. If you die halfway through a combat encounter in most games you could reasonably be expected to be deposited back at the start of that encounter, with checkpoints flowing naturally with the lulls in combat. In The Last of Us you are often deposited halfway through a combat scenario, and forced to orient yourself awkwardly, wondering what items you've already picked up. This problem becomes more acute in areas with more repetitive level design, and you're forced to wonder which way you're even supposed to go.

I know I've spent most of this review griping about the game's shortcomings, and while they are numerous, it would be unfair to write The Last of Us off as a bad game. Sure, the writing might be a bit sloppy here and there, and the whole premise reeks of the video game equivalent of Oscar bait (Game Awards-bait?). There are a lot of issues here, but there's also a lot to admire. Beyond the tense combat, excellent animations, solid acting, and well-executed emotional payoffs The Last of Us can boast a significant level of polish. There are lots of little touches here, that while they do little to actually improve the game of its storyline, help with making the world feel more authentic. Ellie will at times grab a seat on a container and kick her feet absentmindedly while she waits for you to finish a puzzle. Individual houses will have their own layouts and their own distinct decorations. It feels like a AAA game, in a way that few big-budget games do. It ain't brilliant, and it certainly isn't the masterpiece that it was heralded as, but it's a damn good game all the same.