The Last of Us is, in my opinion, the best console game of this generation. The fact that it's still riddled with flaws highlights the issues I have with the current generation of console games.
First, let me start with the good.
The scenery is incredible. These are the prettiest rails I've ever been on. The level design is not only clever enough to make you almost feel like you're not being herded along certain routes, but also incorporates the actual scenery textures in a way that other game studios can learn from. Some of the levels are huge, or at least clever enough in their use of space that they feel huge, which is the same thing to the player.
The writing is solid throughout most of the game, except for a very few parts where they took the lazy route and either tried to play for cheap laughs or cheap drama. The game opens like all good zombie stories should - with only a cursory nod to an actual origin for the zombies and then BAM right into the action. Right out of the gate they're using scenery and characters to enhance the story. There's a moment where Sarah is standing in a bedroom listening to a newscast and, well, what's going on in the TV is going on off in the distance out the window. It's incredibly effective immersion. I would've liked more in-game conversation instead of cut-scenes, but that's a personal preference; I don't feel the cut-scenes were overdone, I just like to be given info dumps in-game rather than be taken out of the game for a few minutes to watch a mini-movie.
There's a story arc in the game that I think needs to be mentioned here in potentially spoilery ways.
The arc involves one of the female characters getting into trouble and, when it started, I rolled my eyes because it really looked like it was going to end in an implied rape scene.
Emasculation is a common part of male hero story arcs and inexperienced male writers, when writing motivating tragedy for a female character, invariably equate rape with emasculation. It's not just wrong, it's lazy.
But I have to give props to the writers here because you quickly learn that rape isn't the threat in this scene at all. The horror that is actually on the table is much, much worse. It was really well done and a refreshing change. The fact that the character not only gets herself out of trouble, but also reacts to the whole situation in an incredible believable way is also worth noting.
I've read other comments where people believe rape was implication, but I don't buy it. David's "little pieces" comment makes it clear what his intentions are.
Ok, off my soap box and moving on.
Character movement is brilliant. Not only do the characters move in realistic ways in different situations, but different characters have different body language. And during combat, targets react in believable ways - there's no shitty ragdoll collision physics here. People grab shoulders where they've been shot, double over in pain when punched in the gut, and swat at their clothing in panic when lit on fire. Which brings me to
The weapons. There's quite an assortment of weapons in The Last of Us, more than most games, less than Borderlands. Each of the weapons feels different when you use it. There's a different amount and type of recoil on the different firearms, each of the melee weapons moves at a different speed and has a different tactile feel, and each of the explosives you use serve different purposes. It's an incredible level of detail that most games simply aren't willing to work for and really makes a difference.
So, now that I've covered how great the game is, let me bitch about a few shortcomings.
Cheap tension, cheap laughs aren't used often in the game, but when they are they break the immersion I mentioned earlier. There's one character in the game who turns out to be gay. You learn this by finding his former partner. The scene that follows is actually really touching, and makes the character really human. It's really well done. Except that immediately after that are a handful of "LOL FAG!" jokes that are just mean spirited and really detract from the emotional impact of the previous scene.
And there's another bit later in the game involving a pair of brothers you team up with temporarily. The story takes a dark turn there that could have been really powerful if given a moment to breath. But instead of playing it for any kind of drama, the ending to that arc is sudden, jerky and clumsy. Again, they could have had a real heartbreaking moment, but the way it was played for shock and surprise instead of drama left you caring little about the characters involved and their fates.
Walking is a huge part of the game. As I said earlier, the game is really pretty, and you spend a lot of time exploring the levels and soaking in the amazing level of detail. Most of the time, being forced to walk works well for atmosphere - such as when you're making your way through a partially collapsed office building or when you're exploring the remains of suburbia with Bill. Other times, however, it's just boring and tedious. There's a scene with a flooded subway tunnel that almost made me put the game down. And this brings me to
Time tavel plays a major part in the game. I'm not talking about sci-fi devices that move you around, I'm talking about "three months later ..." kind of time travel, where the story leaps ahead rather than make you play through all the time in between. It's nice, but the only purpose it serves is to adjust the scenery - the characters never change. There's one transition that covers a couple months, but you come out the other side with exactly the same gear you had before. There's another transition where the weather changes drastically, but conversation about events leads you to believe you've only skipped a week or two at the most.
Repetitive puzzles are an issue in this game because there are only three puzzle formats in the entire game - finding a pallet to get Ellie across some water, finding a ladder to get up to another level of a building, and finding a plank to cross between two ledges. After the third Ellie-on-the-water puzzle I was groaning; after the fourth even Ellie was complaining (that's no lie, she makes a crack about having to do it yet again. If your characters are complaining about the repetitive nature of your puzzles, you should probably reconsider repeating them so much). The second-to-last scene mashes all three into one painful swim/push/climb slog.
Wonky AI is no bigger a problem here than in any other game, but it is here. Naughty Dog has produced some fine AI work for this game, so it's painful to say that there were a few issues that broke some of the combat. At one point, a soldier shone his flashlight toward me and I crouched under it; although I was right in front of him, he couldn't see me because I wasn't in his flashlight beam. I walked up to him but couldn't sneak attack him from the front, I had to crawl around behind him to finish him off. Another instance of weird AI involved a gang of thugs in a giant hotel set. One of the thugs, the last on the floor, saw me just before I killed him and he raised the alarm. Suddenly every thug in the entire hotel knew exactly where I was and was prepared for me when I got close. But the AI issues were nothing compared to the way
Strategic planning is punished in the game. You basically have two options for fighting bad guys in the game - sneak around and kill them one-by-one, or charge in headlong and guns-a-blazing. If you take any other tactic, the game punishes you. For example, there's a gang hiding out in a book store in one area. I found a fire escape on the side of the building that provided perfect cover and a great view for picking off the gang members one-by-one with my rifle. Unfortunately for me, gang members simply spawned endlessly until I moved on to the next area of the map. Strategic, yes, but not the strategy they wanted so it didn't work.
There's another scene with a generator room and a covered walkway that's a stand-and-fight situation. I opted to fall back onto the covered walkway to limit the zombies' movements, only to discover that they continued to drop down from the ceiling wherever I happened to be. Which leads me to my last complaint, the
Pokevolving monsters. If a game has a monster, you can put safe money down that there will be a tougher bigger brother to that monster later in the game. Maybe even more than one level. Last of Us does a really good job of providing a wide variety of opponent (the tank was a nice touch), but it does fall into the trap of "here's a monster - oh no, now here comes a bigger version". It's silly, but at least they didn't make mutated dogs. It's always a sign of a shitty zombie game when there are mutated dogs.
Again, none of the issues noted above are specific to The Last of Us. And none of them were game breakers. The fact that Naughty Dog did a better job of dealing with these issues than most games is certainly noteworthy, but those issues are present.
In all, The Last of Us is an enjoyable game that really made me look forward to what designers might be capable of in the future. I wouldn't feel bad about recommending it because its shortcomings are no greater than any other game of this generation.