Game review: The Last of Us Remastered for PS4

So…got my PS4 earlier than I’d planned. I’d said to hubby that my only worry about buying it in January was that the bundle with The Last of Us Remastered might sell out while I was waiting, and he said he’d front me the funds until my checks came in. So I picked it up on Saturday and got into the game after waiting an hour on updates and downloads. (Not all of that was system updates. I was also downloading all the cross-buy games that I’d purchased on my PS Vita.)

Before I get into my review, I should say that I’ve already seen The Last of Us played on PS3. Back when Naughty Dog was saying there would be no PS4 edition, I decided that since I was never getting a PS3, I might as well watch the game on a YouTube video. The version I saw was HD resolution, and it was just a hair over 6 hours long, skipping some of the artifacts and letters to just get the main story out of the way. I really liked the story and the great facial animation that helped create very subtle emotions in just the shape of the eyes, a slight furrowing of the brow, or little up or downward turns of the corners of the mouth. In fact, Naughty Dog’s facial animation has set the bar so high for me that it’s ruined games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim precisely because the characters have the same bland expression regardless of what their voice acting is saying.

But so anyway, I’ve seen the game played, and the story was spoiled in advance for me. What I was really doing with this game was playing it to see if it was fun or a painful slog. And because I’m an utter wuss, I cranked that difficulty setting down to easy for my first time playing through. Which is not to say it was easy, or that I didn’t die about a billion times. Sometimes I didn’t die, but I’d fucked up so badly that I’d restart the encounter to try being less of a dumb ass.

This was my first game playing with a PS4 controller, and I was worried that having been mostly used to the Xbox, I might have problems with a different layout. But I actually like the placement of the left and right sticks, and the D-pad is much better on the PS4 controller. Having said that, the most frequent cause of my dying or restarting had to do with me hitting the wrong button. Instead of grabbing an enemy in a choke hold, I’d punch them in the back of the head and bring down a whole army on my dumb ass. But I fully admit that’s my fault and the controls were not to blame.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the game itself. From the opening tutorial, I felt emotionally invested in Joel despite him being a bit of an asshole. He’s had to make moral compromises to survive twenty years after the first outbreak of the fungus that’s turning people into “clickers,” which are basically zombies under another name. They pretty much act like your standard zombies, although they’re a bit faster or jerkier in movement. Joel and his partner Tess are initially out to retrieve some guns stolen by another smuggler, and he’s sold them off to a group of resistance fighters, the fireflies. They’re approached by the leader of the fireflies, Marlene, who wants them to escort a young girl, Ellie, to another base, at which point, she will give them all their guns and a few extras for their trouble. Things don’t go as planned, and Joel ends up having to take Ellie all the way across the country twice before finally finding the fireflies. For roughly 75% of the game, Joel regards Ellie more as an obligation to Tess, and he’s gruff and unwilling to form an attachment to her. But near the end, she becomes his reason to keep fighting, and with the possibility of losing her forever, he makes some truly monstrous choices that felt both depressing and realistic at the same time.

I can see playing this game through again on the harder levels, and I don’t mind that the game is mostly linear tunnels. I think a lot of my enjoyment comes from the fact that after dying, enemy patrols change enough that I couldn’t predict where they would be. This is true whether I was facing human bandits or the clickers and runners. I might run to what I thought was a safe spot to plan out my route, only to discover that the enemy had moved to that safe spot. That unpredictability helps keep the game fresh even after playing the same sections over and over.

I like the crafting system because it allows me to create simple items that were mostly believable, and I liked how at times, all the items I needed were scarce and hard to come by even in Easy mode. I’d get all my weapons and supplies up to a full inventory, only to run into a tough patch that left me desperate to scavenge for everything all over again.

Finding bullets in particular was damned hard, and knowing that, I often worked to kill enemies using melee options rather than waste my weapons. My hoarding tendencies were strongest with my Molotov cocktails, which ended up being greatly helpful when I ran into the larger infected bloaters. Instead of wasting ammo trying to keep those bad boys at bay, I just burned them up. And because I never relied on my nail bombs, I had those in reserve to deal with the human armies at key points in the game. Instead of wasting bullets on armored opponents, I’d chuck a bomb up the hall and take out three and four enemies at a time. This was greatly satisfying when it worked out according to plan.

I can’t really say I noticed the improved graphics from this version to the PS3 edition. But I’m no graphics expert, and the game on the last-gen system was already really pretty. I only have a minor nitpick that certain levels look way too clean for being abandoned for 20 years. Certainly, there are some levels that look appropriately decayed, but quite a few look like they’d only been empty for one or two years, not twenty.

And while I’m nitpicking, there were occasional faux pas in the technical aspects, like Joel swimming underwater with his gas mask on. That filter’s not going to work after being waterlogged. There’s also the presence of a military turret-mounted machine gun that should have blown holes in thin metal garage bay doors, and didn’t even dent the surface. And lastly, while the first level has a mirror that reflects its surroundings, the other mirrors throughout the game are all blurry muck that don’t actually reflect anything.

These are minor complaints, though, and I really feel grateful to Naughty Dog for porting the game to the PS4. I like the story, the graphics, the sounds effects and the sparing use of background music. I LOVE the facial animations and their power to give a scene more emotional umpf. I like the controls, the game play, and the randomness of the enemy patrols. This game truly deserves all the hype and reward its received.

So I’m giving The Last of Us Remastered 5 stars. If you haven’t played it yet, you really should grab a copy and give it a spin. It’s easily one of the best stories in a game I’ve ever seen, and y’all know how picky I am about writing. So if I’m feeling all gushy and full of praise, you know that doesn’t come easy. Give it a shot. I think you’ll love it too.