The Last of Us was better than expected

In anticipation of The Last of Us show that’s premiering soon on HBO, I finally broke down and played the game. That is, not the recent PS5 remaster — I played the PS4 version. Not blowing $70 on a remaster of a relatively new game.

I’ve actually had the PS4 for years, and it has been sitting on the shelf staring at me since at least 2016; my backlog of games to play is a minor embarrassment.

It was a gift, I think. The whole “it’s a TV show dressed up as a game” genre doesn’t generally appeal to me. I feel that survival horror has also worn thin. But I have been looking forward to the TV show, so I dutifully played the game in advance.

It was good. By good, I mean better than I was expecting. There was an actual semblance of gameplay, which was relieving. It was also just as much a stealth game as it was a survival horror experience. Like Resident Evil and its ilk, there is constant bullet shortage — you will perpetually be almost out of ammo. But, unlike those other games, you can avoid a lot of battles by sneaking around enemies.

I ended up not doing that, and went in guns a-blazing. I am generally terrible at third person shooters, but I am excellent at aiming. Rather than spend the extra time sneaking around, I just crouched behind stuff and launched Molotov cocktails, taking out two to three enemies at a time.

This gets me to the part of the game I enjoyed: the concept of choice. It is my experience that Sony-likes tend to be pretty linear. Ultimately, the “great outdoors” and abandoned cities scenarios mask linearity, but at least the paths to objectives feel pretty open.

The story? It’s pretty solid. The ending was lame, though, and I expect that it copped to the inevitable sequel. I support I will play that sequel too, but there’s no hurry. I have a whole season of the show before I have to worry about that.

Now that I’ve become a little more open to new gaming experiences, maybe I’ll unwrap Red Dead Redemption II after I finish Nier Automata.

On a side note, the show’s casting of Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal are interesting choices. After playing the game, I see it as more of a Justin Theroux and Juno-era Ellen Page thing.

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