The Last of Us review: Me, you, and the infected

Who would you trust with your life in a zombie apocalypse? Think carefully about the answer, because it's probably the most important question you'll face if such an event ever occurs. Oh sure, there are questions of pure survival: how to avoid getting bitten, how to make sure you have enough food and medicine, how to protect what you have. But deciding who to trust is by far the biggest question of all. And it's a question that The Last of Us is really, at its core, all about.

Joel trusts Ellie, Ellie trusts Joel, and that basic relationship between those protagonists defines the game. But it doesn't start out that way. At first Ellie is just cargo, yet another smuggling job for Joel to take on to earn those basic resources that are increasingly hard to satisfy 20 years after a zombie infection has decimated the world's population. It's not an extremely natural pairing, either: he's a gruff, old, tough-as-nails survivor who absolutely refuses to deal with the obvious trauma of a loss he suffered decades earlier. She's a remarkably resilient, bright, self-reliant 14-year-old who has never known a world that wasn't defined by the response to an overwhelming zombie threat.

But they stick to each other because there really isn't much else to stick to. While the zombies are the extant threat in the world of The Last of Us, the way the humans have responded to that threat really defines the bulk of this world. The major cities have been turned into authoritarian quarantine zones where the military shoots on sight for an infraction as small as being out past curfew. The areas outside those zones are even worse, characterized by rubble-lined streets and buildings, roving packs of bandits serving as the de facto authority figures, and the ever-present threat of the infected. Underscoring it all are the Fireflies, a shadowy and elusive revolutionary group trying to restore America to the rule of law that existed before the outbreak. This is the group that Ellie and Joel are both desperately trying to find.

Joel and Ellie occasionally have to rely on other allies, but not nearly as much as they rely on each other.

As they criss-cross the country, struggling together to just survive, Joel becomes just as charmed by the rambunctious Ellie as anyone who plays the game will. Like any 14-year-old worth knowing, she is at turns playful, reflective, tough, and mature beyond her years. One moment she's cursing out an enemy as she bashes in his head with a brick, the next she's admitting to a fascination with garden gnomes (but not garden fairies—they're creepy). She's just as likely to make a sarcastic crack about a new plan as she is to reflect on the role of the soul in a zombie-infested world.

But Ellie is also entirely a product of a world that's totally foreign to the one we know. She struggles to comprehend the concept of people going to college to "figure out what they want to do with their lives," because basic survival is all anyone can really want to do after the outbreak. She marvels at the vapid problems she reads about in discarded diaries ("Is this really all they had to complain about?") and can't imagine what it was like to ride a working motorcycle.

Simply being around someone as full of life as Ellie slowly but surely has an effect on Joel's hard exterior. He begins to warm to her in an almost fatherly way, patiently explaining how the world used to work, from football to coffee shops. He protects her in a way that shows she's more to him than just smuggled cargo. The shift can be as subtle as a change in Joel's tone of voice toward Ellie as the game continues. This evolution comes through in small animations—a single half-shrugged shoulder or upturned mouth corner—that can do the work of hundreds of pages of dialogue.

The tender relationship Joel and Ellie share is in stark contrast to the brutal violence both of them have to deal out in order to survive. Without giving too much away about how the story develops (I won't even hint at what happens in the brave and thought-provoking conclusion), there's a strain of amorality running through Joel and Ellie's quest. This isn't a game for people looking for the kind of escapism where they get to play as the unquestionably good guy taking down the cackling bad guys. This also isn't the kind of game where you even get to revel in consciously immoral decisions, picking a "dark path" just to enjoy being the "anti-hero."

Instead, the story plays out as it must given its characters and the situations they're put in. Naughty Dog is telling a tightly scripted, almost entirely linear story here. Keeping that story true to its characters sometimes means the game forces you into situations and decisions you might have preferred to handle in other ways. That's not to say the narrative doesn't benefit from the feeling of control and interactivity it gives you in plenty of important scenes. It's just that the game sacrifices true player freedom in exchange for a carefully controlled narrative that is true to its world.

Humanity in an inhuman world

The animation really makes you feel every hit.

In short, the characters in The Last of Us are human, a feeling that even carries over to the gameplay. Yes, it's still a third-person action game, which means you'll occasionally have to take out an entire room full of heavily armed antagonists who have no right being overwhelmed by an invading force of two. But the game does a good job of making Joel and Ellie seem like vulnerable mortals rather than the overpowered, nigh-unkillable gun nuts that often characterize these kinds of games.

Part of this feeling comes from the lack of basic resources like ammo and health packs, which forces you to scrounge through every nook and cranny for raw materials you can craft into usable items. Part of it comes from the way Joel and Ellie will get violently knocked back by a hail of gunfire or a brutal melee weapon rather than resolutely taking the hits with nothing to show for it but a red splotch in the corner of their vision and a moment of automatic health recharge behind cover. Part of it comes from the incredibly detailed animations and grunts that show the pair struggling to climb up high ledges or lift and push heavy objects. Part of it is the grisly death scenes. Usually, Joel or Ellie is shown close-up, screaming in pain and horror before a brutal cut to black (these have the added effect of making death seem like a much worse penalty than it is in pure gameplay terms).

The only real nod to any extra-human powers (besides the ability to patch up several bullet wounds with nothing more than a set of bandages) is Joel's ability to "listen closely" to his surroundings. In gameplay terms, this means you can see the outlines of enemies and allies even through solid barriers, a necessary gameplay nod that makes stealth tactics a functional possibility. Even this minor ability comes at a cost, though, as using it makes Joel extremely slow and more vulnerable to being spotted from a blind side.

While stealth is almost always the preferred (if more difficult) way to get through any situation given the scarce resources, this is one of the rare stealth-action games where both sneaking around and going in guns blazing are equally viable options. Most encounters in my playthrough ended up as something of a mix, starting out with stealthy takedowns of a few enemies before being spotted and forced to bring out the heavy artillery. Being stealthy gets slightly less important as the game goes on and you get access to new weapons that can make short work of what used to be punishingly tough enemies (the flamethrower is a particularly great option). Still, the lack of ammunition and the risk of getting killed by just a few stray bullets or zombie bites makes running away from a battle a perfectly viable strategy as well.

This is going to get bad very quickly.

While there are a limited number of distinct zombie types in the game, their positioning and combinations make each encounter feel fairly fresh. Runners are easy enough on their own, charging in a blind rage as soon as they see you, but in a group they can quickly overwhelm you and limit your movement. This is especially bad if there's a more resilient Clicker nearby that can shamble over to your trapped position and kill you with a single bite to the neck. The tank-like bloaters and their projectile sacks of exploding spores are definitely the most annoying enemies, but they can be handled pretty quickly if you're not afraid to break out buildables like nail bombs or Molotov cocktails.

Surprisingly, conflicts with human enemies are actually more common than fights with the infected in The Last of Us. The AI of these antagonists alternates between being incredibly realistic and incredibly stupid, often in the very same fight. One moment a unarmed thug is diving behind a barricade as he sees you pulling a weapon on him, cautiously trying to flank you as he defends his own well-being. The next moment, a heavily armed soldier fires at your position and then immediately forgets that very position and asks his partners to spread out and search the premises.

For a game that's essentially one big escort mission, Ellie is actually a big help in combat rather than a frustrating chore that you have to protect. Sure, she does occasionally need to be saved when one of the infected manages to get her in a grapple, but she make up for it by providing actual crossfire (both from guns and hurled bricks) and crucial support when you need it. It never gets old seeing Ellie smash a brick into the face of an enemy who has Joel in a chokehold, often with a tension-breaking cry of "limpdick motherfucker!" for good measure.

Beauty amid terror

It's not all zombies and horror. Sometimes it's a beautifully decayed post-apocalyptic vista.

That relief of tension is important because The Last of Us can be a nerve-wracking game to play. The game has a tendency to break out new encounters just when you're feeling the most safe, which led me to stalk through a number of perfectly safe and empty rooms just in case there was someone or something lurking behind the corner. This ever-present tension is only heightened by the game's almost complete lack of breaks in the form of loading screeens—after taking a minute or two to start up after you hit the power button, the game never once pauses explicitly to bring up the next area from the disc. Even restarting after death is incredibly quick and painless.

But that doesn't mean the game is afraid to lower the throttle and ease up on the conflict. On the contrary, the long, conflict-free stretches where Joel and Ellie get to explore and revel in the loneliness and beautiful decay of the post-outbreak world are some of the most satisfying in the game. This isn't because of the platforming puzzles (which are for the most part extremely basic) but because of some of the best environmental design I've ever seen in a virtual world. Everything from a broken down highway overpass crawling with kudzu to an abandoned, garbage-strewn apartment complex just screams with age and neglect without relying on repetitive set pieces.

Each environment is littered with incidental touches, both big and small, that help flesh out the story of the post-outbreak world much more effectively than lengthy exposition. Something as simple as a room strewn with music posters or a dusty classroom in an abandoned "zombie-proof" bunker or a bit of graffiti asking where the promised food is tell you all you need to know about what these places were like before you got there. The game actively encourages you to explore every bit of these environments too, hiding those scarce resources in out-of-the-way places.

The only problem with the rich environment design is that it can be extremely frustrating to figure out exactly where the game wants you to go at times, despite the extremely linear nature of the gameplay. I often spent long periods running around in circles, examining every nook and cranny before I found the hidden spot where I could crawl through to the next set piece. Not that getting lost in these environments is exactly a trial (and it's somewhat fitting that a ruined world would be difficult to navigate), but it was by far the most frustrating part of a game that did so many things perfectly (or near-perfectly).