2013 Year in Review: Game of the Year, The Last of Us

I downloaded The Last of Us one day onto my PS3 on whim when I turned it on to play Injustice: Gods Among Us.  It was an impulse buy.  Boy, am I glad I followed that impulse.

 

Zombies have been big in recent years.  The Walking Dead, Warm Bodies, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, no matter the genre fighting the dead is a popular story. 

The gaming realm has focused most of its zombie smashing energies on providing online-based antics rather than a story driven experience.  Even the classic Resident Evil series is more memorable for its thrilling game play than the convoluted plot lines.  The Last of Us breaks that mold.

Technically, the mindless flesh-consuming villains in The Last of Us aren’t zombies, and that’s part of the beauty of it.  They actually aren’t the primary villains either, also part of the beauty of the best game to come out this year.  A large swath of the global population has been infected with a “zombifying” virus, much like in the Resident Evil series.  Unlike Resident Evil, The Last of Us draws inspiration from a real life cordyceps fungus which effects ants.  Science fiction makes it possible for the virus to take the leap from insect to human, chaos ensues and the game begins.

On a technical level, The Last of Us is fantastic.  It looks amazing.  The voice acting and sound is of the highest caliber.  The weapons system is easy to understand and lends itself well to the survival/horror genre.  The upgrading system encourages multiple playthroughs and world exploring.  The only place where the game disappoints is in the multiplayer game, which had the opportunity to be an immersive, world building system but instead was relegated to a simple CoD style team deathmatch system.  But most players will spend little time on the multiplayer experience, because the story mode is just that good.

**Minor Spoilers** Ahead. (Minor spoilers are spoilers that will only really bother you if you’re a whiney jerk, as opposed to a real spoiler, such as Darth Vader is Luke’s sister in Star Trek.)

The game begins with the outbreak, but the story doesn’t really get going until several years later.  After surviving the initial wave of chaos and making it through the subsequent decades as a smuggler the protagonist of the game, Joel, is enlisted by a questionable ally to transport a young girl across the country.  Joel and the young girl, Ellie, portrayed in stellar performances by Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, embark on there journey through cities that are either under strict martial law or completely lawless.  In turns running from armed soldiers, marauding groups of scavengers, and the always present infected humans, Joel and Ellie make there way from Boston towards their final goal encountering many equally well written characters who either become valued allies or terrifying enemies.

As they near the finish line both struggle with their past choices and what will become of them when they do reach their final destination.  The weight is especially heavy on Joel, who is still struggling with the loss of his own daughter at the outbreak of the virus.

All of their decisions and struggles culminate in what is one the most realistic, subtly shocking, emotional, and fantastic endings ever to find its way into the medium of gaming.

Even without the incredible story, The Last of Us still would have been one of the top games this year.  With the ending, no other game even came close.