The nutshell overview of The Last of Us (TLOU) is that it takes place twenty years after a pandemic swept across the US. Many died, a handful survived, and many others were infected and have become cannibalistic, fast-moving zombies. There are Quarantine Zones spread across the US that act as the last remnants of civilization. Joel, a tough as nails smuggler within one of these Zones, is asked by a dying friend to look after Ellie, an agile, foul-mouthed fourteen year old. Joel’s mission is to watch over her and get her to another Zone. What may sound simple enough turns out to be anything but, as the duo treks across the US, fighting off the infected and savage groups of survivors along the way.
The Last of Us isn’t just an action game, though. Players often have the ability to use the environment and the ability to sneak around to get by potential confrontations with stealth. Things like smoke grenades, bottles and bricks, and your unique Listen ability, along with genre staples like being able to crouch behind objects and sneak up on foes for a silent kill, are all tactics at your disposal. I’ve attached a picture of the Listen mechanic, and it’s pretty cool and certainly more sensible than some kind of HUD radar. The distance that you can Listen, and thus detect live beings, is one of several upgradeable attributes.
But sometime stealth is simply not an option. When its time to meet force with force, Joel is usually up to the task, although players shouldn’t be afraid to run away and regroup. This is as much a game about survival as it is anything else. Ammo is very scarce, melee weapons breakdown, there are no instant medkits, and your foes are not only smart, but sometimes savagely aggressive. Certain enemies, known as Clickers I believe, although that may not be the right term, will insta-kill you if they get too close. That’s happened to me quite a few times in two separate areas of the Lincoln stage, or scene. More specifics on that shortly, but regarding Joel’s offensive capabilities, they’re quite good. As a last resort, you can punch your way through some enemies, or if you have an upgraded melee weapon you can drop most foes with a single strike. Joel is able to carry long guns or weapons and pistols too. The demo features a bow and arrow, pump shotgun, and hunting rifle, as well as a revolver and semi-automatic pistol. Bricks and bottles can be used to distract or stun foes, and if you find the materials for it in Lincoln, you can make a Molotov cocktail as well.
Joel and Ellie are able to climb around pretty well, too. Ok, so maybe not as smooth and skillfully as one Nathan Drake, but Joel’s got some years on Nathan so let’s give him a break. Climbing around is as simple as finding an interactive surface and pressing X. Climbing down is a little less graceful, as there didn’t seem to be any smooth way to do this short of just walking off of the edge. Notably, you cannot dodge roll in TLOU. You can certainly duck to move quietly and stay in cover, but you’re not able to dodge roll, which makes sense given the backpacks on the characters and, well, Joel’s age may have something to do with it too.
So what all is in those backpacks anyway? Well, one of TLOU’s most unique gameplay elements for the genre is Crafting. Joel is able to take several miscellaneous materials, like scissors, tape, alcohol, and make various items, including shivs to stab Clickers (to save you from an insta-kill with the right upgrade) or open doors (to “secret” areas), medkits, and upgrades to melee weapons. You should also keep an eye out for these small pickups that have a gear icon. These are your weapon upgrade points. In the Pittsburgh scene, you come across a table with a lamp. When you interact with it, a screen with your current weapons and a variety of upgrades and their cost is shown. The currency here is gear icons that are out there to be found randomly in the environment.
TLOU demo I played included a gameplay element I really hope gets a lot more attention in the full game. And that element was solving puzzles; for the demo, you really only have one type of puzzle that is used two or three times. This involved just interacting with a wooden beam, or plank, which Joel would pick up. Then, you just have to decide where you want to place it. In the case of the demo, you place it, climbed up to the next level, and then picked it up again so that you could set it down to cover a wide horizontal gap that would have been too far apart to jump. Some puzzles and areas include Ellie, such as working together to get over a locked gate, or through a heavy garage door. One key moment in the Lincoln scene was protecting Ellie while hanging upside down (you were snagged in a trap and then ambushed by a bunch of infected). So expect a lot of teamwork between these two going forward.
Getting back to demo specifics now. The Lincoln scene begins just outside of the town of Lincoln, I presume Lincoln, Nebraska. Joel and Ellie hop into the forest that borders the town. Right away I was quite impressed with what Naughty Dog did with the lighting coming from the sun in the distance. The sunlight is broken up by the trees, creating splotches of light and lots of shadow, very nicely done. Anyway, the walk up to the edge of the town is uneventful other than taking in the impressive forest visuals and finding a couple of items. Soon after you work your way over a fence and you’re in town. Abandoned, wrecked cars, dilapidated buildings, the town looks completely deserted, but somewhere here is Billy, a “friend” of Joel’s that owes him a favor. That favor, Joel hopes, is a car, so that he and Ellie can go see a guy by the name of Tommy in a distant city.
Joel and Ellie encounter a few enemies, climb around a bit, dodge some of Billy’s traps, and eventually meet up with him just as a horde of infected show up. While it might be tempting for action gamers to try and dig in and fight back, this just isn’t that type of game – you have to run and get to a better position. As a whole, this scene demonstrated several of the puzzle and teamwork elements, exploration and crafting, as well as shooting and running. The scene closes with a cutscene that sees Billy reluctantly willing to help out.
The Pittsburgh partial scene is much more action oriented. In a vehicle that gets ambushed by a group of bandit survivors, Joel and Ellie wind up crashing into an old grocery store and are immediately assaulted by several survivors. This is another situation that I found attacking head-on isn’t feasible. You just don’t have enough ammo and there is too much distance to cover to even hope to get to the enemy for a melee encounter before they just gun you down. Thus, stealth and some strategy become the order of the day, and that makes the experience more rewarding and intense. After clearing these jokers out — and this is one area whereby you cannot just sneak away — a few minutes of exploration proceed before the demo ends.
At this point, I’m going to dump my remaining notes here, with some additional thoughts, in bullet-list form. Let’s have a look:
-Cannot close doors back once you open them? – I’m not sure if this is going to be the case in the full game or not, but I was surprised that once you open a door, you can no longer interact with it again to close it. Given that a big part of the gameplay is being sneaky and cautious, it would seem prudent to let players close the doors behind them.
-Ellie’s foul mouth – I was a bit taken aback by the language the fourteen year old character used. I made a note of it, this is more of a “it is what it is” thing, but, yeah.
-No weapon or item drops from enemies? – I don’t think I picked up a single item or weapon, including ammo, from an enemy I killed. I thought this was rather odd. In the Pittsburgh scene, I silently killed one of the enemies that had a gun, and I could have used that ammo, but there was no prompt to interact with the body to search it at all.
–there is a part in the Lincoln scene where you are running with Billy that made it seem to me like you could in fact stand your ground. Turns out I’m rather certain you cannot, and you’re supposed to just keep running. Until you realize that though, you might stubbornly try to survive without knowing the game wasn’t made this way. I’m not sure how many of these type of moments there will be in the full game, but some kind of heads-up to the player could be beneficial. Uncharted, the original, had a part like this too early on when you and Sully found the sub (and Sully got captured).
-There’s a part in Lincoln where you find a ladder. When I found it, I figured I was probably going to need to use it pretty much in that same immediate area, but I also thought that maybe I could take it elsewhere to reach a new area. What I found disappointing was that when I had the ladder in hand, the area was suddenly blocked off with invisible walls. I couldn’t take the ladder out of that area.
-The most common way to die in Lincoln is by one of those Clickers running up to you and biting your neck. A fast QTE — more interactive than the mash a single button type that the game uses in other parts — would have been welcomed as opposed to just instant death and a checkpoint reload. Later on I think you do get the ability to fight back, but not in this demo.
-Early in Lincoln, I swung my melee weapon at a fence and a rock, and nothing happened. No sound, no animations, it’s as though they weren’t even there. I’m not sure if this is done to help the player from accidentally reducing the duration to their weapon, but either way it doesn’t seem quite right.
-The flashlight, mounted on one of your shoulder straps of your backpack, turns on and off by pressing R3. There is no animation at this time that shows Joel actually turning it on and off.
-Maybe I missed it, but a way to holster your weapon or item would be nice. As is, you have to bring up your inventory by pressing Select, and then exit out of it to free up Joel’s hands. This is another cosmetic and realism gripe, nothing major, but noteworthy nonetheless.
-Reload by pressing shoot (R1) when not holding down L1 (aiming) is a reload system I hadn’t seen before, but find interesting.
-I like how fallen enemies stay down instead of disappearing, and the violence, both in what you witness in the world and what you’re a part of, is very nicely done.
That list of notes may seem largely negative, but most of those points are pretty minor. By far, the good overwhelms the bad here. I came away from this demo very impressed, but not surprised that I was impressed. Naughty Dog has been an excellent developer since they began in the 90s. TLOU is shaping up to be another solid addition to their portfolio.
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