The Last of Us 2

In 1980 when the first Pac-Man game was released I doubt they knew at the time that some 40 years later video games would evolve to fully immersive, photo realistic, storytelling masterpieces that would spark any emotion from their player including feelings of love, fear, sadness and more...

Enter 2020's Last Of Us 2 by gaming company Naughty Dog Studios out of Santa Monica, CA. Started as a company just 4 years after Pac Man first hit arcades, Naughty Dog has become the flagship company of the gaming world boasting 17 best of the year awards for this title alone.

If you're unfamiliar with "The Last Of Us" world, it basically follows the stories of people and factions that have arisen after a major outbreak which turned a large percentage of the population into brain dead zombie like creatures the game calls "Infected" (Shouts to 2020 and our very similar pandemic situation).

Unlike in our real life situation however, within The Last Of Us world, players are basically sent into a world where it's either survive or face an extremely brutal death. And not only from the infected - but the largest enemy in the game is mostly the other humans that range from intense. to evil, to straight out psychotic.

Why I think this game is so phenomenal stems from a couple of different in-game experience sources. I'll try and tackle each one part by part and explain why, in this writers opinion this game is truly the pinnicale of what gaming can offer today.

1. STORYTELLING & IMMERSION: For starters this game is straight up terrifying, engaging and incredibly emotional. Since it's release in June of 2020, I've played the nearly 3 hour game probably 7 or 8 times all of the way through. Why you may ask have I done this to myself? It's mostly because I love the characters and story they are able to tell so damn much.

Although the original Last Of Us game (another masterpiece btw) was released in 2013 luckily I hopped on the bandwagon around 2017 so I didnt have to wait for the full five years before the next installation. What Last Of Us does so well in my opinion more than other games and even more than other Naughty Dog titles is create a fully immersive world. You can see the pain in the characters eyes when they walk into a room after a big painful story beat, you can feel one of the characters fear of heights as she traverses some incredibly high up plank you need to walk across, you follow the story as it takes you along various emotions like sadness, joy, pain, loss and most importantly, Naughty Dog does so well in capturing all of it sometimes I forget I'm even playing a game.

One of favorite moments of immersion is when one of the characters, Joel, catches a ray of sunlight through the trees and shields his eyes from the splashes of light. Last of Us 2 is about detail and they truly get pretty much every moment right.

2. SOUND: The sonics of Last Of Us 2 are probably the most important element.

Even after playing so many times, the slow and steady clickkkkk sound of one of the infected that the game calls "clickers" still sends chills down my spine.

There's a shift in the breathing of the character as they switch from walking to full out sprinting, they hold their breath and take restrained inhales and exhales as they sneak along corriders or behind their next enemy, there's moments of silence that are done so perfectly you as the viewer walking along a dilapadated area feel the fear and intensity of the moment and lastly, one of my favorite details is the sound of the weaponry, from the clanking of metal for their gun arsenal to the sound of the pulling and snapping of one of the characters bows as they shoot.

There's a video that explains the sound of Last Of Us 2 really well, I'll go ahead and share that here:

3. GAMEPLAY: The gameplay of Last Of Us 2 ranges from easy to "WE DARE YOU TO SURVIVE FOR 5 FUCKING MINUTES".

Last Of Us 2 is definitely not an easy game, unless you of course want it to be.

Recently Naughty Dog released an update called Grounded Mode which is basically as close to a real life experience as possible. Weapons are much more scarce, the HUD is completely removed and some of the bigger help options in the game such as listening mode are completely stripped making you rely on, pretty much faith, to get through each section. I've watched some people play through the grounded mode version of the game on Twitch and yeah, even though they're good, they're still dying.

What I love most about TLOU2's gameplay though is that it's fun! Sure some parts get repetitive (I watched a youtuber express his utter dislike for the game because of this point) but I think that's kind of what makes a game like this so fun. In the midst of all the absolute chaos, there's moments of calm, giving you the option to bandage yourself or reload between fights, knowing exactly what button to press when something totally messed up is charging full force at you, or giving you the ability to button mash through a deeply emotionally charged scene.

Last Of Us isn't complete button mashing though. I found myself mixing a bit of stealth with full on onslaught terminator style gaming with having to really decide between whether I was gonna try and get by my enemies quietly not to risk setting off the other AI to my position, or just rage in full head of stem. There's even one or two sections in the game where you can get the AI infected and the human enemies to attack each other while you sneak by unscathed.

Ultimately, and to be fair there will definitely be people who don't agree with me, some of them - simply just haters, a smaller percentage of them actually love the game but have some justifiable gripes with it. For me however, I think it's a marvelous feat in the world of gaming that I don't think will be reached for quite some time.

Not only does it look amazing but it really does have replayability, even at the 3 hour mark. I've found myself simply wanting to spend more time with the charactes through their various arcs and storylines and this is mostly because the game spends so much time making them feel as real as possible. I cared about the deaths and stories as if these people were real and I think for the most part that was Naughty Dog's goal, to not only make a game that people could experience as a game but a story that brought characters to life using the medium of gaming to enhance the human experience for all of us and because of this, I think The Last Of Us 2 is the best game ever made.