Reviews// The Last of Us

Crafting, as you may have gathered, is crucial. You'll need to constantly scavenge for bits and pieces that can be assembled into different sorts of weapons or first aid kits.

For some players this might seem a little daunting, but while there are decisions to be made about what you'll use your stuff for, it's more straightforward than, say, Far Cry 3's system.

Similarly, you can use generic nuts and bolts to upgrade your weapons in a way that's much like a skills tree in an RPG or hack 'n' slash beat-'em-up. Mercifully, Naughty Dog has stopped short of making you hunt for things like food, clothes and batteries. It's a smart move that stops the game from being dominated by a constant, urgent need to find new supplies.

Encounters with humans are usually a little closer to the kind of gunplay you're used to from Naughty Dog. As I noted earlier, ammo is scarce but it's not so scarce that you can't afford to occasionally blow someone's head off with a shotgun. Or fill their chest cavity with handgun bullets. Or quietly take them out with a bow.

You get the picture, right? Again, there's a range of ways to approach these situations. What the relative resource scarcity means is that every shot has to count; the tension is ratcheted right up.

Happily, there's no cover 'system' here. You crouch, and if you happen to be crouching behind cover, then... you're behind cover. If you're crouching and you want to take a shot, then when you take aim (using the left bumper) you'll rise up to aim over anything that happens to be in your way. It's well implemented and definitely preferable to a cover 'system' that has you constantly sticking to things you don't want to be stuck to.

That's not to say the game's design is faultless. Occasionally hitting X won't enable you to vault over some obstacle as it should; in a fight or flight situation that can be punishing. Similarly, switching to one of your exotic, hand-crafted weapons is a little cumbersome to the point where you need to have switched it in before a confrontation begins. Otherwise, you may be killed while trying to select it. That feels overly harsh.

Also (and writing this feels like asking someone to cut off my nose to spite my face) death could result in a higher penalty. Part of the game's shtick is the tension it builds. Expect to get killed off reasonably often – it's part of the experience. Given the difficulty, though, being plonked 30 seconds back in the game feels a little like you're getting off lightly. I'm quibbling here, though.

While the mechanics/gameplay design described in the review so far are great ingredients for a very good game, however, what makes The Last of Us really special is the presentation and narrative glue that holds it all together.

The Last of Us is very well written, acted and visually realised. I mean, really. There's a surprising humanity to the characters that enriches and elevates The Last of Us far beyond most of its genre peers. Joel and Ellie feel real in a way that no other game characters I've come across do. There's a real sadness to Joel, while Ellie's cocktail of bravado and vulnerability feels very true. Watching their relationship evolve is a real delight and it makes the rest of the game resonate in a way that's beyond the sum of its gameplay mechanics.