Review: The Last of Us

Now, I know the words "cinematic" and "perfect" and "visceral" get thrown around a lot when describing AAA Games, and especially this one. I'm not getting into spoilers; but the last of us is not the "CITIZEN KANE" of gaming. I'd compare The Last of Us to WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE of gaming.
I say WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE; because The Last of Us is so heavy and so beautiful that I never want to play it again.

It's an emotional experience unlike almost anything I've ever felt. The characters are so real, so flawed, so painfully human, that from the game's gut-wrenching opening to it's haunting ending, you truly feel like these are real people. Not ones written on the page or animated.

Troy Baker, who recently starred in Bioshock: Infinite as Booker DeWitt, gives the performance of his career so far; as does Ellen Paige Ashley Johnson who steals the game as Ellie, the young girl you escort across the country. 

The game-play is tight and weighty. The guns pop, the punches connect, and the brutality is a sickening mix of satisfaction and duty- all stemming from an emotional core of the game, which is survival and protection. The "crafting" system does not feeling gimmicky or like it's forcing you to level up, you can go the entire game without doing it; but the upgrades are easy to craft and the item making system is superb. I found myself often in the heat of battle or trying to stay quiet around a group of enemies; trying to thoroughly plan out attacks and decide if I should use my items on a health-kit; or make a cock-tail bomb. To craft a shiv to silently kill my foes; or create a nail-bomb to take them out at once.

The environments are jaw-dropping and beautiful, while also haunting and deeply sad in a way you have to experience. More often than once, I'd find myself slowly walking through the world, crushed by the weight and depression of the fact these were once homes and offices, buildings that people worked and had lives in. Suitcases still on the floors, bags packed, rotting corpses hang from cars on the highway, and I just sat there imagining all of this calamity during the evacuations. Never has a world so "empty" and desolate of life felt so very alive and breathing.
An atmosphere so heavy and choking I had to pause the game quite a few times.

The game's only flaws are slightly odd AI at the beginning, and some slight hiccups graphically; and only happened once or twice, mainly when the AI would tell you to "be quiet" around the Clickers, the blind enemy in the game that reply on sound and will kill you instantly, and the characters literally run circles around it trying to get to cover; but if you, the player, do that then the whole swarm decends on you.
Slightly immersion breaking; but only for a minute before you're sucked back in.
These flaws, however, are mere specs of dust on a priceless work of art.

The Last of Us is the PlayStation 3's swan-song, and it is the most beautiful melody I have ever heard.
It is a game that leaves you a hollow shell; and all you can do is think of how bittersweet and gorgeous what you just experienced was.