As someone with no prior experience with this famed franchise, I’m taking on the 2022 remake of The Last of Us Part I from a perspective of blissful unawareness: the sum of what I knew about this game prior to booting it up on my PS5 amounts to ‘a post-apocalyptic world where a man and a girl take on mushroom zombies.’ I know it is critically-acclaimed and frequently counted on all-time lists of the most well-regarded games, both horror-inclined and otherwise, but I’ve hardly seen so much as a screenshot.

Earth Died Screaming

The Last of Us Part I lays out its story with authoritative poise, following one of the main characters, Joel Miller, through a brief and impactful 2013 prologue detailing the collapse of the old world at the hands of a mutated cordyceps fungus, which turns people into violent, cannibalistic monsters who grow progressively more monstrous the longer they are infected. In one of the best opening sequences I’ve seen in a video game, The Last of Us Part I abruptly jumps forward twenty-years, where the rawhide protagonist is now operating as a smuggler inside the quarantine zone that was once part of Boston. The world is a devastated no-man’s-land populated by raiders and pockmarked by FEDRA (presumably the jackbooted successors of the federal government) strongholds, where most of the survivors eke out a grim, hard-knock existence under the fascistic eye of their overseers.

Chasing the next payday, Joel and his partner, Tess, agree to smuggle a thirteen-year-old girl named Ellie to the Massachusetts State House, where a revolutionary group called the Fireflies are waiting for her. Shortly thereafter, Joel and Tess learn that Ellie appears to be immune to the cordyceps fungus that has devastated humanity, and their short smuggling run turns into a cross-country saga to deliver Ellie to a Firefly stronghold where synthesizing a vaccine may be possible.

It's called luck, and it is gonna run out.

The Last of Us Part I is wonderfully unflinching in the way it looks at the remnants of humanity. In both the raiders and government remnants we see the worst elements of our species, from fascism, to cowardice, to savagery, creating a believable and considered portrait of the remnants of American society. Yet there are flashes of light, patches of green, moments of beauty that echo across the hardscrabble world and impart that things aren’t quite so dire; even if we’re all sliding toward a chasm, there are handholds to find.

The creators of this title had a phenomenal understanding of story construction, pushing Joel and Ellie through a series of difficult setpieces while always keeping in mind that these are two highly-traumatized individuals who may act in less than heroic ways given the circumstances. Joel is a particularly hard case, as he’s capable of sudden brutality and carries a distinctly black-and-white view of situations. Later, the player will learn a bit about the reasons for this, as well as what it has cost Joel, but the most important element from an evaluative perspective is that it all comes across as terribly and believably human. Joel and Ellie feel more like real people than 99% of video game characters, and this element is a huge part of what makes the game so impactful.

I really shot the hell out of that guy, huh?

I write a lot about how video games are capable of a level of aestheticism or cultural resonance that readily matches the best moments in novels and film, and The Last of Us Part 1 really embodies this idea. The entire game is acutely cinematic, with all the elements of gameplay and worldbuilding ultimately bending toward a cohesive center that is the narrative. Few other games create this level of cohesive immersion, and it’s very much like Naughty Dog left nothing to chance when designing the stealth and combat systems that would ultimately support this very adept instance of storytelling.

To start with the good, The Last of Us Part I makes some of the best use of controllers I’ve encountered. The idea of requiring players to push lightly on the movement stick in order to move slowly and quietly across a space creates a great deal of organic tension, as the player’s thumb can slip as readily as Joel’s foot in the actual scenario, and we get a real sense of tactile communication in each instance where you need to be quiet. Similarly, Joel is unable to craft new materials when standing in waist-deep water, because logically he would need more than his hands alone to create the necessary stabilization to construct an improvised weapon or tool. Little touches go a long way with immersion.

Similarly, the encounter design was frequently genius, (mostly) absent of scripted sequences and always putting the player on the defensive. Many survival-themed games try to insist that engaging enemies should be a last resort, but The Last of US Part I really lives that, and I found many sequences in the game to be completely avoidable, much to my relief. Joel also can’t carry a tremendous amount of ammunition or tools, so avoiding combat is almost always the most economical path forward.

Movement also felt weighty and consequential, shaking the screen and sending haptic vibrations back through the controller at appropriate moments when the tension was high. I was also impressed by the tremendous amount of detail and variation in the models of the main character, as Joel and Ellie would take on blood and mud stains in appropriate places after being wounded or experiencing a fall. As I said before, all of the little elements and systems work to support the aesthetics and vibe of the narrative, and very few games are so comprehensive in their capacity for this.

Most of the gameplay elements worked brilliantly to make the mechanics of ruined-world survival feel real without being overly arduous or intrusive. Little touches that make actions seem a touch more practical or realistic add an appeal and increase the immersion. Initially, I was frustrated with how cumbersome weapon switching was, but making an extra gun holster replaced this process with a single button press. Little elements like this really work to keep the player close to the story and invested in the action, and create a bit of intrigue and appreciation for the more mundane elements of game design which are often only intended to be functional.

The (slow) Killing of A(n) Obnoxious Deer

But it isn’t all great, as some of the gameplay elements are woefully short of the game’s general quality, and while they do feel like intentional choices that serve the central narrative, they also created significant frustration at times. Aiming a gun always felt exceptionally clunky, and even with the aim speed cranked to one-hundred, I felt like it was almost impossible to hit an enemy closing in on me at speed. There’s something that feels miscalibrated between the amount the cursor moves, when it begins to move, and how readily it stops when the joystick is released. Other people have noticed it, and this person on Reddit seems to have a grasp mathematical/mechanical reasons behind aiming being so frustrating.

It’s especially irritating when Joel squares off against other shooters, as the human enemies in TLOUP1 have solid aim and when they do hit you, Joel staggers and loses his poise completely. Combine this with the clunky and indelicate joystick aiming, and you have a scenario that can create regular tedium.

That being said, I think this is a bit intentional, and I can readily imagine arguments in defense of the gunplay controls as they exist. Aiming and firing a firearm accurately is much more difficult than the average gamer probably imagines, and Joel and Ellie are malnourished people under tremendous amounts of stress. Shooting a gun with the controller feels stiff and clunky, but it also fits the circumstances, and because TLOUP1 is so intent on practical realism in other areas, I can see the decision being intentional. More importantly, I never felt the crappy gunplay controls made the game too hard, which tells me this was a challenge Naughty Dog were aware of and elected to stick with.

The only other real criticism I can level is that the design of the encounters is rather limited for a game that runs roughly sixteen hours. There are three types of monstrous enemies (which I acknowledge are significantly different) and humans which use a variety of firearms and melee weapons against you. That’s really it. The arenas change but the encounters really don’t, and that’s an unavoidable disappointment in what is otherwise an excellent title.

Reflection on legacy

Coming away from The Last of Us Part I, I think the legendary status of the title is wholeheartedly deserved; this game made me fall in love with the characters and care about the story they were moving through at a level that I have rarely experienced, and it did that despite my awareness of the game’s monumental status. It’s one thing to be pleasantly surprised, quite another to meet high expectations out of the gate.

I’ve since seen the HBO adaptation, and it’s a real testament to the writing and narrative design of the game that so many of the scenes and memorable lines have made the jump to that high-quality adaptation, and so much of what it does well is directly owed to the incredible accomplishment of the game. Seeing shot-by-shot remakes of some of the game’s most heartfelt scenes felt like a triumph, and after so many years of mangled scripts and abysmal reimaginings of video game properties, we finally see a top-quality television recreation that succeeds because it sticks so closely to the source material.

Final Thoughts

The undeniably-aged gameplay keeps The Last of Us Part I remake from being among the best titles around, but there are elements of pacing, immersion, and narrative which are perhaps without peer, and that makes this title a worthwhile visit for any fan of post-apocalyptic survival horror.

Part of me feels remorse for penalizing a title that does so many critical things best-in-class, as the vibe and immersion are as good as anything out there, but I also noted during my gameplay that it would be disingenuous to shy away from acknowledging the mechanical limits, which are sometimes egregious. While The Last of Us Part I did seriously frustrate me at moments, it never failed to win me back in short order, and the strengths of this title make it one of the best games of its era.

Verdict: 9.1

Strengths:

Best-in-class art direction, worldcraft, and storytelling, putting these elements among the best that have been realized in video games
Excellent approach to realism, using little flourishes to provide immersion without adding tedium
Compelling, complex narrative that does an exceptional job of creating character that are hopelessly human

Weaknesses

Gunplay, particularly against human enemies, can be frustrating
Gameplay is a bit limited for 2024, and the game runs out of new tricks fairly early in its runtime

You can purchase The Last of Us Part 1 Remake on PlayStation 5 or Steam.

Watch this space for my forthcoming review of The Last of Us Part 2, which should be out in a few weeks.

You may also like: Bioshock series, Uncharted series

Game Review: The Last of Us Part 1 Remake (2022)