The Last of Us™ Part I

The saddest part about this game isn't the cutscenes. It's finishing the game and knowing you'll never play it for the first time ever again.

One of the best games ever made!!

A masterpiece 10/10

Real people. Not video game characters. Had me in tears more times that I would like to admit. A master piece.

The Last of Us: Part 1
I already knew a lot about the game before playing it so I already knew what I was getting myself into, but since I hadn't played it myself and now it is on PC I said "finally" and bought it immediately.
So I sat back and waited for the release which was.. shaders fiesta on launch day.. now I have waited some year and thought "alright let's give it a go" and no more bugs or lag or anything for me, everything was fixed and I was hooked and played through the entire game within a few days of basically non-stop playing it.
The story is incredible, possibly one of the best stories out there. I 100% recommend the game, but as of writing this review it is on a 50% sale for 1 more hour so maybe wait for a sale just for that reason, but as a game, value wise, I would say worth at full price.
Graphics
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
Gameplay
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
Audio
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
Audience
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
PC Requirements
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent (low settings)
☑ Fast (max settings)
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
Game Size
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big (79GB)
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
Difficulty
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
Grind
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
Story
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
Game Time
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short(2-20hrs)
☑ Average(20-50hrs)
☐ Long (50-200hrs)
☐ To infinity and beyond
Price
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
Bugs
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
Fun Factor
☐ Felt like a kid again
☑ Loved it
☐ Fun
☐ I had some fun
☐ Felt tedious
☐ Please let it end
? / 10
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

I honestly can’t believe how they managed to make a game with such limited gameplay, yet do everything else so perfectly that it went down in history. This is my fifth completion on PC after playing it first on PlayStation. Truly one of the greatest games of all time. 10/10.

I started The Last of Us thinking this was a zombie game.
It isn’t.
It’s a game about loss, guilt, and pretending you’re fine while the world quietly collapses.
I opened a door, picked up some supplies, and somehow ended up questioning my morals.
Clickers aren’t the real threat — attachment is.
Joel doesn’t save the world.
He barely saves himself.
And Ellie? She turns sarcasm into armor and hope into a dangerous habit.
Combat is slow, heavy, uncomfortable.
Every bullet feels expensive.
Every fight feels like you should’ve avoided it — but didn’t.
• I explored → found nothing but silence.
• I protected Ellie → failed emotionally.
• I made a choice → the game never forgave me.
This isn’t about zombies.
It’s about what you’re willing to become when love survives longer than humanity.
By the end, I wasn’t relieved.
I was quiet.
10/10 –
The world ends, people remain, and that’s somehow worse.

I played this on my steam deck OLED. I ran it at a mix of medium and low settings with proton 10(beta) . It ran perfectly at 45fps only dropped to 30fps in certain areas but never enough to take away from the game. This was an incredibly awesome experience on the steam deck. And just such an incredible game from the store telling to the gameplay. Would recommend if you haven’t played it yet.

I saw nothing technical to complain about, so let's cut to the chase. I'd play it for the contemplative music and apocalyptic set pieces alone, so naturalistic yet with a pinch of stylisation. Naughty Dog used technological advancements to breathe life into both characters and action. They couldn't have conveyed their vision fully without such an intricate facial animation and nuances. Hell, spit flies out Bill's mouth when he angrily reprimands Joel! Now, that's a great fusion of tech and lore. Swapping weapons, looting, going down the stairs, how Joel puts his hands on a wall when near a cover - the animations cannily flow into one another, pleasing the eye on a primordial level. Some inconsistencies apply, but none are immersion-breaking. Good! Because here immersive storytelling is instrumental in every aspect of design.
Just Cargo
Long story short, disgusting parasitic mushrooms started infecting people with mind-controlling spores, turning them into repugnant monstrosities and redecorating the world in their image. I believe that some fungus could undo our whole civilization since I used to live in an place where the black mould's reign just couldn't be stopped. In the cold open, you play as Joel, a daughter's dad who wears nothing but flannel and jeans. After a brief introduction, the outbreak begins and a tragedy strikes during our little family's evacuation attempt. Then we leap into the post-apocalyptic present where a still grieving husk of Joel reluctantly gets an Uber job of delivering Ellie, a young girl immune to the spores, to a hospital on the other end of America. She is humanity's last hope for a vaccine.
It's basically one atypically great escort quest during which you'll bond with Joel and Ellie whom he initially perceives as nothing but cargo. Joel is a private, abrasive man, perfectly playing off Ellie's chill. She sticks to him like glue and doesn't get herself killed for no reason. She's independent, but not in a spoiled way. Not being just a cute object to protect, Ellie can handle herself and her comebacks could make me cry if I ever crossed her path. Joel doesn't want her around the same way I hesitate to adopt a cat. What if I screw up? But it's not all doom and gloom, eventually you'll see cute moments like when Ellie reads a book full of awful puns and they both just stand there cringing. She kept reading and I kept listening. Cringe is addictive, which is why I still have followers.
Chokehold
There's no hivemind overlord in whose heart you could plunge a sword to make things right. The real enemy are human vices and traumas, personified and scattered to avoid becoming grotesque. This whole story is about taking responsibility and letting go of the cynicism that stems from our fear of pain. There's a steep price to pay no matter how you feel. You either go down in crust or man up and allow yourself be vulnerable in a world which doesn't forgive vulnerability. Cynicism is the way of a coward, although, it's difficult to draw the line where compassion becomes indulgence. "Things happen and we move on" is a more convenient option in the world of TLOU. It's alien to our sensibilities, so is its morality. Just do the right thing, they say. Except that thing swings with the weather vane of perception. Here, character interactions portray it genuinely.
You'll mostly meet mad creeps, and even kind people among them are lunatics from our point of view. "It's the normal people who scare me". The ones who find the predicament adequate are the real psychos. People's charm doesn't feel forced, everyone is given development via laconic banter before they either die or betray you. So abruptly, lifelike, with no fanfare. Human interaction in TLOU is fleeting, so you get attached to the main cast. That's why I rooted for Joel until end credits, irrationally so. I thought I knew better, but this game made me doubt myself. Can I possibly tell what's right from across the abyss prostrating between souls? No amount of baggage could ever fill it, but this game's song crosses the gap. There were points when I was close to crying without the sad piano to manipulate my emotions. It kept me in a chokehold.
Nuts & Bolts
It's a hard game to put down. I almost cried from the other end a few times. Sure, it's cinematic and slow-paced, but it's still a gamey survival horror that doesn't lag behind its peers. Then again, I'm a simple man! Gimme naturalistic brick vs skull violence and I'm sold. Have you seen that weighty ragdoll? Pure art. It's a game of quick death, yet quicker kills. I replayed half of the encounters just to see if I could kick ass harder. There were few games that pushed me to celebrate virtual violence like that: Manhunt, Max Payne, and The Punisher. Similarly to Frank, Joel is bestial in his chimp-like brutality. His adversaries justly call him crazy, for he would tear off your genitals and eat your face if needs be. Brick by brick, I made my way through the hordes of mutants and humans, playing the game as a beat 'em up until encounters become too massive to go loud comfortably. Turns out, sneaking is also fun!
Helpful sound cues and predictable behavioural patterns alleviate frustration while leaving the room for risk. Armed humans are able to kill Joel in a couple of shots and newly-infected zombies are fast. A Clicker represents the next, sturdier phase of the infection. It can't be killed with bare arms. They don't see or hear you if you move quietly, but sometimes they let out a scanning scream that blows your cover if you get caught in its range. You never feel completely safe. Then goes a bulky Bloater who act as mini-bosses. They charge for an instakill, throw spore grenades... real party poopers. Humans also have aces up their sleeves. They react to noises and sights in a lively manner, then smoke you out of cover and partake in coordinated flanking or try to bargain when things get heated. Expect being ambushed, trapped, chased. But even during serene moments of looting the world blind bodies and booby traps always remind you where you at.
Sadly, I just listed the whole roster, but sometimes less components only solidify a structure. You get your plot going in-between encounters, then get thrown in a semi-open area to fight for your constitutional right to dumpster-dive in peace. In TLOU, rags are the riches used in an emergent crafting system. Got a bat, some tape, and shivs? A makeshift macuahuitl would last you a couple of kills. Found a manual on bombs? Get better ones. Sometimes you find tools for higher-tier gear upgrades: additional quick slots, ammo capacity, reload speed, etc. The guns are fab! Crafting materials needed for certain stuff intersect, introducing tough choices to make on the fly. A constant stream of loot provides your hands with something to do and your mind - with dopamine. It's scientifically precise and realistic in a sense. Easy to reach places don't have much to offer, a damp cellar ridden with infectious spores is where it's at.
Closure
It's precious - to forget the melting glaciers of our old world for a few hours, leaving behind our grief for a demented dream that melts with them as we enter someone else's nightmare, so close yet far-out. If the world we build is a mandala at its core, then what is a post-apocalyptic game if not a meditation on its impermanence? There were plenty of extinction events in the history of Earth when 99% of all life perished, but the one portrayed in The Last of Us is humanity's personal apocalypse. The nature thrives, sprawling across the ruins, while humans skitter around like rats in a maze built by their ancestors. This is the world of hurt where you either can handle the pain or sink in despair. Or become some cannibal's sex pig, whichever fate prefers. But it's not your turn yet and it feels good.
My curator Big Bad Mutuh