Happy 10th Birthday, The Last of Us! You’re Overrated

The Last of Us recently celebrated its 10th birthday as of 14th June 2023. Since its humble beginnings, it’s spawned a sequel, a standalone DLC, comic books, two remasters, and a TV adaptation! Not bad for a game that is (in my opinion, obviously) massively overrated.

Now, it would be foolish of me to say that The Last of Us is a bad game because it isn’t. It tells a decent enough post-apocalyptic tale of two polar opposite lead characters — Joel and Ellie — overcoming struggle after struggle whilst growing closer to one another. It opens with an interesting premise, with (spoiler alert) Joel’s daughter Sarah being fatally wounded during the hysteria of the onset of the virus outbreak. But from there, the game doesn’t come close to the emotion seen in these first 15 minutes. It’s serviceable, and Ellie, in particular, is rather endearing, keeping a positive outlook on life despite the constant threat of death.

But the interesting narrative doesn’t make up for dull gameplay. I’m not against linear games as long as the moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying. The thing is, The Last of Us just isn’t. Its simple mechanics grew stale very quickly for me;, the stealth felt poorly implemented, and I usually just stuck to popping off headshots at any given opportunity. The simple crafting felt more like a chore than being rewarded with something meaningful, especially when I could just take out enemies with regular weapons.

Innovation is severely lacking as well; there isn’t one portion of The Last of Us where I thought, “Oh wow, I’ve never seen that before!” and although I’ve played — and loved — countless games with zero innovation, none of them have had quite the critical acclaim as this one. It’s rare I feel like a game drags on, but by the time I reached the “giraffe scene”, I had passed the point of caring and just wanted the whole experience to be over with.

Maybe I’m just being too critical and should enjoy it for what it is, but with so many awards to its name, and the sheer amount of love the game gets, I just couldn’t see it. It may be worth noting that I didn’t play the game until six or so months after its release, so there’s a good possibility that it was overhyped, and I just expected more. Regardless of that, I never felt compelled to play The Last of Us Part II, and likely never will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on Reddit championing Days Gone as one of the best post-apocalyptic/zombie games of all time.