{"id":1021,"date":"2013-11-18T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2013-11-11T12:16:05","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T11:16:05","slug":"the-last-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/18\/the-last-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The-Last-of-Us-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week I\u2019ve finished \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d\u2026 and (shocking surprise) it\u2019s amazing!<\/p>\n

First impact: the graphics\u2026 gorgeous rendering, very nice effects all around, the interplay of light and surfaces is amazing, a great work by Naughty Dog!<\/p>\n

Secondly, the story is great\u2026 gone are the usual clich\u00e9s, every single time you thought the story was going clich\u00e9, it subtly made a smooth turn that made complete sense (instead of the jarring plot twist that makes no sense whatsoever) and navigated to less-mainstream themes\u2026<\/p>\n

The characters are amazing, and Ellie is actually a character that instills a sense of protection, without being the normal overbearing entitled child present in too many games, TV shows and movies\u2026<\/p>\n

Joel is a more \u201ccommon\u201d character, but it\u2019s well written and very believable.<\/p>\n

When I started playing, I thought \u201cok, this is pretty and is well made, but why is everyone so in to it?!\u201d\u2026 well, after 3 or 4 hours (the game is surprisingly big for a AAA game nowadays: I clocked in at 17 hours, just for the main campaign), I noticed that I actually cared about the characters\u2026 and I\u2019m not a very "\u201dlovey-dovey\u201d guy, I don\u2019t usually don\u2019t get hooked on characters that much\u2026<\/p>\n

The only thing that detracts from the game (and it\u2019s not really its fault, maybe it\u2019s the medium\u2019s fault) is the gameplay doesn\u2019t shine as much as everything else\u2026 While it plays well, it\u2019s secondary to the amazing story, and besides some key points (very good key points, I admit), it was just getting in the way of me getting my next \u201cstory fix\u201d\u2026 The gameplay wasn\u2019t simply as interesting as the story, which means that either the story was so good I wanted to focus on that (entirely possible), or the gameplay wasn\u2019t that interesting, which might also be true \u2013 the stealth component seemed too random (sometimes the enemies would spot us through crates and walls, sometimes we\u2019d be just next to them and they wouldn\u2019t see us) which made the whole stealth experience a bit trial and error\u2026 The shooting was a bit hard and ammo was scarce (which is a good thing, it gives the game that feeling of post-apocalyptical shortage everywhere, and really poked the player to search around for stuff)\u2026<\/p>\n

So, sorry Mike Bithell, but \u201cThomas Was Alone\u201d was just supplanted as my game of the year\u2026 it\u2019s still amazing (and the gameplay is probably better), but this one is so nihilist that it speaks into my very soul! \"Smile\"<\/p>\n

Good job, Naughty Dog, forget about Uncharted and go for this kind of titles all the way\u2026 Or do both, I don\u2019t care! \"Smile\"<\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I\u2019ve finished \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d\u2026 and (shocking surprise) it\u2019s amazing! First impact: the graphics\u2026 gorgeous rendering, very nice effects all around, the interplay of light and surfaces is amazing, a great work by Naughty Dog! Secondly, the story is great\u2026 gone are the usual clich\u00e9s, every single time you thought the story […]<\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[221,222,75],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","tag-last","tag-of-us","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}