Today I planed on finally getting around to reviewing the first season of Da Vinci's Demons (I loved it). But I also thought I could just pick up The Last of Us, get my feet wet and be able to think about something else for the rest of the day. That's not going to happen. Just when you think Naughty Dog is going to peak as a developer they do something amazing. I'm talking about Jak 2, Uncharted: Among Thieves, and now The Last of Us. Which, depending on how it ends and how many times I wind up playing it, I can clearly see myself calling it the studio's opus.
That's coming from the guy who's first video game ever was Crash (motherf**king) Bandicoot. As rose colored as my glasses are for this studio, I still didn't think they had something like the first 20 minutes of this game in them. I had tears welling in my eyes, and while I'll admit a similar character did that to me under similar circumstances last November, these are the only two times a video game has ever made me that emotional.
This is not a super fun game, in fact I find myself putting it down and walking away from it to write this blurb. It's almost...artful in it's tedium. It's characters are miserable, and you slowly take on their baggage. It's an exhausting game because it's so effortlessly sympathetic.
This isn't a review, but I urge you (the 16 of you) to pick it up if you have the means. If this isn't anouther touchstone moment in video game story telling then I don't know what is.
Except I do... and it is.
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