Playing The Last of Us for the first time in 2022: A re-review

I’ve managed to go nearly 10 years without encountering Last of Us spoilers. What is the secret to this? For one, I wasn’t covering the video game industry in 2013 — I worked early mornings kneading bread and creaming butter for cookies in a bakery, then fiddling with keys to get into strangers’ houses to walk their dogs. On an old Xbox 360, I enjoyed playing console video games. StarCraft 2 on my Mac laptop. I hadn’t had a PlayStation console since the PlayStation 2, which had long been retired to my parents’ garage, and wouldn’t have one of my own until the PlayStation 5 — save for a brief period where I borrowed a PlayStation 4 from a friend to play Death Stranding.

That’s all I have to say. The physical routeTo Last of Us, I was able to escape spoilers against all odds. And now, I have a PlayStation 5 taking up way too much space in my living room, and I can finally say that I’ve played Last of Us. And yeah, it’s still a fucking good game.

To summarize it, it feels banal. Part 1: The Last of Us, given its significance and ubiquity, but I’ll do it for the sake of anyone else who doesn’t know the setup by now: Last of Us is set in a postapocalyptic world where humans have been infected by the Cordyceps fungus — a parasitic fungi that infects the brain and turns infected humans into violent, mutated monsters. Following the outbreak 20 years ago, humans are now living in militarized quarantine zone and dangerous settlements. Joel and Ellie, both of whom survived the outbreak, are Ellie’s daughter. Ellie on the other side was brought into this world. The relationship between them is at first hostile. Joel must smuggle Ellie from Boston into the hands the Fireflies. They are a radical group who want to cure the disease with the help of Ellie.

Joel leans over in a still from The Last of Us Part 1, captured on PS5

Last of Us’ world is as dangerous and violent as any other zombie epic, and its characters are just as ruthless and brutal. But Last of UsIt reminds its players constantly that violence in the world has been a legacy of pre-infection societies. There were many games that featured violence in the past. Last of UsMany continue to do this. Yet, despite all the postapocalyptic movies and games that have appeared, there are still many books, films, and games. Last of Us’Wake, Naughty Dog’s still feels inspired — almost fresh — in 2022. Perhaps this is due to zombie fiction’s decline in popularity over the past few years. Or it could also be because linear big-budget adventure games like Naughty Dog are rare. The timing of this rerelease is perfect, in any case.

However, 2022 will see an increase in violence Last of Us still feels upsetting. Folks have said it before and I’ll say it again: Last of Us isn’t exactly FunTo play. It’s no Halo InfiniteOder FortniteShooting and killing are just numbers on a scoreboard. Holding Joel’s gun, aiming that gun, and shooting that gun is miserable, unbearable, and painful — not only because Joel is fending off other surviving humans, but because the resources are so scarce: Are I going to regret firing that gun?

All its moments of sadness and cynicism, it is a beautiful reminder that there are still people who love the world. Last of UsThis is a tender and sweet game. It navigates Joel and Ellie’s relationship through shifts both subtle and tectonic as they travel across the broken U.S. Their dynamic begins antagonistically — Ellie’s a burden to Joel, the baggage of a promise he made to a now-dead partner. And to Ellie, Joel’s just another stranger who will abandon her at some point along the way.

joel and ellie looking into the wilderness

Every westward American town offers an opportunity to build that connection. From Boston to Pittsburgh, through Jackson and Salt Lake City, Naughty Dog’s choice to pace the game alongside the seasons works wonders: from the summer in Boston, where you can almost Please feelThe heat from its decaying structures, to winter at Silver Lake, Colorado where blood shines through the white, bright snow. Though the game is relatively short — or at least, devoid of bloat, by modern standards — the movement of the seasons makes time feel tangible. And with that time, Joel and Ellie’s relationship begins to grow.

Slowly, the father-daughter bond develops. You will find moments of calm and tenderness interspersed with the brutality. One of the most touching is Joel and Ellie’s visit to Utah, where they discover a group of wild giraffes. They have escaped from the zoo and now live in harmony. It’s a scene that’s become pervasive, almost a meme — that thing everyone talks about when they’re discussing Last of Us. And that’s for good reason; the moment still floored me, nine years later.

It all happens so quickly, even though it is surrounded by pain. Ellie, hoisted onto a ledge by Joel, drops the ladder she was tasked with handling — she sees something that Joel can’t see. My expectations were for horror. It would have been more horrifying than the biggest bloated man. But then her voice changed, and I realized it wasn’t anything bad. It was breathtaking. Naughty Dog smartly lets the player linger on the overlook, the giraffes nipping leaves from trees and wandering around a flooded patch of city — now something more like a lake. I stayed there a while to relish in Ellie’s delight, and the beauty of the picture, and it felt cruel, in retrospect, to open the door into Last of Us’ next, bleak phase.

joel and ellie, from behind, in a dark cave

In a way, I’m glad I’ve only just now seen Last of Us it to the end. I can see it outside the trope of violent, sad dads that dominated the milieu when it was released — think BioShock infinite, Shadow of Mordor in Middle-earth, Grand Theft Auto 5, too. Last of Us is very much a product of its time, and there’s certainly issues there. But now that I’ve seen how well it’s aged overall, I can really appreciate it — not as a cultural relic or a stepping stone, but as its own grisly, beautiful creation.

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