I don’t know if I even want to play the Last of Us anymore

A tale of how too much praise and hype can hurt excitement.

When I’m writing this, the first two episodes of HBO’s adaption of Sony’s and Naughty Dog’s ‘The Last of Us’ has aired to rave reviews. From viewers and gamers applauding the show for its quality, storytelling and faithfulness to the source material. Critics are calling it “Bigger, scarier, unforgettable” and “one of the finest TV shows you will see this year”. It has currently a 97% critic and 96% audience scores on RottenTomatoes and an 84 on MetaCritic.

Yeah. The Last of Us is a hit.

And of course, the success of the show has (re)ignited interest in the game. Sony had already hoped for this and made sure to have a ‘brand new’ The Last of Us in stores. The 2022 remake of the 2013 original for the PS5 (and soon PC): The Last of Us Part I, is a good but, in many ways, an unnecessary update. Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that restock of The Last of Us Part II in stores as well.

If there’s a moment for someone to dive into The Last of Us, it is now. To review it on your blog and get some of that synergy clicks. But here’s the thing: I really don’t want to! I have the game, the PS4 The Last of Us Remasters, which I bought early last year for just 10,- and even though I had wanted to play it before the TV show released, I just never got around to it.

Why? Well, have you ever had something praised to you, talked about to you, so much that it became annoying and that annoyance overshadowed the actual thing that is being praised? Yeah, that. 

So, let’s dive into this little rant of mine that lets me talk about/vent my thoughts on a game series that has crossed my path for a decade but never actually played, at long last.

My history with the Last of Us

Let’s start with that last bit first. My ‘history’ with this gaming series, so to speak. You see, I can remember when the game first launched in 2013 on the PS3. I was in high school at the time and the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One were the talk of the schoolyard at the time and the South Park Black Friday series of specials that everyone wanted to see the conclusion of. These debates were, of course, about which console was better. Xbox or PlayStation. In these debates, The Last of Us came up a lot. It was Sony´s latest and final 1st party release for the PlayStation 3 and the ´Elden Ring´ or ´The Witcher 3´ of its day.

It was also the time I started to dig into YouTube after shying away from it for years and thus got my first taste of online discourse through the Xbox One vs PS4 debate and The Last of Us hype. I even saw some gameplay of it through PewDiePie; the only time I really watched the guy.

Through these discussions and these videos, I learned quite a lot about the game and I did become interested. The atmosphere I felt from it just through the videos I saw was amazing; had me on the edge of my seat. The opening was great and I got invested in Ellie and Joel.

Still, I wasn’t jumping the bit the actually play it. I´ve never liked Zombies. I don’t understand the appeal and actually, find them quite annoying and unimaginative. Quite the contrary

I’ve never liked shooting games as well; the Call of Duty of the world and the like. I played a bit of them on my brother’s PS2 but I never liked them or was any good at them. Whenever I played, I was mostly yelled at by my brother and his friends for how much I sucked. The game´s gameplay reminded me a lot of these not-so-fun experiences. Perhaps weird reasons, but reasons nonetheless.

Also: I didn’t have anything to play it on. I and my brother had talked about saving up for a PS3 together, but that never happened. Same story with the PS4. While I did look at games from other platforms I mostly kept away from them. My thought was that f I didn´t what I was missing, I wouldn´t miss it. So, over time, my interest in The Last of Us waned.

I did, however, learn of The Last of Us Part II controversy. I remember its announcement and people’s excitement contrasted with my own apathy towards the news. Never played the game, as you’re now well aware, and from what I did now about the title I felt that a sequel was unnecessary. When the leaks happened and people became upset for ‘bait and switching’ and purposefully altering stuff for the trailers I thought it was a bad move and a sign of a game made not because Naughty Dog wanted it, but because Sony ordered them to.

To be quite honest with you, I thought that was the story. That The Last of Us Part II jumped the shark and kind off sucked. All the praise it got later, all the awards etc. was something I wasn’t aware of until recently.

Not wanting to spoil Joel's story, I get, but what Naughty Dog did here feels deceptive to this day.

The final bit I want to tackle before the TV show is The Last of Us Part I. Sometime last year, rumours started to spread that Naughty Dog was working on a remake of the original. Business-wise, it made sense. The TV show was announced and Sony, as I said, was hoping that the interest in the TV series would lead to people checking out the game. While the Last of Us Remastered might be playable on a PS5 through PS4 backwards compatibility, that´s not something a casual audience might know about.

Take my mother for example I just now that if she saw The Last of Us Remastered and The Last of Us Part I on shelves, she’d buy the PS5 version even if that one is more expensive just to be sure it would actually play on my PS5. Or don´t think it´s worth bothering. That the game is ´old´ and thus not worth it. Thus, having a 70,- PS5 version on the shelves next to the 20,- PS4 version doesn’t doom the PS5 one. Plus: big fans will gladly pay for the game again to get the ‘best’ version. I mean, that is what happened. That collector's edition was sold out ASAP.

On the development side, the people at Naughty Dog started to ponder how The Last of Us would look if redone in the style of The Last of Us Part II after redoing some stuff for some flashback sequences. That if you played both games there wouldn’t be any discrepancies between them: just one seamless experience.

That last part I can get but I still think the remake was unnecessary. It is the better version, yes, but aside from the graphics and some gameplay changes so the combat of the two games would mesh, not a lot has changed. The accessibility features are really the only big new thing this game has going for it, which is a really good thing, but then you remember that this title took out the multiplayer. For 70,- it’s not a game I recommend for the PS4 version unless you need those accessibility features.

This adaptation and why it’s annoying me so much

Now to the matter at hand: the adaptation and how it killed (for now) my desire to actually play the game. We’ve already established that I heavily dislike zombie stuff and am not a fan of shooters and that’s why I wasn’t even sorry I didn’t have a console that could play the title even with all of its accolades.

After Horizon Zero Dawn, a game that I also thought I wouldn’t like but ended upfalling in love with, I was more open to The Last of Us. More willing to look past my own biases. Perhaps I would get used to the combat and the characters and atmosphere that grabbed me in those videos I saw would overshadow all the dumb zombie stuff. Thus, when I saw the game for only 10,- bucks while walking through a store to kill some time before the next bus arrived I picked it up. I was planning on playing it before the show came out, that synergy I talked about earlier, but I never got around to it.

Other games had my attention and the closer we came to the release of the TV series, the more annoyed I became. Have you ever had, for example, had someone offer their help become annoying and you become annoyed at them? They’re nice for offering to help but offering it so many times while you explicitly said no… Well, sort of the same thing here. I got annoyed at all those people buzzing around my head with how good it was and, *gasp!*, how I haven’t played it. I got annoyed by all those articles talking about how ‘The Last of Us was the best video game adaptation ever’, the ‘best narrative ever told in a video game’ and would ‘finally break the video game curse’. Like God of War, or the Sonic movies don’t exist. It’s all marketing speak, sure, but very annoying marketing speak.

……….

In short: while I did and still do have some interest in The Last of Us and have the game ready to go on my shelf, I got more annoyed by the conversation surrounding the TV show than anything else. It got on my nerves, which is the best way to put it. It became a conversation I just didn’t want to be a part of and put me off more than it excited me. That’s why I haven’t played the game yet and don’t plan on doing so for quite a while unless something unexpected happens. I have to confess: I have become somewhat more interested in the game again due to writing this post put, PS5 wise, I need to finish God of War: Ragnarök first.

If you like The Last of Us, the game and the show, and can’t get enough of it then more power to you!