Best game of seventh generation?

Recently picked up the remastered version of the game on ps4, which would have been my first time playing it in about 2 years. I finished it up last night and the game still hit as hard as it did the first time I played it. Heading into the original release of the game I didn't have much hype for it, basically just picking it up based on the fact it was made by Naughty Dog and the critical acclaim it had been getting. Little did I know I would end up putting it in my top 3 games of all time, possibly even number 2, behind Metal Gear Solid 2.

The game was a much needed breath of fresh air for the survival horror genre, forcing you to actually respect and fear combat because of the lack of supplies and ammunition in the game world. All of the games mechanics work really well, my only complaint being the tedious wood pallet and ladder puzzles. The action is broken up well with the unbelievably realistic character interactions which have yet to be surpassed, and the game really makes you care about these characters. I think the most heart-wrenching moment I've ever experienced in a video game was breaking into the hospital room, shooting the doctors out of desperation, and grabbing Ellie off the bed and avoiding all the guards, all while the incredible soundtrack plays in the background.

I think what makes it so powerful is that the story doesn't really have a happy ending. Joel gets to save what he sees as his new daughter, but at the same time killing Marlene and all those fireflies in order to do so, not to mention potentially dooming mankind by not letting Ellie make her sacrifice in order to find a cure. My theory is that Joel doesn't perceive mankind as being redeemable. After 20 years of struggling to survive, he's seen how selfish and brutal humans can be and doubts there is anything left worth saving in the ruined world. So he just trys to take the one thing he has left, being Ellie, and attempts to start a new life.

I haven't played anything since that has come anywhere close to having an effect on me as The Last of Us has. Not only is it just a really good game, it has a story that every person can relate to and it's so believable in its execution. Naughty Dog in the last 10 years has truly proven they are the developer in which everyone should be compared to.

Last of Us is tied with Dark Souls 2 (1.00) for game of the generation, Witcher 3 is better than either, before that you go back to RE4/Metroid Prime/Valkyrie Profile 2 to find a superior game (though not necessarily to the Witcher). Best Linear voiced plot of all time perhaps, competing with Xenosaga; before the Division best Third Person Shooter gameplay that was slow paced.

Last of Us was a top ten, maybe even top five, game of the last generation for me, though I wouldn't say it was the top. That honor belongs to Mass Effect 2. It's my favorite Naughty Dog game, and it remains the best example of storytelling in a AAA game to date in my opinion.

It's pretty fucking exceptional.

Maybe, If it didn't have zombies in it. As it stands it's just the best zombie game of that generation.

Red Dead Redemption is the correct answer.

I had to look up what "seventh generation" meant.

Top 5 easily for sure!

Not for me anyway.

Off the top of my head I probably put (in no particular order): Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Burnout Paradise, Geometry Wars, Bioshock, Uncharted 2, Bayonetta and Portal 1 & 2 to name a few at least.

Having recently just played through The Last of Us for the first time myself, it's a DAMN FINE game, though I just wish the stealth was a little less clunky or better explained. There are parts in this game where I would say to myself "Now, how the hell can I do this WITHOUT having to attack anyone." and the answer, at least on Normal, was to just shiv dudes and shoot the rest in the face, if discovered, until it stopped. There are several parts in the game where I felt like you could not simply avoid combat and move forward.

I'm playing through the DLC on Survivor and it's a much more stressful experience, yet, I still can't seem to get through most areas without being attacked at some point.

Maybe it's just me, but I end up killing basically everything in the room in order to move forward, and it's not what I was expecting out of this game. Then again, I'm the type of gamer who will spend a stupid amount of time hunting for things in levels as well, which is probably to my detriment in a game like this.

Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely fantastic from a story perspective, but some things about how the stealth actually works does bother me, or I am just terrible at this games version of stealth.

I'm sure it is for some people.

I don't trust those people.

There were just too many great last gen games for me to single out tlou as the best one, but I'd definitely say Left Behind is the best dlc.

I've always thought the Game of the Generation talk wasn't a very good idea, especially with the seventh generation, considering its length. Think about how hard it is to determine the top ten games of any given year. Trying to figure out the top ten games of any particular sub-genre over a several year period would be a monumental task, let alone something as broad as "Best Game".

That being said, Dust: An Elysian Tail is the answer.

Nuh-uh. Burnout Paradise. Possibly Dark Souls.

Red Dead or Skyrim for me.

Probs not. Naughty Dog makes great story driven third person shooters and I don't think we need to compare every or any other developer to them. It's just not everyone's cup of tea. TLOU is a great one of those games but I just don't see it as a landmark that caused a sea change like some of the other games did last generation.

Best story driven game, absolutely!!

third wave ska is the best man.

i don't know if the generation count is accurate or not. at least this will be the last since consoles are dead apparently.

I almost want to say DP was my favourite. So incredibly flawed and yet I don't think I've ever felt quite like how I did when I went through the whole thing myself before seeing the duders play it.

I don't know, MGSV came out on last gen platforms too.

I'm the killjoy that says it's pretty massively overrated, as truly great as I still think it is. OK story, great characters, fantastic writing, decent combat that's far too repetitive and simple for it's own good and resource mechanics that mostly just pretend the game is about survival and deflate much of the tension. Also not nearly enough enemy types, most of my enjoyment came from learning how to sneak around unknown enemy variations and then the game just sorta stopped introducing new ones.

Still a great, A-tier game for sure. Mostly a case of having to make a game that's fun for everyone, I guess.

MGS 4 or BioShock only 2 I will except...until I remember another game I loved a ton

EDIT: Mass Effect 2 an exceptable answer

I like the Uncharted games a lot more to be honest. It has a lot of polish of course, but I found Naughty Dog's usual gameplay shortcomings a lot more apparent in TLOU.

For me Skyrim is biggest highlight of the last gen.

I liked it but probably not top 10. Story was very well done but I didn't enjoy playing it.

It's up there for me. I'd go so far as to say it's one of my top 10 all time favorites. You pretty much hit the nail on head in your description of it and why it's so impactful.

Definitely not for me. The characters were great but I didn't like playing it at all. I dropped it down to easy about halfway through just so I could see the story while making the game as painless as possible. The survival stuff is also completely overblown. It was a very simple system and I was swimming in materials and ammo for almost the entire game(even when I was still on normal). I couldn't use it as quickly as they gave it to me.

I don't see killing Marlene and the Fireflies as being sad at all. If Marlene didn't talk them out of it they had every intention of murdering Joel once he gave them Ellie. As far as they knew he was gonna take his money and go, but they were going to kill him in his sleep just because. I wouldn't trust people like that to handle the power of having the cure to a worldwide plague anyway. The ending struck me as being as 100% happy as a story in that world could be, which I found kinda surprising and refreshing.

Naughty Dog, while putting out some amazing games, have been more miss than hit for me so I wouldn't want them held up as the pinnacle of game development. Can't think of anyone that has been terribly consistent lately.

Not sure what I would pick for game of the generation, though. Mass Effect is my favorite series but they all had various issues. Maybe Demon's Souls.

I didn't think any game would ever top KOTOR for me. And yet within just a few months I had a new number one and two, pushing it down to third. Persona 4 Golden came out of nowhere and blew me away, becoming my favorite game I've ever played. The Last of Us I was excited about, as far as it being a new Naughty Dog game. Though I was super wary of anything zombie related at that point. It was such a tremendous game though. Definitely the second best game I've played. It's a matter of semantics to call it the best of the generation for me. P4G is technically a remaster of a PS2 game after all. There's definitely a feeling you get when you k ow you're playing something important. The Witcher 3 has been giving me that feeling for over a year, and I'm finally almost done with it.

It's that good. It is definitely up there.

You're probably right. When it comes to story and performances, no other game comes close.

I still want to go back and give it another shot but man did i ever hate the gameplay in that game. The intro is definitely the best intro bit of all time though

My choice would be the mass effect series, specifically the second game as a best in series. I did love 3's multiplayer though, i still think about getting a 3month live sub and hooking my 360 back up to play it lol.

Red Dead is even a better grizzled former criminal man tries to reform and raise a child story.

I loved everything about Last of Us except playing it an the ending.

Now Dark Souls and Mario Galaxy on the other hand, mwuah mwuah~ (Vinny kiss sound)

Not even Naughty Dog's best game of the generation. I like this game but I have a lower opinion of it than most. The gameplay was not that fun, it was very repetitive, and the story was quite enjoyable character wise, but plot wise it was pretty generic zombie stuff but yes a cool overall thread to the characters motivations. Just one thread other games have done well too.

Does not make my top 20.

I may have exaggerated the acclaim for Naughty Dog,Uncharted 4 certainly has its list of problems, but they're definitely up there. I've never played a game of theirs that I didn't immediately love. Very excited to see what their next project is.

It's ok for a zombie game.

Edit: This was my list. I suppose I might swap Dark Souls & Fallout 3 depending on my mood.

Very strong game. I enjoyed the game top to bottom but when I think about "best" in a generation, I can't help but think in terms of "importance" and in that regard, there are many other titles that come to mind before TLOU. If I was to come up with a list, I'm sure it'd easily be in top 25 somewhere.

That said, if I stealth my way through an area, I shouldn't be greeted w/ a locked door at the end of it. That is such a bummer and it happened to me a couple times in this game.

I honestly don't think naughty dog has made a great game ever. They're pretty average.

Definitely one of them. Although there are games I'd say are as good, to me, the two games are The Last of Us and Bioshock. I think the reason why I consider them so special is just my expectation of them prior to release. Bioshock was a game I saw when this was put out, and that's all I knew of it, but that felt like a good while before its release. I didn't know details, nor do I remember Ken Levine talking in it. The Last of Us was a game it seemed many were super excited about, and since it wasn't another tried and true Uncharted, and maybe another story about zombies, I was interested, but not that interested, so when I got it a little late (maybe a few weeks to a month or so after?) I was blown away. The Last of Us isn't only the best Naughty Dog game (still, which ultimately made Uncharted 4 disappointing despite it still being good), nor one of the best last-gen games, but also one of my favorite ever.

Another one I would mention is Dead Space, it made me clearly realize that I love sci-fi, as well as real science, especially what goes on in our universe rather than just on our own small planet, so if it weren't for that game, I may not know what I do today about some stuff. Though I like it as much, the only issue with that and why it never comes to mind like Bioshock and The Last of Us is that when I bought it (and was an instance where I didn't really know anything about it other than it was supposed to be similar to RE4), I couldn't get into it, and even quit for a couple of months before deciding to just finish it, and I'm glad I did. I beat it perhaps ten times more. All three games have something in common, and the reasons I find them special, though only a partial aspect of it, is that I love all of their settings.

Specifically talking about The Last of Us, the thing that I loved was that not only did it have characters I cared for, and really fun gameplay (I thought the shooting felt exceptional, and stealth was more than adequate), what really got my attention was the setting and its story. How places we created deteriorate over time without our care, and how flora and fauna thrive. Places you can imagine humans once walking around, dealing with stuff we deal with in our daily lives, be it having fun, going to work, or having a rough time in other, more modern ways, juxtaposed to how people might live if a pandemic got that bad. The zombie (or cordyceps) aspect is not really that important, it's just a reason for the world to be in that state, but even that cordycep aspect is interesting, albeit not entirely realistic (though more realistic than the living dead). It makes me question whether the cordyceps are living, or dead, and if there is a cure for those already afflicted in some manner. If so, it'd be like killing sick people, which is sad.

I just want to mention Red Dead Redemption as well, because I loved that game from last-gen as well. I played it late like Dead Space. I got my friend the game for his birthday, and I had no real desire to play it, but then bought it and did so, and I loved it. My favorite open world game. Bioshock and The Last of Us are the two that always pop to mind, but then as I think of other games, Dead Space and RDR always come next it seems. Some superb games this-gen too, but nothing has been better than The Last of Us so far in my opinion. The one thing that bothers me about The Last of Us though is that you can't restart the game with all your current stuff if you're already playing the game. Sometimes I want to start the game over, but with all the stuff I already have, but I think where I quit is Ellie's section.

I beat the game three times on PS3, and three and a half times on PS4.

It's a really good story, covered in a really nice coat of paint that runs really smoothly. But playing it is like playing any Naughty Dog game; combat is okay or frustrating and you keep playing because you want to see the next story beat or big event. I don't fault it that much for just playing decent, but I have a bigger fondness for Mass Effect's characters than I do the ones in The Last of Us and while the Mass Effect franchise wasn't perfect, it was never worse than The Last of Us. Well, maybe running was better in The Last of Us. But as a few others have noted earlier, I feel like Naughty Dog makes average games with spectacular tech, visuals and story.

@artisanbreads: Solid list. I bet it would be fun writing one of these, just to compartmentalize my thoughts on the generation.

Last of Us? Not even close. That would be Dark Souls. Red Dead is up there for sure. Portal. Bioshock.

Not a fan of Skyrim, thought Burnout Paradise was way, way worse than its predecessors, and Geometry Wars was definitely an Xbox Arcade hit, and changed the landscape a lot, but I think it's just a fun, simple arcade game, nothing more.

And The Last of Us seems like a neat amalgamation of very obvious things from past video games. There's very little ingenuity or heart in the mechanics. The story is cool, but hey, I can just watch a The Last of Us movie and be done with that.

It's the first time I heard someone refer to Last of Us as survival horror. I never really thought of it that way but yah sure it fits I guess.

I enjoyed that game, and it had some exceptional storytelling moments but the gameplay itself was sort of lacking for me personally which makes it a solid 4/5 and not a "game of the year/generation" contender.

No way, it brought nothing new to the medium. It was a well made game for sure and a visual treat but the shooting was worse than Max Payne 1 and the stealth was incredibly one note. Comparing that to games like Demons Souls that came up with an entirely new way for players to interact online. Even Batman Arkham Asylum did things like managing to finally blend stealth and action systems together allowing players to seamlessly transition between styles of gameplay without everything feeling janky as fuck (not to mention its fantastic level design.)

So no, I could probably come up with 20 games that are overall better games while doing more inventive things design wise.

@bigboss1911: Its a close race between that or Red Dead Redemption. I would give the nod to TLoU due to its tighter, cohesive narrative.

I can get behind Red Dead Redemption as a Rockstar fan boy, but the correct answer to this question is the first Dark Souls.

That said, I think Naughty Dog makes cool stories but I find playing their games to be unpleasant.

Thanks. Yeah that was the whole exercise for me. I'm not a big list guy on their own but it's a fun thing to reflect on. Without really doing it you might have different ideas of where games rank for you. Of course, who cares, but still fun to do. I had to be honest and put Fight Night Round 3 top 10 because I played it that much.

I liked TLOU so much more then Uncharted 4. It has the cinematic look of Uncharted but with actual awesome gameplay. That tension of hiding from enemies, trying to take them out one at a time and when the shit hits the fan it was a matter of surviving by throwing objects, using melee weapons and the occasional bullet if you had any. The animation and sound design made the impacts so powerful and believable.
Enemies were also totally unpredictable. When you thought you had the pattern down after a death the enemies would come from a different direction in the next try. I played it without the 'looking through walls' ability mind you.

The story was okay, but it was the gameplay that really impressed me about TLOU.