I attended a preview event for The Last of Us a couple months back. Simply put it wasn't the greatest of demos and gave me bad feelings about what was soon to be released in June. It's not that the gameplay wasn't good necessarily, it just felt SO familiar and generic.

Being a guy that loves systems in video games, I was really disappointed Naughty Dog weren't innovating in this department. Take I Am Alive, while it wasn't a great game by any means, the mechanics of survival felt original enough for me to respect what they were trying to do, even if it wasn't the sweetest of executions.

Regardless of how I felt walking out of that preview event, I realised the difficulty of demoing these sorts of games, so I hadn't written it off just yet and still planned to pick the game up at launch.

After being blown away by the opening 15 minutes, the game that resumed is game I didn't much care for. Sitting down with the game in front of my TV confirmed as much. Encounters felt repetitive, boring and most of the time ended up frustrating me. While the story still had me hooked, after almost 10 hours in, I was ready to write this game off.

Then it stepped up a notch (slightly) we met Henry and Sam, escaped the city at night and got away. They eventually died and not long after Joel got hurt real bad. This was the turning point for me.

Continuing alone as Ellie, hunting for food in Winter, not knowing if Joel had made it felt harrowing. It was a beautiful spell, the kind of slow-paced moment I felt the game had lacked up to that point. Maybe it was that sudden cut they made from Joel falling off that horse to Ellie fending for herself, I dunno.

Then there was the bumping into David, the fighting off what felt like a thousand infected, the high fives all round after I'd completed that sequence, and then watching that reveal play out. Ahh, did that make the 12 hours up to that point (10 of which I didn't enjoy) worth it or what!

As the game progressed I started to fall in love with it more and more. Taking control of Joel post-fever and playing out his and Ellie's sequences separately, retracing Ellie's footsteps through the same town in the foggy snow trying to find one another felt so well directed and Naughty Dog pulled this off effortlessly.

I can go on forever discussing the second half of this game, hell, even that bit with the giraffes. But it was that last scene in the hospital where you picked Ellie up off the table and ran for it; harkening back to the start of the game so brilliantly without being preachy or obvious. Watching Joel shoot Marlene when confronted at gunpoint (just like the opening) with the threat of Ellie being taken from him, Ellie, who at this point fully embodies his daughter. And straight up lying to her in the car, to suit his own selfish needs.

As I explained at the start of this post, after 10 hours in I wasn't a fan. And after all the praise heaped on this game, I hated it slightly more (I know, that's kind of dickish). But somehow, The Last of Us had me do a complete one-eighty on my feelings and opinions of it when I was nailed on to hate this game. Neil Druckmann, my friend, take a bow!

Joel did the right thing. Fuck the fireflies.

I liked the part of the game where the shotguns were awesome.

@tourgen: the shotguns did shot well, I agree.

I agree although i really loved the segment with bill. him and ellie going at it still cracks me up. and bill and this frank guys relationship was pretty funny. i think my favorite scene in the entire game is the when they go for that drive in the truck. just really opened the game up, made it feel more alive and grand. loved the country music 2, all the way till when they get jumped by the bandits, all of it was perfect.