The Last of Us is definitely a great game, it accomplishes a lot. That said I've a lot of gripes too.

• First off, today's update introduced a savegame related bug, and I've lost all of today's progress (roughly 4-5 hours, so that's been rough) - especially since I don't find the game mechanically *fun* to play. It's not really about fun.
• Its greatest accomplishment for me, is how real the world and its inhabitants feel, which makes all the concessions to game mechanics all the more painful. Having accomplished such a believable world (despite being a corridor for the most parts) makes illogical gamey things stand out so much more. Such as...
• Cannot loot enemy's guns and gear and ammo. In a game that's all about scavenging and survival, it boggles the mind.
• Ammo is kinda rare, yet enemies never run out of ammo. Again - can't loot their ammo or guns after taking them out either. Ammo drops, or it doesn't.
• Bulletsponge enemies. Typical Naughty Dog-style one-hit-kill headshot immunity through gasmasks and such. Foes often take hits, but don't stagger. And so forth. As if all rounds are short loaded (using little gun powder).

I don't understand it really. Naughty Dog accomplishes such a high degree of believability with their world and character building, as well as making the protagonist play like a real non-superhuman being with shaky hands and such. A flawed character, a survivor - but not an unstoppable force of nature, as game protagists are wont to be.

What it does in service of gameplay does hurt it all the more for how successful it is at that - and the results definitely could be achieved much more elegantly, without artifice. There is no need for artificially forced ammo scarcity. Forced bullet spongy enemies. Forcing specific solutions to much more broadly solvable problems. Why not make the AI adhere to the same rules as the player? Like AI carrying limited ammo, expending it in combat, and consequently running out of it too? Guess it must be system memory restrictions or something. I can't explain it otherwise.

It wouldn't change the game much, other than getting rid of the stark juxtaposition between gameworld and game mechanics. The former feeling eerily real and the latter being artificially fabricated.

What say you? And what are your gripes?

None THAT PROLOGUE WAS FUCKING AWESOME

There are definitely a few times where the game can't resist being a game, and they tend to stand out. Two examples that I can think of are the 2 unlimited ammo set pieces (the hanging upside down one and the sniper one) and the dumb miniboss clicker that throws spore bombs at you.

Also, though each encounter is less bombastic than a typical uncharted firefight, by virtue of the game being far longer, I still feel like I left a comically large pile of bodies in my wake. At least Joel feels like a convincing mass murderer, though, instead of being a Drake-like charming rogue.

Overall, what I'll say about The Last of Us is that it's basically a half-measure in dealing with the narrative dissonance that plagues most action games, but it's the most successful attempt at doing so that I've played this gen, so credit where credit's due.

I felt insulted by what comes before that shooting gallery section. I had so many valid angles on that sniper perch, yet the shooter is non-existant. It's literally a sniper rifle without a shooter, shooting me dead. There's but one way to take the sniper out. The way Naughty Dog has intended.

Gamedesign fascism is what I accuse Naughty Dog of. There's one way to play their game, the way they intend it to be played. If you want to fight, where the game wants you to sneak, you'll have an extremely hard time. Same goes the other way around. And it's not good at making it known to the player what it expects from him either in any given situation.

Only a little bit in and I'm not happy how I'm forced to help the fireflies "Oh great their leader is already suffering a gut wound and they are being killed in the street. I'm sure this deal will work out great."

RETARDED AI

Seriously ruined the game for me.

Zombies. But I'm still gonna play it, because it does look very good.

They aren't Zombies. They're Mushroom Men.

The fact that this game is way too excellent so that whenever something '' videogamy'' happens, it pulls you out of the atmosphere. For instance, Joel being unable to climb a ladder that Ellie is trying to climb at the same time, thus causing both models to collide into one another. Or when your enemies never drop bullets when they're fully armed. I'd rather get one or two bullet for every corpse than looting five randomly.

Other than that, it's an outstanding, ground-breaking experience.

The enemies are fucking morons. Straight out of the Metal Gear Solid school of stealth. At one point I kept choking necks and every so often another enemy would come over and inspect the body and I'd snap his neck... I had a pile of five enemies at one point.

The way all your companions shout shit while your stealthing about is a little annoying.

some weird inconsistencies with the infected spotting you when you're behind them and then ignoring you when you're standing right next to them.

Oh yeah, and losing eight hours of playtime.

Oh man, that save bug sounds like the worst. I use art programs regulary and have been burnt too many times there to ever miss an opportunity to save in a game, I'm actually getting something out of role playing my saves into the game, like after a specifically harrowing moment in the rain I'll find shelter nearby and take a breather by saving, like I'm giving Joel a rest or something, it's quirky but I'm enjoying it.

For what it's worth I haven't run into any of those AI issues playing on hard.

Im really glad they fixed the save bug i only lost a few mins of play time due to hard saving like a mad man. The only problem i have with this game is the pacing but i expect that too pick up soon!

The only issue I have with the game so far is that switching out one weapon for another is really clunky, I think it's great that you don't have instant access to your second pistol, for example (at least not until you upgrade), but I often find I'll need to pull up the quick select a couple of times before getting it right when swapping to a different pistol or ranged weapon.

I tend to just be inclined to accept game mechanics for the way they are, so things like the OP mentioned haven't really broken immersion at all, because honestly, I haven't really thought about it. The Last of Us's world is incredibly well realised, but it's still a videogame, I come to it with "videogame" expectations and I have no problem with concessions that are made in that regard. I also don't really feel like enemies are bullet sponges, they just feel about as tough to put down as I'd expect.

That said, having enemies adhere to the same rules that apply to the player would certainly be a cool improvement in a future game if there were to be one. And I can see where the OP is coming from, they're just not issues that have personally bothered me.

Shooting/Combat just feels weird, I don't know what it is but it feels like the animations speed up during it and it just feels weird.

What is ground-breaking about it? Just curious I beat it today and it didn't seem all that special to me. Definitely not this "emotional masterpiece" everyone is hyping it up to be.

First off let me say I love the game, but like even the best of games, there have been a few flaws. I've had a few immersion breaking moments which involve the Ai. Whenever I found myself stealthing past a set of clickers or Humans, Elly will make herself occasionally conspicuous. She's run right in front of enemies that should've otherwise seen her and also made herself audibly known around enemies that could've easily heard her. Just like in Bisohock Infinite it doesn't outright bother me, but it is a small gripe that breaks the immersion slightly. These types of instances involving AI are bound to happen and I'm easily able to forgive it.

Maybe it's because of all the next gen games I've seen this E3, but I find some of the environmental visuals a little underwhelming. The characters look absolutely fantastic and the lightings pretty good too, but I have found some of the vistas to be a little static in their presentation. The voice acting is top notch and I've found the story as of 4 hours is very gripping . I can't wait to see how the rest of this game unfolds and how these characters story's come to a conclusion. The few complaints I've voiced are by no means a knock to the game's overall quality. The Last of Us seems like a wonderful swan song to the Ps3. Oh yeah, That prolouge is Fantastic!

I hate how he moves backwards. That's pretty much it though

Only major problem I have with the game is that it leans a little too heavily in the combat for my liking. A few too many moments of ''suddenly, a group of Hunters arrived!''. But otherwise, I've had no major complaints. Friendly AI is definitely really goofy with the way they meander about, sometimes in clear view of an enemy, but whatever. Rather that than them constantly getting you caught. Hearing Bill's elephant footsteps when he runs to catch up to you is hilarious, though, immersion breaking it may be. Plus there was the time where Tess' head done an 180 to speak to Ellie, which was pretty freaky.

Mostly just a lot of small things really; I otherwise adored my time with this game and it's easily taken the lead for GOTY for me as of now.

Moron enemies and hilarious AI from my companions. I'm sneaking around and they will sprint inches past multiple enemies (human or infected) to take up a position in cover. The enemies never even see them. Really, really breaks the immersion of a tense scene. I found myself laughing at the stupidity of it a few times.

Frankly, i've seen enough issues in the first 3 1/2 hours of the game that it feels pretty unlikely i'd be able to give it 5 stars myself. I also felt it started very slow.

I have seen this comment multiple times in relation to this game. In which case, I have to ask, what makes it so great? Just the story? But then shouldn't Asura's Wrath also have been hailed as a masterpiece?

Why are games losing their 'gaming' bit in order to ape hollywood? Stories are good, and god knows we needed good story telling in games but not at the expense of the central idea/mechanic of games.

Inconsistent framerate, the past couple Uncharted games ran at a solid 30 the whole time but Last of Us keeps moving around 25 to 30 frequently that the slowdowns are just annoying. It's surprising because Naughty Dog always did great optimization but I wonder if it's partly because I have one of the older fat PS3's. This game is making it sound like several jets taking off all at once.

Also weird AI issues but considering the hardware and scale of the game I was willing to let that slide.

It's the same Naughty Dog stuff; great story and characters, lacking gameplay mechanics. Gunplay is certainly better than Uncharted, and so is the character movement, but the encounters are balls. Having to pad out ten or fifteen minutes on trial and error of what actually triggers the clickers in particular, before getting to the end and having a one hit kill performed on you is incredibly unfun, but to have it throw you back at the beginning of the encounter is more jarring on the story side of things. I'm a Hitman fanatic, and I love pondering my movements and taking my time in games, but the game part of this is fairly dismal. I love wandering around in the ruined environments, I love the way the game kicked off the story and relates a lot of it through collectables that are personal tales rather than military journal #541, but instafail gameplay belongs with faster paced gameplay than this.

Clicker AI seems really inconsistent. There will be times where I'll be standing completely still behind cover, and the Clickers always seem to randomly wander exactly to where I am. I'm having a hard time enjoying fighting human enemies, but I suppose that may be more because of my preference of Uncharted's or GTA 4's large set piece shootouts.

It sucks, because I went into this game with high expectations, and the opening didn't disappoint; everything afterwards kind of has, though.

I don't really like the combat.

So is this the type of game you play once, really enjoy the story but never want to play again because the gameplay is just not really there? I felt like that was a major issue with Bioshock, Mass Effect, Portal 2 and a couple others, and that always bums me out. I like me a game that I go back to immeadiately because the gameplay is fun or because there are others ways to play through it (Deus Ex, Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty 4, etc.) I'm hoping it's the second one, because I've been eyeing a new PS3 but it might be a waste given new consoles coming up.

The beginning is merely good/great and not up to par with the rest of the game which is the best survival horror game of all time; darn.

Enemies do run out of ammo. I've seen dudes straight up drop their guns and sprint at me because they have no other choice.

And enemies aren't bullet sponges (well, standard enemies). The runners and regular dudes without armor die in one headshot/2 body shots. The issue might be you're just not hitting them (not trying to take shots, I miss all the time) or are up against an armored enemy (military, clickers, bloaters)

I guess me biggest gripe, so far, is friendly NPC's actually do have unlimited ammo; kind of takes you out of the immersion.

Also, I wish new game plus let me choose a difficulty besides the one I will beat the game on. If you want to get the platinum as quickly as possible, you have to beat the game to unlock survivor, then beat survivor, then beat survivor on new game plus. Such a dumb oversight that I wish they'd patch, but I doubt they will.

Anyway, no gripe can bring this game down. If it keeps up this momentum, it could become my all time favorite gameSeriously.... The prologue is one of the best things I've experienced with a piece of art/entertainment.

Also, play the god damn game with good head phones everyone. A lot is gained from it

@gunstarred: That's what you get for trying to marathon a game that isn't meant to be marathoned.

There were some parts where I felt like the inclusion of a combat scenario actively harmed the tone they were trying to create. Specifically, I felt that the clicker scenario right after you see the giraffes didn't need to be there; should've just been a straight shot to the endgame, maybe a traversal bit to set up the transition.

Oh, it's a game alright. More so than most linear experiences. It's just quite stressful. The camera is a tad bit too slow for my liking, which generally gives me a headache. It's very slow paced, with lots of kinda mandatory scavenging and long stretches of being sneaky. By the nature of being a linear experience, there's lots of *find the one convoluted way to progress*, which I do not enjoy. It's not a liberating or empowering game, it's a game of fear and survival. For the most parts it wants the player to be sneaky, which makes it a game of patience - that's fine of course, if I don't have to be patience twice in a row because of a gamebreaking autosave bug.

I've lost an entire chapter's worth of progress. From entering a city to leaving it again. It's just not the kind of thing that will be any fun to do a second time, at least right away. It's the kind of game that I *enjoy* once, and not for it being tremendously *fun*, but for the experience of it. That's what I'm saying. It's not the kind of game I enjoy in a way, that I want to replay it over and over again. It's not Max Payne 3 or Warhammer 40,000 : Spacemarine, which I've played though 3-4 times before I called it quits. I just want to experience The Last of Us, and then put it on a shelve.

I'll ask you this, are all movies or books fun? Or can entertainment be something else? The Last of Us is something else, and as that it's quite rare in the realm of videogames.

Yeah, that part I definitely agree about. Same with the part where you find Ellie again in the farmhouse after she rode off on the horse; then after the scene's over--a damn emotional one at that--well.... suddenly, a group of Hunters arrived! It served literally no purpose besides to give you more combat, and this is a game that has already got a lot of it in here.

I also want to add that I agree with the OP that the bit where you're being hounded by the sniper is complete bullshit. I at first thought it was a bug or something considering it's just a gun, and the gun doesn't even move at that.

Anywhoo I don't want to rattle too harshly on The Last of Us because, again, GOTY contender right here for me. But yeah, like every other game out there, it isn't perfect.

May be so, but if it's so, it's certainly inconsistent. There's been quite a few instances of AI blasting away at my position. That's another gripe of mine. The game makes up the rules at it goes, which is very annoying. Sometimes clickers are blind, sometimes the run right at me. Hell - there's one segment where the player needs to take out a treat, and that treat isn't being drawn by the engine, so that the player can't kill it any other way than intended - which leads to a gun a without a shooter shooting at the player. Well - you'll need to exercise your player agency to actually notice it, but it irked the hell out of me.

Some other people have said this but I feel there are some pacing issues because of the very slow start (having said that the prologue is outstanding). Although once you reach Pittsburgh things start to pick up considerably. I'm in the Fall now and I can see why this game got all the perfect scores

The game is so great it needs a gripes thread.

My gripes are pretty much just that enemies were a lot more plentiful than I had hoped. Also with how many there are it makes the survival aspect seem a bit forced. Very few enemies with guns actually drop their guns. The fact that they all use them just fine but don't drop them makes the challenge seem a little artificial.

My biggest issue is the auto-save bug though, I lost all progress from early in the game up to completion (probably 9-10 hours). The game didn't even unlock the higher difficulty for me upon completion, it just crashed and reset my progress. On the plus side though I got to play through the whole thing and see all the story without having to redo any lost progress. I really enjoyed it and auto-save issue aside (which is a pretty nasty issue) my gripes are relatively minor with it.

I guess how everything falls into place at the right time? How the game is just constantly renewing itself despite its length, embracing a near-perfect pacing that balances story and gameplay. The combat scenarios are also superb and believable. I'm not going to say Last of Us is an emotional masterpiece, but to me, it's one type of experience that I haven't had in a really long time. This game does things that most games won't even dare to do, even Bioshock Infinite.

I just started my game up and I've lost around 3-4 hours worth of gameplay. Im really having a hard time motivating myself to play it over again. I really enjoy the story, but mechanically playing the same encounters again so soon just takes the wind out of my sails.

A few of things:

• The inconsistently of stealth killing Tickers is irritating. Sometimes stealth killing a Ticker goes off with fault, other times it alerts EVERYTHING.
• Joel's magic 'sound vision' is too overpowered. I can see though walls 20 meters in front of me and know exactly where someone is purely based by sound. This is justified by Joel's years of experience but when you control Elle she manages to learn it in a few months.
• The game is just too long for something with little variety. Sometimes you fight infected and the other times you fight people with guns. At no point do you fight anything else or even the two groups together. This might of worked with your typical 7-8 hour game but not a 15+ hour adventure like this.
• Human enemies are bullet sponges. It's overlooked in Uncharted because of it's over the top nature but when you're going for a gritty realistic survival game and a guy can take a shotgun blast and just walk it off then it sticks out.
• Useless weapons. I only used the flamethrower once or twice. Also, I didn't even get an assault rifle until the last 20 minutes of the game.
• I hated the upgrade system. The fact that I cannot upgrade certain items because I'm not up to the correct 'upgrade level' is bullshit. Same with the pills. I shouldn't be punished with weaker weapons late game because I didn't scavenge enough.
• There are multiple times where I didn't know where to go. Almost all of it involved pushing something in the environment that either looks like everything else or seems irrelevant.

I don't think this is the game that redefines a genre like most people are saying but I liked it enough to give it a recommendation.

@mrmuscle: That's still happening? I thought they fixed it yesterday by rebooting their servers.

@webscud: i noticed when i went to switch my game off last night Norwegian time that i couldnt save and it just had a message that said something about autosaving in progress. I went to get ready for bed and came back like 20 minutes later and nothing had changed. So nothing i played last night had saved :( Hopefully its fixed now.

Watch-the-patrol stealth sequences. There's one early on in this wrecked office tower that nearly made me turn the game off. I'm playing on Hard and the Toad zombies literally have a 315 degree cone of vision. The only way to stealth kill them is to come up exactly from behind.

And I'm fully done with the Enemy Who Shoots At You 8 Times, Drops Gun, It Has 1 Bullet Left. The idea of ammo scarcity in the post-apocalypse is hysterical; the reality is you will either have 0 bullets or you will have more bullets than you will ever need to use. Scarcity of reliable, working firearms makes sense. Scarcity of bullets is nonsense. I bet you there are over a trillion bullets in the United States right now. It's not like the apocalypse comes and now it's like "How many bullets you got, Ed?" "Four" "Wow, Ed, you're lucky."

Stop coming to the exact same piece of cover as me and merging with my body please AI. Also, get out of the freaking way.

There's definitely some clipping through when they get in cover but once they are in cover i think the animation where Joel is actually covering Ellie while she squeezes between him and the cover is really great.

I like viewing '' gripes '' threads like this. Because in one year, everybody will remember Last of Us very fondly. Same happened with Castlevania: Lords of Show. Everybody disliked it, and now, it's seen as a pretty great action game.

I'm not far in, but I've had a couple of encounters that felt like I only had one option to proceed through, and it wasn't the option I'd prefer. Disclosure: I'm also kind of bad at it.

It took my breath away.

I didn't like the whole, "Ellie can't swim so we flooded this section. Dive on in and find a pallet to put her dumb ass on so you can paddle her across," moments. It felt like it happened a few to many times. But the AI for Ellie as a whole really impressed me otherwise. There were a few times that she saved my ass by hitting somebody with a brick or stabbing them in the back.

I also hated the dumb AI. There were times that I was hidden but Ellie wasn't and the bandits took no notice of it.

I also wasn't a fan of some of the story parts. There's one section where Joel gets hurt and it moves forward into the middle of winter. Ellie gives him some antibiotics and magically he hops to in a few hours to go save her. Again. That part bugged me.

The sound vision is something I could do without. I understand the point, but it's far to powerful when you can see enemies through walls. I'd like there to just be maybe a cue in the general direction of where an enemy is instead of their whole silhouette.

Other than that I still love it. I'm on my second go round on the hardest difficulty and it's a fucking challenge.

Hmm..let's see.

- I thought the stealth sections could be a little janky. I had a few instances where I'd get seen when I shouldn't have, or my A.I partner would walk into an enemy and it wouldn't care.

- Perhaps I missed a piece of dialogue, but I was never made aware when the stalker variation of the infected were introduced. The type that are as alert as runners, but are as dangerous as clickers. I kinda wish there had been a reveal for them, similar to the Bloaters.

- I didn't like how the story felt a little rushed near the end. I know it would have felt like a drag if the fall and winter seasons had been as long as the summer one, but it bothered me how the characters were jumping from one location to another nearer the end, as opposed to the beginning of the game which flowed better in my opinion. Maybe there was a deliberate gap left for single player dlc? I would like to see what happened between winter and spring, after Joel reunites with Ellie.

- I also thought the graphical fidelity was a little inconsistent. At times the game looked stunning, both in-game and in cutscenes. Though at times it would also look pretty bad, compared to the rest of the game. I never really saw that with the later Uncharted games, so perhaps with it being a new venture for Naughty Dog some of the polish wasn't there. It was never enough to take me out of the experience, but I still noticed it.

- And of course, like most games you get the occasional hiccup where things go/look really weird. Be it clipping through an A.I partner, a body flying around the ground or just an audio cue not propping correctly. It's so common with games these days that I don't really care, but I still would like it gone.

With all these gripes, I still loved my time with the game. I think Patrick was right to give it 5 stars, and while it's still early, this could very well be a strong contender for my personal GOTY.

I kinda dislike how important scavenging is by design. There's too many incentives to scavenge past what I'd consider organic and in-tune with the current ongoings of the story. It creates pacing problems for me, because I feel obligated to search every nook and cranny - especially because progession relevant items such as pills are scavenged. I just arrived in Spring, and have only found 3 out of 5 tools in my playthrough, which limits my gun customization - and that's despite me scavenging to the point of it being detrimental to my experience.

I'd much more appreciate if scavenging was about supplies exclusively, and character progression and gun customization would rather be tied to combat (via looting the vanquished) and story progression (via XP). I don't want to feel *forced* to scavenge, even if I'm completely stocked up. Scavenging *Wonderpills* to level-up my character? Why? What the fuck's wrong with XP? There's plenty of games that know how to properly implement an XP system in a stealthy game, for example Deus Ex : Human Revolution.

Scavening is incentivized by The Last of Us' design. I get why that is. To underline the scarcity of goods and the survivalist aspect of the setting. It's going too far though. For me, the design messes with the game's pacing too much, and gets me to act *unnaturally*. In a gameworld that feels surprisingly organic for being level-based, it's yet another immersion breaking factor, incentivizing the player to act unnaturally, instead of *roleplaying* more organically.

P.S. Do games like The Last of Us really gain anything from gamey things like collectibles? I say such things incentivize detrimental playstyles, and should have no place in such a game's design. How will games ever get past being games, if designers insist on incentivizing other behaviours than high quality roleplaying?

Not gonna read through this in case of spoilers, but other than the fact that I hate dual analog sticks for shooting guns, my only real gripe about the game is some unfortunate checkpointing.

I had one checkpoint that always put me directly in the line of sight of a runner during a stealth section, causing the entire area to attack me every time I reloaded. Later I had the game checkpoint me right after I had switched to my empty rifle that I was trying to reload while I was at almost zero health with no medkits, right as three runners were attacking me. That one was particularly frustrating.

Some people like collectibles. There's no reason not to have them. It's like getting frustrated with a restaurant for serving fatty foods because you don't have the self control to not order it.