Perhaps not 100% necessary, but still absolutely brilliant.
You wouldn’t know it if you don’t read “Terrible Take Twitter” or the “Irate Internet,” but there’s been a lot of negativity around the remake of The Last of Us for PS5, subtly renamed to The Last of Us: Part 1. The gist of this anger is due to the original game on PS3 releasing a little over nine years ago. So, how dare Naughty Dog remake a game that new, right?
Frankly, I don’t care what projects a game development studio decides to take on, and in this particular instance the handwringing over an extensively spruced up remake feels rather performative. My take: this is a superb remake of an already brilliant game that brings it up to the standard people expect from a modern Naughty Dog game. It’s easily one of the best remakes I’ve ever played.
If you are coming to The Last of Us for the first time, what you’ve got is essentially a zombie apocalypse scenario, but we don’t call them zombies – they’re the infected and they come in variety of horrific forms, such as Runners, Stalkers, and Clickers (the latter gives me shivers just reading the name). Joel, a bearded, gruff man, suffers a terrible loss when things take a dramatic turn, only for him to find Ellie, a teenage girl, in his care as they venture into hostile lands on a delivery mission.
Naughty Dog is great at creating believable characters, and The Last of Us delivers a number of standouts, all of which you’ll spend a decent chunk of time with to make them feel core to the whole experience. Unlike many games that feature ally NPCs, these don’t feel so much like bots, and crucially they don’t exist to spout inane gibberish.
The official line from PlayStation and Naughty Dog about the improvements you get in this remake is thus: “A total overhaul of the original experience, faithfully reproduced but incorporating modernized gameplay mechanics, improved controls and expanded accessibility options. Feel immersed in improved environmental storytelling, effects, facial animations, and enhanced exploration and combat.” Having not played the original in about eight years, I can’t claim to notice every little tweak and change, but as a complete game this remake is everything I wanted.
Like most of Naughty Dog’s games, presentation is a key part of what made The Last of Us stand out on PS3. Go back to that game today (or its marginally-improved PS4 port) and yes, it’s still the same excellent game full of top-tier interactive storytelling, but it’s not the showstopper it once was.
