Remember when Blu-ray first came out? I was blown away by HD. For the first ten minutes of every movie I watched I was bedazzled. But then I would just sort of forget about the high resolution and just… watch the movie. That’s exactly how I feel about The Last of Us: Remastered.
Seriously, the upgrade is noticeable. I watched a friend compare the PS3 and the PS4 version side-by-side. The difference is massive when you see it with your own eyes, but you won’t be playing them side-by-side. You’ll just be playing it. The exact same game. And after a while you’ll take the 60 frames-per-second/1080p resolution and you’ll just be playing The Last of Us again.
Which, in itself, is hardly a problem. The Last of Us is a great video game and this is as good an excuse as any to play through one of 2013’s best releases. The addition of the DLC was practically mandatory, but remains useful for plebs like me who haven’t played through it yet.
I’d say that if you haven’t played The Last of Us? Then this remastered version is an absolute must buy. If you already own it on PS3? I’m not sure the upgrade is really worthwhile. This isn’t a ‘remastering’ on the level of, say, Wind Waker HD on the Wii U. That’s just my view.
What are your thoughts? Anyone been playing through this? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
34 responses to “Community Review: The Last Of Us: Remastered”
I’ll be finishing TLoU finally personally, so pretty pumped to get a hold of this soon
As someone who finished on pre-gen and doesn’t own next-gen, can I still give my review on it?
You have my permission. Now, type! Type away!
I have not played the game and don’t own a ps3, but it looks fantastic. Will probably bet a ps4 later on and get this.
Well it’s been a year, let’s see if I can remember.
The characters and environments are fantastic. Some of the set pieces can really be rather tensed. I like how the A.I. is good enough to “lose” the player, if you get spotted they’ll chase you down but if they lose sight of you they’ll only approach or seek through areas. They won’t “forget” you like so many stealth games do, they’ll be aware you’re still in the area and act accordingly.
Not counting allies though as they’ll walk into enemies and they’ll never notice (enough people have joked about this).
There’s a real sense of bonding between Ellie and Joel. Some of their interactions are great and only rarely come off as forced.
For example, Ellie can enquire Joel about girls in his time not eating to be “pretty” and scoff at the idea. But at the same time she becomes a smartass by pretending she’s checking into a hotel despite the obvious fact that she would have no idea how hotels would work.
The game is at its best when it’s a scrouging game (like Resident Evil). There’s a real sense of vulnerability when missing a single shot with a pistol costs more then missing two rockets in a modern FPS game. The upgrade system is great because nothing you upgrade will increase the damage, so you can’t shove all points into one weapon and dominate with it.
That being said, the scrouging aspects eventually collapses in on itself around the half way mark where you’re loaded up with multiple weapons, shivs, guns and ammo. It defeats the purpose when I can throw a couple of grenades to clear an entire area, then rebuild them back, AND find the materials I needed to create them within the same area. By the end of the game I was either limiting myself by trying to do all areas with stealth takedowns, or just dumping my weapons into the enemy.
Hell, there’s an upgrade where you can counter attack an infected human to avoid instant death at the cost of a shiv and the second I upgraded that ability I never got grabbed by them, usually because I blew them away before they could get close enough.
The story keeps you hooked from early on but I personally feel that it drops the ball towards the end. There’s a moment near the end where the writers couldn’t think of a way to get the characters from a subway to a building across town so they just knock them out and they wake up there.
Not only that, and I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but I felt that the ending took the wrong direction. It really feels like they were building up to an emotional moment that will leave the player in tears and questioning everything they’ve done up to this point but then the publisher jumps in and changes the ending on the off chance they’ll get a sequel to make more money. I really didn’t like the ending (I can’t spoil it either) and every reason I have read from people who think it’s amazing hasn’t swayed my opinion.
It’s still a fantastic game that’s worthy of at least a single playthrough. It may fumble towards the end but up until that moment it’s great to play.
Out of curiosity, what difficulty were you playing on? I played through it 3 times and loved it each time, but for me the “real” way to play it is on survivor difficulty. Then there is genuine scarcity of resources through pretty much the whole game. That, combined with the loss of Joel’s x-ray hearing ability really takes the game to another level.
It’s just a shame that survivor difficulty is locked until you finish the game, as a lot of people wouldn’t bother to play through again even if they liked it the first time.
My normal routine is to play the game on the second highest difficulty setting then replay on the highest.
Unless there’s only 3 settings or it feels like I’m playing another “me-too” game, then I usually select hard.
On Survivor, you complete the DLC Left Behind without ever having enough materials to craft an item. The game is amazingly tense on Survivor. It’s a difficulty level that is tough but fair, unlike Naughty Dog’s previous games (namely Uncharted) where the gunplay/difficulty balancing weren’t good enough to hold up under the stress of a high difficulty.
Me and a friend spent several weekends drinking and passing the controller between each other edging our way through the campaign. I would highly recommend it to anyone, easily one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had.
Survivor mode here (completed on the PS3 already) I was coming through the hotel and I accidentally crafted a spike bomb instead of a shiv and then didn’t have the mats to replace the last one I used on the red X door before the hotel, missed access to 2 shiv doors and knew I could open both if I could get into one of them -_-
Probably going straight to grounded mode after playing the DLC which I missed the first time around.
I stopped opening the shiv doors pretty early on in survivor mode, simply because I was finding the materials you got inside the room generally weren’t worth the cost of a shiv. On normal difficulty I’d open them all because you’d spend a shiv to open it, but there were usually enough materials in there to create a new shiv to replace it, plus a bunch of extra stuff, too.
I opened more shiv doors in my New Game + on survivor because I already had a fair amount of gear so could be a little more loose with my spending of resources.
Yeah although considering how poor and unfair the hard difficulties on Uncharted were I was so apprehensive to even choose Hard the first time through on The Last Of Us. Thankfully it is genuinely “hard”, not “frustratingly hard”.
But at the same time she becomes a smartass by pretending she’s checking into a hotel despite the obvious fact that she would have no idea how hotels would work.
Sorry for nitpicking but… We don’t know everything about her life before the game and prequel comic. She could have read about hotels – she’s literate enough to read comics.
I find it a bit hard to believe that she has never come across a Cosmo magazine but read enough about hotels to understand how they work.
Sounds very cool. I’m also curious about uncharted. Naughty dog seem pretty cool and seem to have some pretty cool stuff. I did play uncharted on the vita, but never finished and didn’t get that far. Was told it wasn’t as good as the ones on ps3
Oh yeah, IMHO, Uncharted vita was about on par with uncharted 1 gameplay wise but with worse story/ plot/ character development.
Uncharted 2 is, again IMHO, perhaps the most visually consistent game I have ever seen. More so than tlou (visually, even remastered somethings can stand out in a bad way) and had groundbreaking storytelling at the time as well.
Only if you remaster your review for proper HD reading.
Never! Must comment first.
Probably will read it in a sec lol
I have it. Never played the original. Was a definite buy for $50 since last-gen never went below $45. Played it for a couple hours and it’s a neat game.
I watch movies and game on a 1080P projector with the screen width of about 3metres.
So yeah, I forget about the rez and just watch the movie, until I put a standard DVD in, and then the crappy resolution and scaling problems bug me for most of the film.
I’m all for higher quality remakes, as long as they are actually 1080P so I’m still not getting scaling artefacts.
This looks stunningly better than the PS3 version on the projector, on a normal sized TV I have no idea if it would look tons better or not, but it was a much better experience on the PS4 when playing on the wall.
I never finished TLoU on PS3, but pre-ordered it for PS4 as soon as I could.
It looks stunning on the new console. I am kind of ruining the story because I’m stopping so often to take photos of the scenery.
One thing still bugs me from the original though (and I know they didn’t upgrade the game itself) but you can’t take supplies from dead military forces. To pretend there are only 5 bullets in the entire area when the soldiers shooting at you are clearly kitted out is pretty dumb. Why can’t I take their bullets, armor and helmets? Because video games.
I found that if you went around stealth killing where possible, you rarely had spare ammo. If, however, you spent ammo to kill an enemy the game would, from time to time, be generous and give you a few rounds for the weapon you used to kill them. A case of not wanting to use the ammo because it is scarce but at the same time, not using it is the reason for its scarcity.
Yep. This is my biggest problem with the game. You’ll take out tough enemies with great guns, but every single time they’ve just happened to have used up their last shot, so no ammo for you,and you can’t take their gun either. Really annoying.
I wasn’t too excited about it myself. It didn’t look that much better. I found it on sale and couldn’t say no. While it doesn’t look much better (compared to other remasterings anyway) the benefits of 60fps is game changing.
I normally play on pc, so I knew it would be better, but in a game like this I didn’t think it would be THIS much better.
Remoteplay is also one of the best, the HUD elements scale well etc.
I’d say it’s worth a double dip if you can get it for about $60 (it’s around that on Psn and ozgameshop)
So far im enjoying the story and some of the characters, Bill was a riot, Joel/Ellie interactions… meh, there good but not great… the heart string tugging moments seem forced (totally picked what happens to his daughter and to tess from the get go)
AI is hit and miss, Companions walking out in the middle of enemies for no reason is off putting and totally throws the immersion, when im trying to be sneaky and use a Bow they start shooting (this really bothers me).
And enemies that appear out of nothing, i’ll have to do an encounter loud, i kill the 4 dudes in the area, then magically there’s another 4 directly behind me from an area that was completely clear only 3 seconds earlier.
Pathing is good in the AI respect they seem to be pretty random with the odd pattern which i like, the enemy zombie encounters are both good and bad, i love running out of ammo/shives when surrounded by clickers and having to sneak/misdirect my way through.
overall its kept me on the couch longer than any console game since DE:HR so thats gotta be a good sign… will reserve full judgement on the story till ive completed it.
I started playing it again on Grounded difficulty and it’s no joke. You strangle a dude from behind or hit him with a bottle and he just turns around with hate in his eyes and effs you up.
The brawls feel more violent and bloody. It’s actually making me avoid confrontation and try to stealth.
Loving it again. Was so close to getting platinum on ps3 then got distracted by GTAV. For some reason I was able to start straight away on Survivor mode though everyone has been saying it’s locked for them.
After playing Watch Dogs and then TLOU the first thing I noticed was how good the facial animations were. Surely it’s still the benchmark, it’s great to have in game scenes have the lips match up to their voices! And the art design is just fantastic, the attention to detail in everything makes every scene a pleasure to look at/explore.
The photo mode is a great addition, all games should have this from now on, though it seems only the pretty games (infamous, TLOU) may get it for that reason. Being able to zoom in and count the individual hairs on Joel’s chest (as you do) during in game scenes really show how good the graphics are.
Saving the dlc for after my first play through but should be awesome.
If you owned a ps3 and haven’t played this game by now then you’re probably never going to and you shouldn’t even be reading this. If you missed it though there’s no reason not to get it
I bought the uncensored PS4 US version on the 29th via PSN and am having a blast! You can tell it was meant for next gen hardware, I think people who say they can’t tell the difference between the PS4 & PS3 versions either need their eyes checked or they don’t have a properly calibrated 1080p TV. It’s beautiful and plays like a dream! 60fps + 1080p is phenomenal.
It’s been a year since I played the PS3 version, so it was almost like the first time for me. I’m loving the uncensored, brutal MP executions! The shorty & double barrel make for some VERY satisfying kills! The way heads “blow apart” rather than just “off” is oh so awesome. Makes killing 13 year old american kids as satisfying as possible.
Get the US version, it only costed me $50. But if digital the DL is 43bg + patch. No issue for me though as I have 100mbps/40mbps NBN.
I really struggled with this game on the PS3, the shitty framerate and the required reflex play were at odds with me. Cliched story elements notwithstanding…
My thoughts were that the old girl (PS3) was really struggling to run this game. It looked very grubby on my projector / screen at 96″. The remastered version with it’s silky smooth framerate (most of the time) and gorgeous visuals are a treat for me now. And I’m loving the game more than I did last year…
Why did you guys (Kotaku) use the ollllllld art with the original Ellie model for the header? That’s bugging me now :/
Pretty happy with all aspects, except at one point I notices some drop in fps that made me consider locking it to the 30 fps option. Drop in frames botgers me more that consistently low frames, breaks the immersion for me. Don’t know why, it just always has.
All in all though, considering how fast they made this a 1080p/60fps game compared to last gen (which still looked fantastic considering the hardware) it puts my hopes up high that R* can do the same with GTA Online for current gen and pc.
REMOTE PLAY!
If you played it and enjoyed it already on PS3 there is no reason to update here.
If you haven’t played it yet – you must pick it up.
It looked pretty cool in the couple of videos I watched, and I’d definatly wach a movie, but I have an Xbox.
Do I get a prize for my review??
Fantastic, love the game! I would love to give multiplayer a few more tries, but my internet connection keeps dropping, unable to play.
Was really looking forward to this but just started playing and even on easy mode I’m getting killed way to often! Cannot seem to figure out how to sneak past anyone. I’m going to give it a few more tries but maybe not the game for me.
Same with AC4 can’t even get passed the tutorials trying to catch a pickpocket as I never manage to get him in time.
In a way I would like it in these games if there was a story mode (like in LA Noire and others) where you can just ignore or by pass the game elements if you can’t do them after a number of attempts