A Detailed The Last of Us Game Review for Fans and Newcomers

Some games entertain. Others challenge. And there are those rare few that stay with you long after the last bullet is fired. The Last of Us is one of those games. What starts as a horrific survival story soon becomes something far more personal: a slow-burning investigation of loss, love, and the price of clinging on in a society long gone.

In this review, we’re diving into both parts of The Last of Us—how they've changed narrative gaming, what makes their characters unique, and why, even years later, they still feel like a punch to the chest. There is no doubt about the weight The Last of Us carries—not only as a game but also as a historic event in the medium's history. So, let’s revisit the heartbreak and the end of humanity in one of the greatest stories ever told in video games.

(Spoilers below for The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II)

The Last of Us video game is a brutal, emotional two-part saga set in a world gutted by a Cordyceps brain infection. It starts in 2013 with the first wave of the outbreak: Joel loses his daughter to a bullet fired by a terrified soldier, and twenty years later, he works as a hardened smuggler. Now, his goal is to escort Ellie, a teenage girl immune to the infection, across a hostile, post-apocalyptic United States. What starts as a job becomes a bond, but when Joel learns Ellie's immunity will cost her life, he slaughters the Fireflies preparing to operate and lies to Ellie to protect her from the truth.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/26/971429736/reading-the-game-the-last-of-us-part-2

In The Last of Us Part II, four years later, that deceit explodes. Abby, the daughter of the surgeon Joel killed, hunts him down and murders him. Furious and scarred, Ellie starts a revenge campaign over Seattle's wreckage and spirals into obsession. The game reverses viewpoint, putting players as Abby—letting them see her own pain, her friendship with ex-Fireflies and pariah Seraphites, and her slow realization of the cycle she's repeating.

The last act tracks both women to Santa Barbara, where blood vengeance almost claims all. Not because it redeems anyone, but rather because it comes too late, Ellie's decision to spare Abby marks the most agonizing moment in the game. That’s how The Last of Us game presents only damage, consequence, and a silent, shattered goodbye.

Forget about the fungal apocalypse for a moment—this title delivers a more powerful impact due to its unwavering focus. This one explores the rot—emotional, psychological, and relational—whereas other titles dress up survival with leveling systems and cinematic bravado. The narrative drives every shot you take and every piece of conversation you hear. It asks what you would become if you survived rather than if you did. Just two people clinging to meaning in a world that doesn’t care. That’s the difference.

Tight, suspenseful stealth and resource management define The Last of Us' gameplay. With great focus on improvisation, combat is grounded and tough. Joel is a survivor, not a Superman. Using bottles and bricks, you slip by Clickers; you scrounge for bits to mend yourself; you create DIY tools like shivs and Molotov cocktails. The game reminds you continually that resources are limited; hence, every bullet and bandage is important.

Combat is relatively simple—melee involves basic punching and dodging, and ranged weapons feel heavy and deliberate. Although functional, the AI follows predictable patterns; consequently, stealth encounters seem more like a riddle than a dynamic interaction. Usually comprising moving ladders or locating floating pallets for Ellie to cross water, environmental puzzles are simple. Exploration gives gamers collectibles that highlight the world but hardly influence gameplay. Workbenches and supplements help you make little changes to your gear and skills.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/last-us-part-ii-one-best-video-games-ever-made/

Then The Last of Us Part 2 game arrived, and everything grew more violent, deeper, and sharper. Stealth and fighting were greatly expanded. Now Ellie can go prone, hiding beneath trucks or in dense grass, which totally flips the script. A dodge button and jumping's ability to provide fluid, on-demand movement gave the battle unprecedented fluidity. Far smarter, too, are AI foes; they flank you, interact, and even become emotional when one of their own dies. And finally, dogs, which follow your scent, give stealth sections another dreadful layer.

Crafting improved as well. You might want to enhance your stealth skills or improve your crafting speed; the second game offers more recipes and allows you to specialize your character through skill trees. Real-time animations at detailed workbenches help to modify weapons, giving the act of modification significant and immersive power. Particularly on Ellie's first day in Seattle, exploration started to feel more open-ended, too. Players might search side stories entirely off the main path, wander a semi-open terrain, find hidden structures, and crack safes by piecing together contextual cues.

Source: https://medium.com/super-jump/the-brilliant-crafting-system-in-the-last-of-us-bb33f221f2c1

Along with the rest, the AI companion changed. Dina and others assist with problems, call out enemies, and fight actively. They feel like actual, responsive partners. And gameplay gets considerably more varied when the narrative moves between Ellie and Abby. Every character offers different points of view and challenges you to change your playstyle by having their unique weaponry, fighting techniques, and upgrading routes.

Joel and Ellie's connection is sculpted in silence, shared trauma, and all the things left unsaid. You cease perceiving them as just characters halfway between evading Clickers in a wrecked subway and watching sunbeams flow through broken glass. To you, they become actual human beings. Joel, the worn-out man who vowed off love after seeing his daughter and world fall apart. Ellie, the sharp-tongued girl too young to bear all the weight she does, does it nevertheless since she has no other choice. Their relationship is neither sentimental nor clean. It's messy. It is based on anguish and lies as well as sacrifice. And with all of this, The Last of Us video game is among the most human things gaming has ever displayed for us.

Something in Joel closes up from the second he loses Sarah. You feel it. He wanders through life like a man half-alive, doing whatever it takes to keep on but never truly present. Then Ellie enters his life—not with trust, not by choice, simply as a job. Joel accepts when Tess nudges him into it, but his eyes show doubt. Tess is aware of Joel's terrified admission: moving Ellie across the country could cause him to break once more. She's also right. Joel begins to care somewhere along the road. You notice it in his yelling when Ellie is under threat. In the way his voice softens, gently, over several dozen hours. During the quiet moments, The Last of Us game allows you to connect with them directly.

Source: https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/the_last_of_us_ellie_and_joe_story_game_show

But none of this matters without the environment they live in. Every supporting character reflects what Joel and Ellie could yet be. The strongest alert is from Bill. Bill lives like someone who thinks connection is a death sentence, alone in a walled ghost town steeped in booby traps and paranoia. Though communicated through ripped pages and subdued glances, his story with Frank is nearly a whisper. Still, it's enough.

When you encounter Henry and Sam, the cost of their connection becomes unbearable. Seeing Sam grow and Henry fall apart is terrible since, by then, you start to think that perhaps the universe can have positive events. Perhaps Joel, Ellie, Henry, and Sam, this makeshift family, might really make it. The rug is then violently dragged out. It’s a turning point not just for the story, but for Joel, who goes quiet for days after. You don’t need a cutscene to tell you what he’s feeling. The game knows you’ll feel it too.

Source: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a42756910/the-last-of-us-henry-sam/

Joel's brother Tommy is the one flickering point of stability left. Living in Jackson among people, a wife, and a life. He is evidence that survival does not always equal isolation. Joel finds he envies it and rejects it. He wants to drive Ellie away, separate her from Tommy, and shield himself from what he already knows—he loves her. He also understands the expenses of loving someone in this world.

Ellie, for her part, isn’t just a passenger in this journey. She’s actively becoming someone. The DLC, Left Behind, is essential to understanding her, not because it adds lore, but because it shows what she’s lost. Riley wasn’t just her friend; she was the one person Ellie let herself believe in. When she died, Ellie was left with a bite mark and a mountain of survivor’s guilt. And then Joel lied to her. Took her purpose, twisted it into a secret, and tried to build something with her on top of that lie.

The heartbreak of The Last of Us 2 game isn’t just Joel dying—it’s Ellie never getting to forgive him while he was alive. She tells him she's willing to try at last, the night before his death. That little, visceral instant is the core of all that follows. Ellie slides into violence, her grief displaced rather than merely seeking retribution. Mangled love. From Jesse to Dina to Lev, every individual she interacts with in Part II is another mirror. Still another opportunity for introspection or breaking free.

And then Abby comes around. Until you do, the type of person that really irritates you so profoundly that you cannot even see straight. Until the game makes you sit in her shoes, live through her losses, and understand that the same despair that twists Ellie into a ghost has done the same to her. Joel ties Abby and Ellie together. Through what he did and what he intended. Whether as a father or as a symbol, how loving he was destroyed them both in different ways.

Source: https://www.noobfeed.com/articles/why-hating-abby-is-justified

The infected or the gunplay is not what makes The Last of Us so compelling. It is the painful slowness of a guitar string. Joel refers to Ellie as "baby girl" during a time when she is too damaged to speak. Ellie's journal writings seem more real than most people's tweets, for starters. It's the agony of losing someone and the delight of discovering family in an environment devoid of growth. Seeing Ellie drop that guitar behind at the close of Part II, one knows—without words—that this is the last piece of Joel she is bidding farewell to.

The silence in The Last of Us initially grabs you. This uncomfortable quiet follows the fading music, leaving only the sound of wind traversing through a broken window frame or the steady groan of an old floorboard underfoot. From the very beginning, this world isn’t loud—it’s listening. And so you listen too.

Visually, the game doesn’t need to shout to impress. It lets decay speak for itself. Roads split in half and choked by nature, crumbling buildings buried in green, fluorescent lights humming in the distance of long-abandoned stores. Every place tells you exactly what happened here—and more crucially, what was lost. Understanding the backstory of a world where the lights went out and nobody returned requires no cutscene. It is in the boarded-off stores, the moldy couches, and the teddy bear on a bloodstained mattress. Building its story into the textures of its environment, The Last of Us layers memory into every chamber.

Source: https://thedeadpixels.squarespace.com/articles/the-last-of-us-video-games-as-art

The restraint is what makes that visual narrative impact harder. For dramatic purposes, Naughty Dog does not clutter the screen with post-apocalyptic trash. It allows the nothingness to speak. And when it doesn’t want you to look, it wants you to listen. The score of Gustavo Santaolalla seems to follow you. Raw, sparse, personal—plucked strings that evoke more of aching nerves than of music. It sounds like someone attempting to recall a song they used to know. Even the instruments sound like they have survived the apocalypse. There’s one track, “The Outbreak,” that feels like it could collapse at any second.

To be honest, the clickers' sound design is among the cruelest things the developers have ever done to us, in the best way. Your whole body contracts the first time you hear that piercing, dry click. They can't see you. They hear you. Every broken plate on the floor and every heavy breath you take—everything becomes dangerous. You are prey.

But The Last of Us doesn’t rely on spectacle. It could, but it doesn’t. It's never about flaunting, even in its most cinematic moments—like standing in the Salt Lake City zoo ruins watching giraffes move over a field of wreckage. That moment disturbs the rhythm of survival, not because it is beautiful, though it is. It helps you to realize that life is still trying. That, even with the decay and collapse, something pure still moves across the remains. The game also lets you stop right at that point. Just Ellie, breathing it in—no shooting, no creeping.

Source: https://lhsantos89.medium.com/children-an-odd-force-that-transforms-us-bf3472445518

The game is such that the frightening room is the one devoid of sound. Where someone gently tuning a guitar marks the most dramatic scene without a confession. And perhaps the most striking graphic isn't a devastated city—it's a broken man staring at the girl who made him care again

The Last of Us game on PC (or any platform) isn’t your typical action shooter. These tips will help you survive longer and waste less.

Let Infected Fight for You
When enemies and infected are near each other, stay hidden and let them fight it out. You’ll save ammo and avoid unnecessary risk.

Ammo and Weapons Break — Save Them
Bullets are rare. Melee weapons break. Don’t use either unless you have to. Prioritize stealth or distractions when possible.

Search Everything
Every room has potential. Look in drawers, on shelves, and under desks. You’ll find crafting materials, ammo, and collectibles. Don’t skip a single corner.

Craft Shivs and Keep One Ready
Shivs are lifesavers. They kill clickers and let you perform silent takedowns. They even open special doors. Keep at least one in your inventory at all times.

Use Bottles and Bricks to Control Enemies
Toss a bottle to lure an enemy into a trap or distract a group. You can stun someone with a throw and follow up with a quick takedown.

Use Accessibility Features to Your Advantage
Options like Auto Pick-Up, Enhanced Listen Mode, or Slow Motion while aiming can make the game smoother and more manageable without removing the challenge.

Hold On to Crafting Ingredients
Craft only when needed. It's tempting to make gear early, but if you use everything too soon, you’ll have nothing when things get tough.

Prioritize the Right Upgrades
Focus on weapon damage and stability first. For Ellie’s skills, upgrades like extra health, stealth boosts, and better listening are worth the early investment.

Don’t Rush Into Fights
Combat can punish bad decisions. Scout the area, make a plan, and strike when it’s safe. If things go wrong, back off and reset.

Take Time to Enjoy the Game’s World
The visual detail and sound design are incredible. Pause and take in the scenery. Whether it's crumbling cities or eerie silence, The Last of Us game characters and environments tell their stories.

Fan responses to The Last of Us were explosive. From the time players encountered Joel and Ellie, the characters became household names for everyone, even those somewhat engaged in gaming culture. At the time, nothing else matched the emotional depth, cinematic storytelling, and grounded gameplay hit. People still discuss that finale, that hospital scene, and the moral line Joel crossed ten years later as well.

Then Part II took place.

No sequel in gaming today has generated more debate, division, and depth of analysis than The Last of Us Part II. It challenged viewers to doubt Joel and Ellie's story. To go through loss from another side. To really embody the antagonist. To pay for it and live through the same cycle of retribution that defined Joel's story, but this time as Ellie.

Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-final-last-of-us-2-gameplay-trailer-is-too-violent-for-comfort

Some fans felt betrayed. Others felt seen. Many found it audacious, even revolutionary. A few called it a mistake. One thing is clear, though: none of everyone turned away from Part II indifferent. The way video games interact with their audience underwent a seismic change when that style of narrative—the one that makes you uncomfortable and rejects neat resolutions—became involved.

These games have left a legacy not in sales figures or Metacritic ratings. Following The Last of Us, we watched a tsunami of story-rich games trying to match the emotional highs: God of War, Life is Strange, Detroit: Become Human, Horizon, and A Plague Tale. The risks Naughty Dog took in giving intricate character arcs and emotional consequences top priority over conventional gameplay rewards define these titles.

The Last of Us Part II showed that, if the characters are portrayed with sincerity, players would follow a story, even a challenging, painful one. By the end, Abby—a violent character—became someone many viewers came to relate to. Ellie, who was adored from the first game, was more difficult to watch as she broke down. The borders separating the protagonist from the villain grew hazy. The last chapter wasn't about justice. It was about grief. Forgiveness. Letting go.

Source: https://www.pluggedin.com/game-reviews/last-of-us-part-ii/

And through all of this, The Last of Us video game characters stood at the center of everything. They became symbols—not just of a genre, but of what games could emotionally achieve.

Unquestionably, even outside of the games, the impact has been felt. Celebrated for its realism and acting, the HBO adaptation attracted fresh viewers and vividly brought the characters to life in ways few game adaptations ever do. Schools have included The Last of Us in media and film curriculum. In environmental design, emotional storytelling, and pacing, developers turn it into a case study. And both new and old fans keep creating essays, artwork, and gaming replays to relive certain events.

Ultimately, both halves of The Last of Us performed what only the most significant pieces of art ever accomplish. It switched the media it belonged to. It denied to provide simple solutions. And it left behind a story that will be studied, replayed, and remembered for decades—one clicker, one silence, one broken guitar string at a time.

The length of The Last of Us games varies depending on your playstyle and the specific game:

The Last of Us Part I:

Main Story: Around 14.5-15 hours.
Main Story + Extras: Around 17.5-18 hours.
Completionist: Around 22.5-25 hours.
The Left Behind DLC adds an additional 2-3 hours.

The Last of Us Part II:

Main Story: Around 24-25 hours.
Main Story + Extras: Around 28-30 hours.
Completionist: Around 35-40 hours or more.
So, playing through both main stories will likely take you around 40-45 hours, and aiming for a more complete experience could extend that to 60 hours or more.

The main writer for The Last of Us Part I is Neil Druckmann. He also served as the Creative Director for the game. While other individuals at Naughty Dog contributed to the story and dialogue, Druckmann is credited as the principal writer.

No, The Last of Us is an original story created by Naughty Dog. However, the developers have cited various inspirations, including the nature documentaries about Cordyceps and the film Children of Men.

The Last of Us Part I has a significant standalone DLC chapter called Left Behind, which explores Ellie's past. The Last of Us Part II did not have any single-player story DLC, but The Last of Us Part II Remastered includes a new roguelike survival mode called "No Return."

As we look ahead, one thing is clear: players are no longer satisfied with empty spectacle. The Last of Us proved just how powerful gaming can be—and the hunger for emotionally grounded, cinematic experiences is only growing.

If you’ve got a story to tell, contact Argentics. Our artists create visuals that make emotion leap off the screen, our developers build mechanics that feel as smooth as they are meaningful, and our storytellers know how to turn pixels into poetry. Let’s create something unforgettable—together.