The Last of Us Gameplay Trailer

The Last of Us is an intriguing game. There's no release date, but it sounds like it'll be around the end of this year or the start of the next.

The game revolves around a pair, Joel (the player character, a slightly grizzled sort) and Ellie (a fourteen year old girl). Unusually for Videogameland they have a father-daughter type relationship, which is an interesting direction for developer Naughty Dog to explore.

The world they're in is a post-apocalypse one, where the human race has been decimated and civilisation toppled by disease. No, don't yawn. It's slightly more original than it sounds, as the disease isn't, strictly speaking, zombieism but a fungal woe that really does exist (although I don't think it affects humans and make them uglier than Yasser Arafat).

I can take or leave apocalypse worlds, but the premise is interesting. I've seen a few videos, and both Joel and Ellie seem well-written and very well-acted. The gameplay trailer I'll embed below has shifted the game from the Maybe to the Probably column, for me. There seems to be a heavy emphasis on realism, with bullets being relatively rare and the combat visceral and intense. I also liked the apparently real time menu, and the fact that a bandage and alcohol can be combined into a Molotov Cocktail or used to make a medical kit.

Here's the video:

Thaddeus