The biggest virtue of The Last of Us is that it stays true to itself right to the end. It sets up the characters and the scenario and never deviates from its course for the sake of entertainment.
It takes the familiar and shows it in a way we've not quite seen before. It's basically a road movie in game form. It's not about the global implications like nearly every other zombie/post-apocalypse story, but about the characters. Now this is a sales pitch most similar stories will have, but with TLoU it actually walks the walk. And this is something many people, even the fans, misunderstand about the ending... It's not what it means for the rest of the world, but what it means for Joel and Ellie and how it changes them.
Ofcourse a lot of what the game does has been done before, but it shows it from a fresh perspective and most importantly fills it with an incredible amount of subtext. We've seen the "lone wolf and cub" story many times before. However, TLoU takes it beyond the "old bitter man learns to love again", and takes it into a darker and sinister place. Same with the Hero/Damsel aspect of the game. And all of this is a natural progression of both Joel and Ellie as characters - It's not forced for the sake of a cheap twist or shock effect. Both of their character arcs come full circle in the end.
The environments, apart from being gorgeous, tell their own subplot of a world that isn't necessarily better of without mankind, but that simply doesn't care whether we're here or not. Throughout the game you see flora and fauna florishing everywhere like it always has been for billions of years, completely indifferent to our suffering. It's this indifference that grants these beautiful levels a tremendous sense of melancholy. Our entire existence is being whiped from the Earth, and the Earth doesn't give a shit and just continues being awesome.
The gameplay at face value is just your typical third-person action, but it's the little details that gives it its edge. The action has been discribed as 'brutal', but that's almost every violent game in a nutshell. The violence in TLoU is frank and earnest. It doesn't revel in it like God of War/Gears of War, yet it won't sugar coat it like Uncharted either. If I had to give an accurate comparison I'd say it's like the movie A History of Violence. It too has violence in it, and it's the kind that simultaneously excites and repels you. It fills you with this satisfying sensation of "survival of the fittest", yet immediately afterward has you feeling shocked about what has just occured. This happens constantly in TLoU when fighting other humans, as you bash their heads in with a pipe, see it burst open from a rifle shot, or have their arms splinter into bits from a close shotgun blast.
The action gameplay feels like a chore, and appropriately so. Nearly every enemy encounter feels like a struggle just to stay alive, and Joel never takes the violence he inflicts lightly by showing off with sick skillz or making quibs. This is the game staying true to itself and the character of Joel. He's a killer, but not a psychotic killer... yet. His optional dialoge with Ellie at the arcade machine illustrates this perfectly - You're playing a violent videogame with a character who doesn't like violent videogames.
Apart from that the guns you use don't feel efficient, they feel unstable and loud, like real guns. Getting shot will often knock you on your ass, and hearing someone firing a rifle at you from out of nowhere is unnerving to say the least.
And while the action is in essence the same third-person action we're used to, the limited resources force you to change weapons and attacks on the fly and it lends itself well for experimenting. Like throwing a bottle/brick to stun an enemy in order to one-hit kill them. Even your guns can be used to that effect. Or luring infected into a clutter with a bottle/brick and then hurling a molotov at them.
The game also breaks with conventions by not giving you regenerating health or a two weapon limit. And everything from healing, to crafting, to switching weapons from your backpack is done in real-time.
That doesn't mean the game doesn't have flaws though. The start in the quarantine zone is rather slow, the first enemy encounters are bland and uninspired for the tutorial's sake, and the real game doesn't begin till Ellie enters the scene.
Shivs for the purpose of shiving become pretty useless later in the game, since you want to keep them for "shiv doors" anyway, and since strangling non-Clicker enemies holds practically no penalty compared to shiving them. It lasts a bit longer, but that's it. There should've really been a better power balance between strangling and shiving. Strangling should've also been an activity where you hold the button to strangle, instead of just initiating it. This would've felt more involving, but more importantly would allow you to let go if another enemy started shooting at you. Now you just stand there like a chump watching the murder animation play itself out while some goon is blasting you.
Listen mode turns the stealth into a waiting game, taking away that frantic, heartpounding sensation of fucking up when getting spotted by an enemy you've overlooked and dealing with the consequent fall-out. Thankfully you can turn this off, but I'm certain most other players won't, which will help them get through the game easier, but denies them that feeling of hunting and being hunted by enemies you can't be sure of where they are.
The flamethrower takes away any tension the remaining infected encounters might have, since fire not only makes short work of them, but also stun-locks them, even the Bloaters. This weapon should've never been in the game, or just been gimped to take away the stunlock, though that would just make the weapon really unwieldy and frustrating.
The realistic grounded setting can sometimes be a double edged sword. Grabbing things like ladders and planks for crossing gaps feels natural for people trying to traverse collapsed structures and whatnot, but the repetitive nature of gameplay can swiftly reveal the shortcomings. Ellie and other A.I. partners feel individual in their actions and responses, but at the same time this can make them feel disconnected from the gameplay and the tension of the action.
But these are the kind of flaws most other games have. They can sometimes feel more previlant, because TLoU is trying to reach such heights - at which it succeeds the majority of the time - but it's definately nothing gamebreaking.
In the end this is simply one of the most engrosing games I've played in years. People can throw out little put downs like "Oscar bait" and critique the game for having impure gameplay cuz story and cutscenes, but if The Last of Us is the end result of that, then I say bring it on.
