The Last of Us is simply the absolute masterpiece of PS3 and one of the most important games ever created. Joel and Ellie in post-apocalyptic America, narrative of rare maturity and emotion. A perfect score well deserved.
Your verdict
Category
Action Adventure1 player18+
Description
Naughty Dog post-apocalyptic masterpiece following Joel and Ellie crossing the United States ravaged by a fungal infection. Published by Sony, released in Europe in June 2013. Reference mature and emotional narrative, realistic tactical gunplay, terrifying infected, detailed environments, and memorable characters. Reference narrative game.
Last of Us, The review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
MAX
Story
★★★★★
"Masterful"
Nature reclaiming the cities, sumptuous natural light and faces of overwhelming expressiveness: the game composes a post-apocalypse of melancholy beauty. The contrast between greenery and ruins and the care for detail reach a rare emotion. This art direction, polished and sensitive, marks the peak of the console.
Signed by Gustavo Santaolalla, the music reduces the orchestra to the essential: a bare guitar, scattered strings, heavy silences. This overwhelming restraint embraces the solitude and the fragile tenderness of Joel and Ellie. This sonic identity, minimal and heart-rending, remains one of the most beautiful achievements of the medium.
Twenty years after the collapse of civilisation, a broken man escorts a teenage girl who carries a hope across a devastated America. The tale turns a survival journey into a shattering story of paternal love and indefensible choices. An absolute peak of video-game writing, its finale haunts you long after.
Gameplay
"Masterful"
Rationing scarce ammo, jury-rigging tools and choosing between stealth and confrontation makes every encounter tense and heavy with consequence. The dogged AI and the hero's fragility sustain a constant tension. The summit of narrative action-survival, it keeps a visceral gameplay and a staging whose impact remains intact.
Fun
"Pleasant"
Addictiveness
"Obsessive"
Combing every ruin for a few bullets, crafting just enough to survive and progressing through a wrenching tale sets up a constant tension that always pushes you to see what's behind the next door. The attachment to the characters pulls the adventure forward. Its encounters can repeat, but the strength of its writing and its atmosphere makes every pause hard to decide on.
Difficulty
"Balanced"
Lifespan
"Massive"
Joel and Ellie's journey across a devastated America stretches over a generous narrative campaign, paced by the exploration of rich settings full of resources to scavenge and artefacts to find. A punishing survival mode and a higher difficulty invite a wholly different replay, while the constant tension lends weight to every hour. A story you linger over on purpose.
Naughty Dog's summit and the PS3's swan song, The Last of Us stunned with its survival tale between a smuggler and a teenage girl in an America ravaged by a fungus. A colossal best-seller, its collector interest rests less on scarcity than on its status as a landmark work of a generation, making it an essential, emblematic piece. An affordable milestone of narrative gaming's golden age.
A cult cover
Backs to each other in a fading light, Joel and Ellie sum up in a single glance the rugged tenderness at the story's heart, while a firefly breaks the grayness. The washed-out tones and intimate framing convey a post-pandemic world where the human outweighs the spectacle. Restrained and poignant, it announces a drama rather than an action game.
Is Last of Us, The still worth playing in 2026?
The Last of Us is an absolute peak of the PS3, one of the most striking works video games have produced. The journey of Joel and Ellie across a devastated post-pandemic America unfolds a narrative of rare maturity and emotional rightness, where every silence and every gaze weighs as much as the dialogue. The tense survival gameplay, blending stealth, tight resource management and desperate combat, magnificently serves the writing. The art direction and the performances stay exemplary. Time has done nothing to dim this shattering experience. To be experienced without fail, it is one of the greatest games ever made.
