A common controversy among the gaming population is what specifically defines perfection, and can it be culminated in a simple score? What is the standard of perfection? What are the requirements to meet the basis of a good game, and how do you exceed that to be defined, perfect?

In this new little series that I’ve simply titled, Why’d this get a 10/10, I want to explore all of the thought that went into scoring certain games a, “perfect score.” I want to break down things by what I agree with, maybe things I disagree with, and ultimately, determine why the game was scored the way it was.

This is a game that I feel received a lot of genuine controversy for the perfect scores it received on its launch. Many people wrote it off as another post apocalypse style zombie game that wasn’t worth the time investment, or the interest in general. Hell, you may even have that very same thought running through your head seeing it be the topic of this write up. But I feel this game deserves to be talked about in a general and informative way to explore why people felt the way they felt about it. Which is why today’s focus is:

The Last of Us

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Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us is a cinematic, post-apocalyptic story of two individuals journey to find hope in a dying world. This basic summary is typically the first stopping point for people when it came to this game. The familiar tropes of a tired and true zombie story left the curious gamer with a sour memory at first, one that left them un-interested and bored.

This mentality isn’t entirely unjustified either. Gamers desire new experiences for the most part, and when faced with familiarity they will typically welcome it or refuse it.

So in looking at what separates The Last of Us from your average zombie title, we need to set aside our thoughts on its genre and look more into what it is at heart. The Last of Us has been defined by critics at large as, “an experience.”

The praise and acclaim this title received came from where gamers didn’t expect to see it, which was in its ability to tell you its story. And what I believe happened is The Last of Us broke the tropes of your general game. I believe that gamers found more than a simple game in The Last of Us.

Let’s take a look at what former IGN writer Colin Moriarty has to say in regards to this title.

“The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay with a stellar narrative. It never slows down, it never lets up, and frankly, it never disappoints. It’s PlayStation 3’s best exclusive, and the entire experience, from start to finish, is remarkable. I lost myself in Naughty Dog’s vision of a pandemic-ridden United States, in the characters that populate this unfortunate wasteland, and in their individual stories. The 17 hours I spent playing through the campaign are among the most memorable I’ve ever spent with a game.”

Notice that while lightly touching on gameplay, he raves about the experience more than anything else. We can see this exact consensus mirrored in reviews such as, Patrick Klepek’s GiantBomb review.

The Last of Us is not simply Uncharted with zombies, but it couldn't exist without Naughty Dog having made Uncharted first, either. It's a dark adventure, one rarely filled with laughs or joy. There are bitter pills to swallow along the way, and nothing is taken for granted, not even characters. People live, people die. Sometimes it's fair, sometimes it's not. It's still a zombie game, but a sobering one. Take a deep breath.”

Or even in Jim Sterling’s Destructoid review.

There is more to The Last of Us than just combat and "emotional" story tropes. To touch on its setpiece moments, to detail its beautiful changes in pace, would be to spoil too much. It cannot be said enough, however, that Naughty Dog's new best creation iscomplete, and when I say complete, I mean it to pay the highest of compliments. I do not want more from The Last of Us: I do not need more. As the last line was uttered and the credits ushered in the close, I was done. The Last of Us had achieved everything it needed to achieve in order to provide me with everything I wanted.

And it ended perfectly.

These critics speak of this game as if it was more than a game to them. In fact, The Last of Us to a lot of people was truly, an experience. The cinematic drama, raw emotion, characterization and wonderful dynamic the main character’s share is what truly creates the driving force of the game. For the most part, I feel gamers expect to be ready to leap into games headfirst with the story being the ancillary thought and the gameplay being king.

This isn’t to say The Last of Us fails from a gameplay standard. Quite the contrary, the gameplay was quite the solid experience, though I do not 100% feel it is as perfect as critics praised it originally. I feel a lot of this was based on the occasional inability to perfectly focus fire or the twitchy and sometimes unreactive execution of stealth combat. However, for the time it was reviewed, these small critiques have little bearing on what makes The Last of Us so enticing.

What shocked people looking from the outside, into The Last of Us from a story perspective, is that you can’t feel the tension, the connection, the emotional dynamic that you share with these characters as you play them. No let’s play or 15-minute game demo can define what makes the game special. While you may see things you like in the demo, or things that may not interest you, the overall package of the game is combining itself with the ability to immerse you.

This was lost on anybody that hasn’t taken the time to sit down and truly explore the universe of The Last of Us.

When we pick this game apart piece by piece, we begin to realize these pieces in conjunction are what make the game so damn good. When we look at the cutscenes alone, we lost feeling of the gameplay. When we look at gameplay demos, we lose sight of the characters and story. When we play all of this in conjunction, what we are left with is what everyone has been talking about all along.

An experience. A culmination of what Naughty Dog does best, which is tell you a story while allowing you to have fun with that story. Allowing you to feel like you aren’t just playing a game, but are on a journey in graphically gorgeous universe. You are seeing these characters through an emotional rollercoaster ride that you are in control of.

The basis of a good game is, in my opinion, the ability to have you enjoy the game based on the what it is packaged with. Whether that be nothing but gameplay, nothing but story, or a combination, it does not matter. But when you can combine those things to make a good game, and set a standard that exceeds what you thought you wanted, you have created a great game, if not, a perfect game.

And that, my fellow gamers. Is why The Last of Us received a:

10/10
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I hope you enjoyed my first try at a new article piece. I won’t commit to this being a weekly thing but I plan on making it recurring. But I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece of ways it can improve, if you agree or disagree, and what you would like to see next.

Ill be adding a poll for the next game I’ll cover, although I do already have plans for the next title I’d like to look at, so the poll will most likely be for the third game I plan on covering.

This was very experimental and I aim to improve it, so please forgive if there still is a lack of detail or a repetitive nature to it. I felt I did this particular game justice in my initial look, but I would not mind responding to feedback in any way to maybe give this another shot and improve it if it isn’t to your liking.

Thanks for reading guys, your support is everything!

 

[SockNaste]

Idk about you guys, but I am a massive Last of Us fan. I will give a 10/10, hey this is an opinion so no hate or judgement. I can't wait to get the 2nd one. Also to inform you guys I heard the 2nd one has nothing to do with the story in the first one.

 

[jumpman17]

I enjoyed the game, but my issue with it was after a while, all the environments just started to feel the same and towards the end, I was at the point where I was thinking "OMG, I've been running through overgrown city for hours, I'm so bored of this".

 

[grossaffe]

I am not gonna give u any hate, but even the person you quoted didn't say it was a 10/10. So what you just said made no sense

The person I quoted said he initially thought the title was implying that The Last Of Us didn't deserve 10/10 and therefore he hated the thread starter. Therefore it would stand to reason he would hate me when I stated that The Last Of Us didn't deserve 10/10.

 

[SockNaste]

I enjoyed the game, but my issue with it was after a while, all the environments just started to feel the same and towards the end, I was at the point where I was thinking "OMG, I've been running through overgrown city for hours, I'm so bored of this".

Yeah. I also disliked the annoying and impossible incounters with clickers and runners.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

The person I quoted said he initially thought the title was implying that The Last Of Us didn't deserve 10/10 and therefore he hated the thread starter. Therefore it would stand to reason he would hate me when I stated that The Last Of Us didn't deserve 10/10.

Oh I see how you do it.

 

[mediabob]

Idk about you guys, but I am a massive Last of Us fan. I will give a 10/10, hey this is an opinion so no hate or judgement. I can't wait to get the 2nd one. Also to inform you guys I heard the 2nd one has nothing to do with the story in the first one.

Honestly I think Joel's story is done, so the only way I would play it is if it was unrelated to the first one. It's a massive world they can do a different story in the same universe.

 

[SockNaste]

Honestly I think Joel's story is done, so the only way I would play it is if it was unrelated to the first one. It's a massive world they can do a different story in the same universe.

Yeah, but maybe Naughty Dog will be nice and release a DLC for the 2nd one giving us the COMPLETE ending to the story.

 

[Chary]

I remember when I first played the game. While I was expecting the

Spoiler: Spoiler

daughter to die in the beginning

the way that scene was executed is what really "wowed" me. The rest of the game is fantastic, but there's a few things here and there that keep it from being "perfect" I think. However, it took the best parts of that era of games, and I'd even say TLOU influenced how games tell stories. Even though it's not flawless, it's definitely enough for people to give it a 10/10. Very nice article, I'm interested to see how the Mario Galaxy discussion is gonna go.

 

[SockNaste]

I remember when I first played the game. While I was expecting the

Spoiler: Spoiler

daughter to die in the beginning

the way that scene was executed is what really "wowed" me. The rest of the game is fantastic, but there's a few things here and there that keep it from being "perfect" I think. However, it took the best parts of that era of games, and I'd even say TLOU influenced how games told stories. Even though it's not flawless, it's definitely enough for people to give it a 10/10. Very nice article, I'm interested to see how the Mario Galaxy discussion is gonna go.

Yes the most nostalgic game for me. Besides Luigi's Mansion of course. Gosh I loved Mario Galaxy, not the 2nd one. I am also interested to see that discussion.

 

[Steena]

I think you're forcing cliche and trope to be negatives when they simply serve as means of story telling. These tropes exist because they serve as a means of giving character and emotion to the story, just because it exists in other medium doesn't make it a back thing. Especially when you consider that not everyone shares the foresight you share to, "see these things coming a mile away."

Your skepticism sounds like it ruins a lot for you when you can't avoid these kinds of things in story telling. How can you even watch movies or enjoy content if content is based on existing tropes and "cliche's" of
Its predecessors???

The beginning part is cliches done wrong, though. You "play", or rather walk for what, 10 minutes total? There is no character development there. The daughter's death was "please feel bad" bait. You did not grow attached to her, had no reason to, there was nothing going on. They just slapped a kid and then immediately killed it off to attempt to make you feel bad, but without doing any effort in making you actually give a shit. The fact that they made her "playable" (while not being gameplay at all) gave it away that they would kill her to kickstart things, because they thought people would grow attached to a character by walking with it for 20 feet across. Because a movie cannot work like a game, pulling random movie tropes doesn't really work. Since it's a game, you're not investing unique animations/transitions for any model, so it was obvious from the get-go that she was gonna be used as shock value plot device. However it would have had the potential to be ambiguous/open-ended in a movie, because an actor is an actor. In this case, it worked against their own script, ruining it.

And my big question for you really is how do you enjoy games if anything that isn't your basic open world game, is a linear systematic experience that serves to, "take you on a journey?"

This isn't about linearity in terms of world or progression. It's about linearity in how the game is designed and what the developers want you to see. When you first control Joel, and you do the walk explaining thing, you get to your first "open space" that is not a corridor. For the first time in the game, you see objects that are ducking-size, conveniently placed in multiple rows around. Surprise surprise, it's a cover shooting gameplay part. Might as well have a big flashing sign on it, right? The fact that this game is not "open world" is not the problem. My problem with systematic game design is that it gets boring because it's too focused and straightforward. The way tutorials work, the way you go from "play" to "walk" back and forth, it's way too limiting and obvious. You know for a fact, that 100% of the times you are in said "walking storytelling" portions, you will never, say, get attacked, or need to be ready to act quick. Because the game is built in such a way that sets up clear rules on what will happen and what never will, to greater details than most other linear games, and it takes the life out of it. It makes it less engaging because you get a better idea of what's gonna happen next, since they ND are control freaks. If I read to you TLOU's script for the first time, would you feel emotions and grow attached to the events, or would you just say "okay, I guess I know about this thing now"? The more a developer exposes of their story/events beforehand, the weaker/less powerful it becomes, obviously. Tunnelvisioning a player/spectator can be a double edged sword, and ND are one of the biggest offenders for using this wrong throughout their games.

How many tricks and deceiving moments have actually happened for you in story telling and games, and how many of those moments have been replicated since the first game to do it... Did it?
And a better question is really, is it that bad to base your games off of these concepts when this could be the first experience for that person?

It's all about not being extremely obvious/lazy with how you tell a story. When you give it away yourself, I don't care if your plot device trick was done a million times or it's brand new, it was done badly. That's about it.

To summarize my point of view, one of the things I like most about games is how atmosphere/mood/setting/gameplay/difficulty/storytelling/purpose/music/pacing/design/etc can all blend together into one coherent experience. TLOU has very detatched moments from many standpoints within itself, and the coherency is often only superficial or mainly favoring the storytelling alone against everything else. It is because games (and only games) can do all of these things, I find it a waste/unremarkable for TLOU to be a game instead of a book or movie.

To give you an extreme example, I think TLOU has more ludonarrative dissonance than Katamari, as weird as it may sound.

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I don't think the last of us was a 10, but I respect what Naughty Dog is trying to do with the medium. It's hard to cross the line between movies and games and get the right balance and the story and presentation is definitely what hooked me on the game.

I reserved it for launch and I wasn't going to play it right away because if my back log but I popped in just to check it out and that opening scene roped me in and kept me going.

That said, at some points it becomes to linier and forgets it is a game.

This is an interesting discussion after the explosion at IGN this morning about The Witness getting a 10, at the end of the day though we have to remember that a review is one person's opinion and that can very much very skewed by how much they like a genre/developer/etc

I don't care for FPS games so if you asked me to review one I am sure my disdain of the genre would leak in to it. I am a self admitted massive Nintendo fan boy so I am sure that would also leak in to a review if I scored say a new 3D Mario game. For example I am also a huge Infamous fan so I loved Second Son even for all the negativity around it, but how much if that did I miss because of my love for the series?

Sometime I think reviews can be products of the time to. It would be interesting for the same reviewer that gave a game a 10 to look at it again 10 years later and see what they thought. Some games are timeless and some not so much. When I played Last of Us at launch I would had said a solid 9 but after replaying the PS4 version I wasn't so amazed by it and probably would have gone a bit lower.

Yeah reviews really hold little value, mainly because people doing the reviewing have no standards and it's pretty much just the opinion of a random dude. There is no certification, no experience requirements, etc. I've seen plenty of games being reviewed by people who admitted they never played a game in the same genre, or hated it. I've also seen games being reviewed by fanboys. It gets pretty dark both ways, I always thought reviews should have multiple opinions from different experiences, from the veteran of the serie, the veteran of the genre (who is new to the serie/game), and the brand new person, so you can catch things in a broader spec
In general, reviewers rarely even include their past experiences within the genre/medium, which makes the review impossible to be relate-able to people.

 

[Hells Malice]

I do always question why it got 10/10.
Alright gameplay, and a story that really dropped it in the last few hours.

Graphics were nice though. Can't say I remember any of the music.

 

[DesuIsSparta]

The game wasn't perfect, but it still gets a 10/10 for me. Naughtydog hasn't failed me yet. Jak and Daxter, Crash Bandicoot, they're all great games and they're always well-made. You can really feel the passion while playi

 

[Tigran]

I'm sorry.. The gameplay was okay, *nothing special*.... But I couldn't get into the story at all.

It is -extremely- cliche and predicable. So they are fungus zombie instead of virus zombie... that's about the -only- difference between it and a lot of other similar stories.

I didn't find any of the characters particularly likable or even to give two craps about one or the other.

I do agree the gameplay was okay, but it wasn't anything new. I like naughty dog... but like a lot of their games, it seems like they see something like Banjo Kazooie/Mario 64 and go "Lets do that!"

I think that's what honestly killed Last of Us for me is it really... -really- felt like a "Lets copy that!" game more than anything original with heart and soul put into it.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

Heh, I enjoyed the game, but it din't really stuck to me, I guess. I mean, I liked the characters, the gameplay and whatnot, but sometimes, it just felt like
stuff I've already seen in other countless games. Like, I'm just too much Genre Savvy, I guess.

The Last of Us has been defined by critics at large as, “an experience.”

Meh, I'll tell you what game really felt like an experience for me.

Spoiler: This is my opinion. If ya don't like it, ok, I guess. Just don't get mad or something.

Undertale

 

[gudenau]

You know, I never heard of this game.

 

[Swiftloke]

Why isn't Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door or Mother 3 on this list?

 

[dontay0100]

I did check out this game for a short time out of curiosity, but it's a console FPS that runs at 30fps, which is enough to turn me off. I decided to watch through all the cutscenes, since the story is what people loved about it, and I can see why other people liked it.

FPS wtf R u talking about?

 

[Ericzander]

Bravo. This article was a great idea and I hope you keep going. You're reviewing the reviews. Very meta.

 

[TecXero]

FPS wtf R u talking about?

My mistake was already addressed here.

 

[chavosaur]

Why isn't Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door or Mother 3 on this list?

Because neither of them got 10/10's from a majority of critics.

 

[gcunit]

10/10 doesn't have to mean 'perfect' you pedantic ****wits!

10/10 can just be 'it was closer to 10 than 9' - you ever heard of rounding to the nearest whole number?