Very few video games can boast that they’re so good that they’re being remastered and re-released a year after their original release. The Last of Us is one of those games. From the very moment Sony and Naughty Dog dropped our jaws, The Last of Us has been more than just a simple video game: It’s been a harrowing and captivating experience.
Pre-Order The Last of Us Remastered
A year after its release, it’s now the second highest selling PS3 game of all time, with only Gran Turismo 5 moving more copies (though to be fair, it DID have a 3 year head start) worldwide. With nearly 10% of Playstation owners believing and jumping aboard, what was developer Naughty Dog to do with the release of the Playstation 4?
The answer? The Last of Us Remastered. The crazy thing is, the original Last of Us was a visually striking masterpiece on its own, but Naughty Dog wanted to make it better. On June 29th, you get to witness the game in full 1080p, 60 frames a second and a completely rebuilt and re-understood visual experience. The best part is, if you were like me and jumped in head first at full price on launch day, you don’t have to pay the same price again. Originally tagged at $69.99, Sony slashed the price about a month ago, and now you pay $54.99 out of the gate, which is just over 20% less than the original MSRP. The Last of Us: Remastered will also feature a new series of director commentaries, as well as the Left Behind DLC.
What makes the game so stunning? It dared to go places no other games had gone before. It took a hard look at a world ravaged by a 20 year mutated fungal infection, and played the “What if someone was immune and could potentially save the world?” card. This was the journey that The Last of Us sent us on with Joel protecting Ellie, and captivated us from one chapter to the next. Getting hooked to characters, having to say goodbye to them, and braving scare after scare after scare, all while waiting for the next surprise and tale in the storyline. The game was built to make you feel the consequences of your every action too. The AI was quick, and intelligent to your advances right from the very getgo. Unlike other adventure shooters, your consequences were very real to the advancement of the game, and you weren’t going to mysteriously find guns and armor mysteriously hidden in little nooks and crannies. You had to be wise in how you progressed, and how you played the game. Having to craft weapons on the fly most battles without slow down was a HUGE difficulty leap for me, who would often catch breathers in weapon wheels and think about my strategy going forward.
That immediate cerebral element to The Last of Us was something else that gave the game those legs and separated the melee players from the careful thinkers. In the end, there were numerous ways for you to go about how you wanted to succeed from one mission to the another, and I found this out often the hard way. I admit I never reached the end when the game originally released (a combination of the fact that my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child then and too many games coming out in the months ahead to review) but hearing about the Last of Us Remastered had me scrambling back to my PS3 for the first time in months before deciding after a while that I’d just continue the leap in 1080p on my PlayStation 4.
The time is here. Join me on July 29th for The Last of Us Remastered. You can Pre-Order your copy on BestBuy.ca now, or be one of the many to get your copy in-store the day of release.
In anticipation of the game’s release upcoming, leave your personal reviews and experiences of the original Last of Us in the comments below and tell me whether or not you’re going to be getting the Remastered game too.
For great Sony Exclusives like The Last of Us Remastered, MLB 14: The Show and more, visit the Sony PlayStation Online Store on BestBuy.ca
