LO1 Game Analysis: The Last of Us

LO1 Game Analysis: The Last of Us

In this analysis I will be looking at The Last of Us in terms of genre, narrative, production process, characterisation, gameplay, target audience and platform. I will be commenting about their use to create the overall game experience.

The Last of Us is a 3-dimensional linear game of the action adventure and survival horror genre. It contains a fair bit of blood and gore, as well as quiet and tense moments to make the audience feel on edge. In this way, it is similar to many other horror games. It has a classic storyline involving zombies, like The Walking Dead.

In the game, a young girl wakes up to find her dad come running through the door to the garden, telling her to “stay away from the doors”. The neighbours have “got sick”, meaning they are now like zombies, and they have to try and escape. The little girl dies and the father must survive on his own. This scary and eerie storyline reflects the gameplay as it is tense and atmospheric. It is slow-moving at first to evoke emotions. The young girl who we play as in the beginning is obviously vulnerable so we want to make sure she is safe and protected. After she dies and we control the father, we feel a sense of injustice and we want to avenge her death, making sure to destroy whatever is causing the “sickness”. This connects with a young adult audience of 18+ because the horror is thrilling and exciting as well as frightening in places, things which a young audience would look for.

The game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. There are a variety of weapons to use to defeat the zombie-like humans. There is also a specially designed “listen mode” to give players improved hearing and spatial awareness to locate enemies. Physics are based on real-life and it is made to look as realistic as possible in terms of movement.

Joel, the main protagonist, is relevant to the target audience of young adults aged 18-40 because he might be the kind of person that the audience want to be. He is their age, and strong-willed and powerful as he has to overcome a damning situation after losing his daughter. Joel has an appeal to the audience after this event because they would feel sorry for him and a strong sense of injustice - they would want to finish the game to avenge her death and restore some kind of order to the world. The character of Joel matches conventions of the survival horror genre as he has to be strong-willed to survive against the odds. The same applies to the action-adventure genre - he is a strong, powerful man who will keep going until the end. Based on my brief experience, I felt the characters were strong. Joel is the only one I played as, and he is physically and mentally strong, as he would have to be to fight on after his daughter’s death. I also felt that the daughter created a strong bond with the audience quite quickly as we wanted to protect her but she dies quickly and extremely unfairly, which makes us want to continue the quest as Joel and avenge her death.

The challenge in the game is avoiding being killed by the infected people and defeating them throughout, in order to restore order. The player is engaged by the game because they have new challenges to overcome in every area they go to. The environments are detailed so the game doesn’t get boring, and the storyline is kept interesting, while the combat also makes the game thrilling and action-packed. The narrative is one of dystopia and damnation with a hint of sadness, which is reflected in the gameplay as it progresses slowly and you don’t know what is around each corner. You are also always on edge because of the danger of the infected. The gameplay evolved in the brief stint that I played for, as first I played as the daughter, before she died and I had to play as Joel. The locations also change quickly and there are always new scenarios and information to deal with, which keeps attention.

I would say that the target audience is adults aged 18-40, and the indicators that this game is for this age range are bad language throughout, gore, combat and scares. The game directly appeals to the target audience because they would be looking for a gritty, adult action-packed game which would keep them entertained throughout. Other games targeting the same audience might be Watch Dogs or The Evil Within, as they are both survival horror games on the same platform. There are a lot of games like this out there with similar concepts of “shooting zombies”, so it isn’t the most original concept in comparison.

The Last of Us was originally only available on PlayStation 3, released June 2013. The Last of Us Remastered was then released on PlayStation 4 in August 2014 to bring better graphics, rendering, combat and frame rate. The game is more suited to PS4 because it is the same game, but enhanced for the newer and more powerful console, so it feels better to play.

The game uses Naughty Dog's own in-house "next-gen engine". The company says that it built on its older engine during the production of the game as they encountered problems, taking problems as they came, to avoid the struggles of creating an entirely new engine.