The Last of Us Part I review: Revolutionizing gaming in a new way

digitaltrends.com:

After taking a few years off from gaming, I bought a PS4 in 2014. It came bundled with a free copy of The Last of Us Remastered, a game I didn’t know much about outside of its sterling reputation among critics. Less than a week later, I found myself staring at my TV, my mouth hanging open as I processed the game’s stunning final hour. “So, this is what video games can do,” I thought to myself. My previously narrow view of the medium as escapist entertainment was smashed wide open like a golf club to a skull.

A lot has changed about video games between then and the release of The Last of Us Part I, Sony’s new PS5 remake of a PS3 classic that got a PS4 upgrade. While it was a revelation even still in 2014, developers have since taken its coveted blood and injected it into everything from God of War to Tomb Raider. Returning to the PS5 glow-up eight years after I first played the remaster feels a bit like going back to 1985’s Super Mario Bros. While many games I play today have its DNA, it’ll always be patient zero.

The Last of Us Part I shows that Naughty Dog’s gritty action game is still an enduring classic that hasn’t aged a day. Though that’s largely because Sony won’t allow it to, as evidenced by a mostly superfluous remake that doesn’t meaningfully improve on the game’s perfectly modern (and much cheaper) 2014 remaster. However, the project does once again push the industry forward in an important way: by raising the bar for accessibility in gaming’s past, present, and future.

The Last of Us Part I is a difficult game to critique for a variety of reasons that’ll become clear shortly. No matter how many philosophical gripes I have with the entire idea of the remake’s existence, it’s still the best version of what I’d