Sony has a huge booth on the Electronic Entertainment Expo show floor this year, and among the first-rate efforts it’s showing for PlayStation 3 is "The Last of Us," the latest game from Naughty Dog, developers of the "Uncharted" game trilogy.
But don't expect another adventurous tale of treasure hunting.
Instead, "The Last of Us" tells a vast story of survival. The world has been ravaged by some unexplained global pandemic. Joel, an old straggler who remains uninfected, finds himself fighting to keep alive. Ellie, a young girl, is sticking right by him — hopeful they’ll make it out together.
But they'll have to deal not only with mutants affected by the event, but with thugs who are ransacking for their own purpose (similar to the challenge in " The Walking Dead ").
At E3, Naughty Dog showed some shocking footage, including a dramatic encounter in which Joel's shotgun blasts the face of one of the thugs. However, in the demo we saw, the developers took a different route, showing how you could complete a mission in a lot subtler way. Joel and Ellie hide behind windows and other objects, out of the enemy's view. One is eventually taken hostage to avoid alerting others, but Joel dispatches him very quickly.
With a better focus on simply staying alive rather than playing hero, Naughty Dog has added a great deal of intensity to its latest project. In addition, "The Last of Us" has the most detailed visuals we’ve seen from the company to date, including a gorgeously bleak world in which you don’t know what you’ll need to do to survive. Think of the wreckage in the movie "2012" without worrying about running into John Cusack. [ 'Resistance Burning Skies' Lights Up PlayStation Vita ]
" The Last of Us " doesn’t have a release date yet, but it should arrive sometime over the next year and sell for $60.