The Last of Us is a cynical game. I don't mean its grim atmosphere, or its gruesome setting, or its storyline. The cynicism I see is in the way the game plays, in the decisions its developer made and considered to be important. Unfortunately, cynicism sells these days, and the game's creators have found near-universal acclaim for crafting a fake, disingenuous experience that simply refashions the culture's most popular ideas about entertainment, with a level of self-conscious style bordering on narcissism. The painterly faces of Joel and Ellie are now everywhere.
I'm writing this review late, so I won't rebuild arguments that The Last of Us is buggy, and linear, and offers rinse-repeat stealth action with frequent trips back to a checkpoint. Problems like these used to be cause for alarm. (If the car in your driveway looks great, but putters down the street, it's an issue.) Naughty Dog knew it wasn't selling anything new, so it made sure to wrap the mediocrity in a shell that was practically irresistible to today's gamers.
If you wondered, "would I turn in the outbreak described in the game?" on the subject of the game's hype, I have an answer. I didn't turn. I'm immune. The decades-long obsession with walking corpses and pandemics doesn't move me, and doesn't force us to crown the game a masterpiece, all by itself. If being indifferent to zombie-style stories disqualifies me from a game like The Last of Us, then my charge of cynicism holds. The game is an exercise in atmosphere. As a fan of story, I am drawn in by drama, and The Last of Us offers drama in a wholly-expected way, but nonetheless, the game looks promising for the 10 minutes it builds its story and introduces you into its world.
... to go nowhere. The game itself is the bugs, is the linear storyline, is the rinse-repeat. The game is the morose atmosphere, the "we could be killed senselessly" weightiness that becomes cause for philosophizing about the "meaning of it all," just as in every other story of a pandemic or an apocalypse. But it's pretty. But it's from Naughty Dog, (a developer once loved for an actual video game series that served compelling gameplay, and atmosphere).
As if admitting the game itself is weak, fans of The Last of Us reference Citizen Kane, to capture their serious adoration. Because the game uses professional-quality voice acting? Because the plot is annoyingly held back, only revealed in painfully-slow increments? Because it is requisitely grim and self-important? Because it's about life 'n stuff? And so the fans drag a computer program manipulated with a controller into the classical pantheon.
Citizen Kane was an engaging movie about freshness and novelty, everything about it. From its boisterous acting troupe, to inventive camera techniques, to its daring subject––an attack on a real-life media figure with the power to start wars and destroy people––Citizen Kane was everything The Last of Us is not. Real. New. Frightening.
There were a lot of fashionable, vapid movies released the year of Citizen Kane. They're forgotten now, justly. Ten years ago, a video game as thin and tedious to play as The Last of Us would be quickly forgotten as well. Today, it thrives. The cynical, masterful developer that Naughty Dog seemingly has become, it knows. "We don't need to create better games. We just need better references in our games." Gaming cheats have always known, playing the game is too tough, but there's nothing more effective at grabbing attention for yourself than gaming the system.