E3 2012 Hands-On: The Last Of Us

There are a number of intriguing titles coming out for the PlayStation 3, but one that easily bumps its way to the top of the list is The Last of Us.  This latest project from Naughty Dog, the development team behind the Uncharted series, marks a new direction for them as you fight for survival rather than leisure.  Sony recently invited us behind closed doors at E3 2012 to take a special look at the game.  

The world has been rocked by an unexplained survival event, and Joel finds himself teaming with the much younger Ellie as they fight against both human and mutated threats using limited firepower and whatever else they can find.

In previous footage of The Last of Us shown Monday night at the Sony press conference, we saw Joel and Ellie take the most visceral route in taking down bad guys as they fought through an abandoned home.  This time around, they still have to make their way through the structure, but instead of going all-out to kill everyone they take more of a precautionary approach, hiding behind objects and walls.

This marks one of Naughty Dog’s biggest achievements with The Last of Us.  The game leaves it up to you to approach the different challenges in a number of ways.  Depending on the method, you can see the events unfold as a result.  

We saw this clearly by taking a secondary route into the home.  The stage still starts the same as it did during the Sony presser, though now Joel stops to take notice of a really crappy werewolf movie poster which Ellie comments on.  From there, the duo go into the house only to find there’s no ladder to take them up to the second level.  They have to work together to push over a desk, boost their way up to the level, and push down a ladder, which Joel can then climb so they can proceed onward.

By the time we reached the second level, things began to look quite familiar as thugs were making their way through the house to ransack it.  However, instead of killing them off one by one, Joel fights more for survival purposes, taking one hostage before eventually putting them all down so he doesn’t alert the others.

The battle does eventually lead to a firefight of sorts, but Joel has to conserve his bullets, like last time, and uses objects in the environment to his advantage like an empty bottle for a distraction and a brick to bash someone’s head in.  He eventually finds himself in a dangerous situation when a thug hurls a Molotov cocktail at him, but he survives and rejoins Ellie in a nearby elevator shaft.

We made our way to the top of the elevator, wobbling loose due to old age, and Joel managed to give Ellie a boost to an opening in the shaft.  The elevator then gives away, separating the two as Joel swims around in the depths below.  He tells Ellie to stay put and begins to navigate his way through these sewer-y waters, using only a flashlight to his advantage as the demo faded to black.

The multiple approaches you can take in The Last of Us really do add up to something special, and we can’t wait to see more of it as E3 rolls on over the next couple of days.  While this was more of an eyes-on demo, we can’t wait to get our hands on the game and report back with the latest!