The Last of Us Part I
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
Brutal third-person combat against human survivors and fungal Infected using guns, bows, melee weapons, and chokeholds, with heavy blood spray and close, personal kills.
Sustained bleak subject matter including grief, child death, cannibalism, and moral ruin in a collapsed society.
Strong profanity, including f-words, is used frequently throughout the dialogue.
Alcohol is consumed by adults and a young character is shown drinking, and characters smoke and reference drinking.
Tense stealth encounters with grotesque fungal Infected such as blind Clickers create frightening, dread-heavy sequences.
The player character is a smuggler who robs, ambushes, and kills other survivors to survive.
Joel violently interrogates and stabs a captive to extract information in a directly depicted scene.
A predatory antagonist menaces a young character with implied sexual threat during the winter chapter.
Suicide is a recurring theme, including an on-screen scene where a character takes his own life.
Shotgun blasts and explosives can visibly cause decapitation and dismemberment of enemies.
A pin-up adult magazine with suggestive imagery is found and referenced by characters.
A brief sequence has the player hunt and shoot a deer for food.
A crude sexual remark is made about a found adult magazine, and the Left Behind chapter includes a kiss between two teenage characters.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Set two decades after a fungal outbreak destroyed civilization, this narrative-focused action-adventure follows a lone player through a ruined America. The story centers on Joel, a battle-worn smuggler tasked with moving a teenaged girl, Ellie, from one edge of the nation to the other; along the route, the pair contend with mutated infected beings as well as dangerous bands of fellow humans. Fighting is graphic and grounded, drawing on firearms, archery, and makeshift close-range tools, and foes can be quietly eliminated, strangled, or blown apart, with detonations severing limbs or heads. Coarse language recurs often, and the plot handles weighty material such as eating human flesh, deliberately inflicted suffering, self-inflicted death, mourning, and the loss of young lives; it also shows momentary drinking, a discovered adult publication, and a suggested sexual menace aimed at a minor. Warped, unsettling Infected turn certain stretches into something resembling a horror experience. Nothing connects online: no multiplayer, no messaging, and no paid content exist.
How it's framed
Rather than celebrating its brutality, the title renders bloodshed as costly to the conscience and born of desperation, holding endurance, affection, and bereavement at the core of the narrative. The line dividing good from evil is intentionally muddied, leaving the player to reckon with what savage decisions produce. Its finale resists closure, remaining open-ended and heavily argued over instead of comforting.
Details
- Developer
- Naughty Dog LLC
- Publisher
- PlayStation Publishing LLC
- Released
- Mar 28, 2023
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