One aspect of Last of Us rekindled my love of games

I replayed The Last of Us a few days ago and after a month of no games and concern I was going off the medium, I was suddenly back in love with it. And it was primarily down to one aspect.

A quick recap of what happened and my days in gaming wilderness

I went through a period of playing huge epic games (apologies for the tautology, I am making a point). A colossal sandbox is my go-to genre. Or FPS. Some games are pretty much both. I played some of my all-time favourite games in a relatively short period of a couple of years – I’ve been an avid gamer for 40+ years. The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, the Uncharted series, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War. The list could be longer but you get the point. The final game that made me think it was time to change was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. An absolutely superb game but fucking colossal.

I tried Indie

I thought I would try something new. Switch up genres a bit. I did some stuff in Dreams which is still great and was really creative. I wrote about it here. I will be using it as more of a platform for drawing and sculpting environments that I’m writing about rather than games though. So I tried Indie games. Quite a few of them. They were fun but I really felt like Journey was the peak for me and after that, I thought I could play a lot of similar stuff on my iPad. My console was for bigger things.

I then gave sports and other genres a go

I tried the sports genre first. I like rugby and tennis in real life (possibly because I have played both). I couldn’t find any decent games in those sports so I went football and golf – Pes 2020 and Golf Club 2019. Nope. Sims 4 was free, so I played that. Then came Doom Eternal and Divinity Original Sin 2. I write about this period that was briefly alleviated by the 12 hours of Call of Duty WW2 here. It was a traumatic time. All the games were genuinely great but deep down, I was kind of bored.

Return to the familiar?

I was growing concerned and needed something familiar. Days Gone and Far Cry 5 were going cheap. I’ve played nearly all the Far Cry games (including Primal) and the reviews were that it was great but more of the same. Days Gone seemed fun but a bit huge and repetitive (I’m probably being unfair). I didn’t fancy either, it was too much epicness. A collectathon with repetitive tasks alleviated by a cleansing burst of violence was not what I needed.

Then the unthinkable – no games for a month

Without really thinking about it, for the first time in decades, I stopped playing games for over a month. I would like to say it was a revelation or that I was suddenly more productive or social, but that would be a lie. I work hard as a journalist and writer by day and spend a huge amount of time reading a mix of fiction and non-fiction by night. I also draw and go out a lot with friends. I am too social according to my liver.

My point is that I don’t play games like people think all gamers do – I’m not playing for hours, day after day. It’s not an obsession where I neglect my health or end up shitting in a bin (that does happen, sadly). It is more like an hour or two on the occasional free evening and maybe several hours at the weekend. I don’t watch sport or terrestrial TV, I play when people do those things. When I quit games for a month, the main difference in my life was that I watched more Netflix.

Enter: The Last of Us Remastered

I had played the original Last of Us on the PS3 and it was one of my all-time favourite games. Just fucking superb. I had the remastered version in my PS4 library and the Last of Us 2 was imminent. I paused my current Netflix binge and thought I would give it a replay.

I had forgotten how superb games are as a story-telling medium and the Last of Us is one of the best. Naughty Dog is one of the masters of this. I had forgotten how great the game-play and graphics are and the remastered version was even more so.

But what stood out and what has brought me back from the gaming equivalent of being at sea, was the narrative. The story, dialogue and characters were as good as anything I had been bingeing on Netflix. In many cases better. The dialogue was well written, the characters utterly believable and, especially given how the story ends, their motivations and story arcs are logical and brilliantly done.

I occasionally had daydreams where I tried to remember what that brilliant series was that I had seen recently, before realising I was thinking of the Last of Us. I guess two of the constants in my life have been a love of books, movies and imaginative TV shows – and games. I love a good story and as games make you involved and force you to interact, the story can be even more intense.

I just love stories.

Suddenly, I find myself in loves with games again. I know what to do. Epic sandbox followed by tighter more linear narrative games. Break it up a little. Maybe chuck in a story-based FPS like the Bioshock series or Metro Exodus and I am good to go.

Games are great again.