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It’s no Halo Infinite or Fortnite, wherein shooting and killing is just a series of numbers ticking up on a scoreboard. Folks have said it before and I’ll say it again: The Last of Us isn’t exactly fun to play.
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Still, in 2022, the violence in The Last of Us still feels upsetting. Their relationship is initially hostile, at best, as Joel is tasked with smuggling the teenager out of Boston and into the hands of the Fireflies, a revolutionary group that wants to use the immune Ellie to find a cure for the infection.Įverything new in The Last of Us Part 1 for PS5 Ellie, on the other hand, was born into this world.
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Joel and Ellie are two of the survivors Joel survived the initial outbreak, although his daughter did not. The main plot begins 20 years following the initial outbreak, where humans have moved into decaying, militarized quarantine zones and remote, dangerous settlements. It feels trite to summarize The Last of Us Part 1, given its significance and ubiquity, but I’ll do it for the sake of anyone else who doesn’t know the setup by now: The Last of Us is set in a postapocalyptic world where humans have been infected by the Cordyceps fungus - a parasitic fungi that infects the brain and turns infected humans into violent, mutated monsters.
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And yeah, it’s still a fucking good game. And now, I have a PlayStation 5 taking up way too much space in my living room, and I can finally say that I’ve played The Last of Us. This is all to say that I had no physical way to play The Last of Us, and, against all odds, I somehow avoided spoilers, too. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences.
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