Last Of Us Honest Trailer Actually Praises The Game

The Honest Trailers from Smosh Games usually go the route of being overly cynical of some of the popular titles out there. Well, they didn't do that with The Last Of Us for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. Check it out below.

It starts off like it's going to explore how the game received a lot of critical praise and then proceed to take a huge dump on it, but the opposite happened. Instead, the “Honest Trailer” ends up being a promotional piece for Naughty Dog's masterpiece.

I have no qualms with Smosh throwing a lot praise the way of The Last of Us. It's one of the few games that was critically praised by press and received equal amounts laud from the gaming community, too. Most people praised the well-crafted story centered around Joel and Elle, and the heartbreak and pain that helped shape both their lives throughout the journey.

The Honest Trailer does an honest job of breaking down what makes the game so good. A lot of it came down to the solid gameplay mechanics that were refined through years of Naughty Dog working on Uncharted, and a sound mix of atmospheric platforming with light puzzle-solving. An inter-mixture of melee combat, weapon-focused upgrading and various shades of intense gunfights, all helped mold and hew The Last of Us into a nice tour de force as far as gameplay variety and consistency go.

Although, in a way, the Honest Trailer also kind of skirts around some of the more glaring issues of the game, too. And yes, there were some glaring issues.

One of my biggest issues with Naughty Dog's swan song for the PS3 was with the A.I. I know, I know, there are limitations to the home console and something had to give. It's more like a necessary evil that the game's A.I., isn't quite up to scratch rather than the developers failing at their job. But yes, the A.I., can be quite atrocious at times because only a few of the non-player characters can be active at a time, and only a few of them can execute their node paths at a time. Oftentimes – if you're paying attention – you might notice that some of the A.I., companions with Joel will nearly come to a complete halt when a firefight ensues.

Also, the vegetable zombies will at times only attack in segmented waves. Near the end of the game there were quite a few zombies on the screen but only a few that were active. Again, it's a necessary evil that Naughty Dog had to undertake due to the limited hardware capabilities of the PS3. I can't necessarily speak on behalf of the PS4 version, so I don't know if this is an issue that they fixed when it made the leap to the new generation console.

Even still, The Last of Us was easily one of the best games made during the seventh generation of gaming, and Smosh Games' Honest Trailer is more like a tribute to the game than it is the typical cynical barrage that other games get pelted with.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.