by Eugen Pfister
(Translation by Catherine Marshall)
After almost two hours of play we finally arrived at our destination. We have crept through the harbour occupied by a military dictatorship, overcome the walls of the quarantine zone, fought our way through a downtown Boston reclaimed by nature and overrun with hordes of “infected”, and now we are finally standing in front of our objecive: the state capitol, officially called the State House, seat of government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. From the outside, the building appears like a smaller version of the much more famous Capitol in Washington D.C. Yet the building was completed in 1789 (and thus 25 years before the Capitol in Washington). In 1874 (and again in 1997) the dome of the building was gilded, and thus shines purposely – like a beacon of democracy – over the roofs of the city. In the game, however, the dome of the now vacant and partially dilapidated government building overgrown with weeds gleams only dully in the evening sun. The government of the US state of Massachusetts is no more, nor is the government of the USA. And yet the building still promises hope, at least in the short term. Here we are to meet a group of rebels who believe they can find a cure for a worldwide Cordyceps pandemic. Our disappointment, then, is all the greater when we discover that the rebels we were supposed to meet here have been murdered by the military shortly before our arrival and we are now caught in the middle of an ambush.
Game name: The Last of Us
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony
Creators: Bruce Straley, Neil Druckmann
Year of release: 2013 (2014)
Platform: PS3, PS4
Setting: Zombie apocalypse, dystopia
Genre (ludic): Action
Gameplay: 3rd Person Shooter / Stealth