10 Reasons The Last Of Us Is STILL The Best Video Game Of All Time
2. The Environments
Abandoned by society and left for mother nature to reclaim, the post-apocalyptic America presented in The Last of Us is simply stunning. Ivy creeping up the walls of rundown 21st century architecture is a sight we so rarely see in today's world, yet Naughty Dog's commitment to creating a dystopia orchestrated by natural causes somehow manages to feel plausible.
There's a beauty in the fusion of natural and man-made, so meandering through suburban areas, picking through long-forgotten relics of the last two decades is never dull.
Most AAA titles demonstrate environmental variety by selecting certain areas of a map and designing them to look fundamentally different from one another. Icy northern territories and the dusty, deserts of western areas are often present in an abundance of games today, yet The Last of Us has the uncanny ability of constantly providing diverse backgrounds that still manage to remain faithful to the game's core setting.
Perhaps a metaphor for the cordyceps fungus that plagues Humanity in The Last of Us, natures ability to latch onto the fundamental instruments of 21st century like buildings, roads and parks is constantly engaging and always fresh.