10 Video Games To Blame For The Current State Of Games

1. The Miserable, Self-Serious Thriller - The Last Of Us

There's no disputing that Naughty Dog's The Last of Us was a landmark for video game storytelling: lacking the flighty whimsy of Uncharted, it was a serious, grim, and deeply affecting game with some of the most compelling characterisation the medium has ever seen.

And naturally, it wasn't long before other creatives attempted to imitate its almost impossibly bleak tone to varying degrees of success - most all of them inferior, mind.

Perhaps the most memorable recent example is the Sony exclusive Days Gone, a morbid slog of a game that felt more self-consciously edgy than a genuinely moody, atmospheric romp, to say nothing of its tedious deference towards "realistic" survival mechanics.

In much the same way that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight ushered in a decade of try-hard "dark" blockbusters that forgot the crucial human element, so too has The Last of Us challenged other action games to amp up the dramatic stakes while still maintaining a consistent tone and sense of humanity.

If you find yourself groaning at the navel-gazing self-regard with which many modern action games hold themselves, in all of their empty somberness, you can blame Naughty Dog's groundbreaking post-apocalyptic masterpiece in all of its brilliance.