6. Story-Driven Gameplay
Plenty of great games have managed to survive on the strength of their gameplay rather than their story, peppering in occasional slithers of narrative in between each delirious set-piece, but The Last of Us is a game that lets us have it all. It has stunning gameplay, but it's driven first and foremost by the story, which might seem minimalist at first, but slowly develops over the course of the game, wrapped around these two excellent characters. Sure, The Last of Us would probably still have been a great game if it were simply littered with a string of enemy encounters without much of a story to remember, but it's the decision to let the story dictate the pace that truly takes this game to the next level - the level of a masterpiece.