2. The Infected
I'm not a fan of games that involve zombies, dark areas, loud noises, things that jump out at you, any form of sneaking as well as a long list of things that terrify me; so The Last Of Us was a rather new experience for me. When I met my first infected I screamed like a little girl and when I was ambushed for the first time I'm quite certain I threw my controller at the screen and ran out of the room screaming wildly. All that being said there seem to be two trends in modern media when it comes to zombies/infected monsters. You either have every person the same, running towards you drooling for brains and blood or you have different types and classes with all manner of different attacks. Naughty Dog seemed to have attempted the latter rather half-heartedly by giving us four types of infected. I know I've said four types, but in truth there are really only two types of infected; clickers and the normal kind. There's supposed to be a type that follows you around and ambushes you just like the Hunter in Left 4 Dead, but honestly after 2 play-throughs I encountered it once and I'm not even sure whether it was a different type. The other type is merely a normal clicker with a lot more armour, but I think you only encounter them 3 or 4 times through-out the game so they're more level bosses than an actual type of enemy. It's understandable that Joel isn't going to travel through infected ridden zones, but you would have thought that you'd come into contact with them a lot more than you did through-out the game. I've admitted more than enough times that I'm a wimp, but I rather enjoyed getting around the infected during my second play-through on the hard difficulty. They don't really jump out at you and you can easily evade them if you're moving slowly enough and this brings me to the problem with the infected enemies, it's too easy getting round them. Naughty Dog supply you with a vast array of weapons as well as a nifty little power that allows you to hear exactly where the infected are located, so for anyone playing the easy or normal difficulty setting it's not too difficult getting round them. For instance, in one area where you're passing through the drainage tunnel under a hill you emerge into a larger tunnel with about 10 of the pesky monsters moving about. Given that I couldn't attack them with my metal bar and only had 3 shivs, there's no way that I could charge them head on. No worries says Naughty Dog whilst giving me 6 different guns, some nail bombs, Molotov cocktails and a shotgun. I know the idea was to sneak around them, but what's the point when I can just shoot right through them? I Am Alive and other survival games give you the option to either sneak past or distract the enemies with a head on attack being only for desperate occasions. The clickers may respond to sound, but dear lord they're deaf in most cases. For instance I was firing off my shotgun like some sort of 4th July parade and it only seemed to draw the attention of about 2 clickers. I'm no expert when it comes to shooting guns in enclosed spaces, but surely if you're firing off a shotgun in a tunnel it's going to be rather loud no? Even the heavily armoured clickers where no challenge by the end of the game given that I was laden with all sorts of bombs, more handguns then I could shake a stick at a bloody great big flame-thrower. There was a stage near the end where the only way out was blocked by about 20 different clickers including the heavily armoured ones and I cleared straight through them merely by lobbing over a few nail bombs and Molotov cocktails. Come on Naughty Dog, at least try to make it somewhat challenging.