
Promotional art for the game.
The Last of Us is a third-person action-adventure survival horror video game developed by Naughty Dog and originally released for the Sony PlayStation 3 on June 14, 2013. A year later the game was given an HD remastering that was instead released for the PlayStation 4 on July 29, 2014 known as The Last of Us Remastered. A short side story involving the backstory behind Ellie and her friend Riley called The Last of Us: Left Behind was released as DLC for the PS3 version and came with the remastered edition.
Throughout the game, the player controls a trio of characters - starting out as the young girl Sarah in 2013 during the game's introduction chapter, and then playing Joel, a man in his mid-40s 20 years later in 2033, long after the virus has claimed the world as its own. During two later chapters, the player also plays the role of Ellie, a young 14-year-old and Joel's traveling partner.
The game can be considered mostly a stealth game, as the zombies and other humans can both hear you if you are too loud and attack, often with deadly weaponry or excellent precision. The player while playing as either Joel or Ellie can drop into a "listen mode" that makes them go quiet and avoid making sound as well as they sneak around to either avoid enemies or move into a position to better strike. Stealth kills are possible, although only Joel can perform them correctly without alerting nearby enemies - Sarah will not encounter any enemies during her play through and Ellie is still too small to overpower her opponents silently, leaving her to violently stab them to death most of the time. Even Joel will make too much noise unless he uses an improvised shiv. These shivs only have limited uses can be constructed (alongside various other weapons) using material found throughout the game world.