Undervalued Gaming: The Last of Us- Survivor difficulty

By Reece Merryweather-Brown

The Last of Us, created by the always amazing Naughty Dog team was released last year, the supposed end of the world (get it, cos it’s a game about the apocalypse?) Now most of you reading this who are proud, respectable owners of a Playstation 3 have probably already played this game (and if you haven’t I highly recommend it.) But one thing you may not have tried is the somewhat overlooked…survivor difficulty.

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While it obviously does nothing for the actual story itself the survivor difficulty, for competent and well-versed gamers, adds a whole new level to the already stellar gameplay. The game is amazing on the lesser difficulties, sure, but it never truly feels like an actual ‘survival’ game, in the fact that you have constantly dwindling ammo and resources (unless you, y’know, suck at it.)

And that’s where survivor difficulty comes in. Oh you remember how your basic pistol holds seven shots? It’s six now. And you remember how in that beginning bit after you fight the runners there’s a little hidden ammo box in that side room? Guess again. As each difficulty level progresses you find less and less resources and ammo, but this effect is gradual, until of course you hit this setting, where the game pretty much flips you the bird and decides that practically all of its items are too good for your greedy little hands. The only sure fire way of finding anything is using a precious shiv to unlock a door.

Now, where did I put that shiv?

Ah. Right.

Going through the game for the third time in this sort of Chuck Norris difficulty mode I always felt really chuffed when I discovered a room that I had no idea previously existed, or opened a cupboard I never knew was there. But at almost every single turn I was smacked in the face with the hard reality of the videogame and that reality was this: no matter how many rooms I found, no matter how many cupboards and draws I opened and no matter how many hunters infected I fought I was barely ever rewarded. You know that a game has nailed the survivor feel when you walk into a room, find an entire box full of revolver ammo and you simply explode with joy. I remember this time clearly as I walked into a shiv door in the Pittsburgh level. “Six shots!” I exclaimed, as I swung my pack off my back and selected my revolver, which up until now had been stuck with one solitary bullet in its six shot chamber. I practically melted with joy as I watched Joel’s glorious animation showing him slot the ammo in one by one, and the satisfying ‘slink slink slink’ as each one slotted into place. With a final click I had an entire revolver full of ammo and one extra bullet. And you think that is an extreme reaction? What if I told you, that until the very last mission of the entire game I did not fire a single shot? And that single shot was only used as a symbolic victory to show to myself and the world that yes, I beat the survivor difficulty and yes, I had a gun which was filled with ammo.

But everything aside, even though many points in the game were soul crushing and heart breaking these moments of unbridled joy is what makes this mode special. This is the closest to the apocalypse you’re going to get if you have a console, save creating and breeding a virus that can mutate or destroy most of human civilisation. Everything you do feels so much more rewarding this way. On normal difficulty, you kill an infected you’re quite happy that you took it down. On Survivor, you’re thanking your lucky stars that you’d saved up that one bullet to get that thing right between the eyes. And the ending, nothing can compare to that immense feeling of joy as you realised, just as Joel does, that you’ve done it. Against all odds, despite everything the world and the game has thrown at you, you have done it. You are…a survivor.