As a companion to Laura’s review about “The Last of Us” TV show, I wanted to talk about my personal passion and delve into “The Last of Us” game — specifically, the environment, character and sound design.

“The Last of Us” was released in 2013 and developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

It was a widely anticipated game, and after it was released it received praise for its narrative, gameplay, visuals, sound design, score, characterization and female characters. It won numerous accolades including Game of the Year awards from several gaming publications, critics and awards ceremonies and has been described by many as one of the greatest video games ever made.

The sequel, “The Last of Us, Part II” was released in 2020 and was set four years after the original game. A remaster and remake were also made. I will be doing a review of these at a later date.

If you know me you know I am a sucker for the zombie apocalypse. Every creator does their universe a little differently, but “The Last of Us” has an extremely unique premise for their game.

Instead of focusing on the initial survival of humanity, the game shoots ahead 20 years into the apocalypse where civilization has already been destroyed and is attempting to rebuild itself amidst monsters.

The player controls a smuggler named Joel who is tasked with transporting a teenage girl named Ellie across the United States. The story is great, but that isn’t what drew me to “The Last of Us.”

The visuals in this game are insane.

From the very first trailer I saw of this game I was blown away by how gorgeous the scenery was and how horrific the zombies looked.

I’ll start with the scenery and sound design. The score for this game is fantastic — composed and performed by Gustavo Santaolalla.

Santaolalla is an Argentine composer and musician who became famous for creating the scores for “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Babel” (2006). He also composed the score for the show along with David Fleming.

I am a firm believer that a score can make or break a game — if the music is too loud, it breaks the immersion. However Santaolalla did a fantastic job guiding the player through the emotions of a scene using instruments. One of my favorites is “The Outbreak” which is on Spotify if you’re curious — it’s haunting!

The scenery is also gorgeous in the game. Every time the camera pans out, you get to see abandoned, crumbling infrastructure and vines growing on buildings.

I absolutely love any sort of apocalypse game or movie, especially when the landscape looks overgrown with plants and crumbling.

One of the more interesting instances of this in the game takes place in Salt Lake City. Throughout their travels there are various advertisements for a zoo, and eventually they see a herd of giraffes just wandering a decimated enclosure. You have to travel through a broken and crumbling building to even see them, and the journey (though short) is well worth the sight. Immediately I thought about all the animals that would have been left behind in apocalyptic scenarios and how life goes on anyway. It was such a cool scene.

Every zombie game has classifications of zombies, but in my opinion “The Last of Us” is one of the only series that pulls it off to this degree.

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill zombies. These are mutated, grotesque, mushroom-riddled creatures that really put the player on edge. The “infected” are mutated by the cordyceps brain infection, resulting in aggressive creatures that attack anything that moves.

The really scary thing about this particular flavor of zombie is that this idea of a fungus affecting your brain is real.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasitic fungus that hijacks bugs, enabling the spread of its spores and creating for itself a movable food source.

The creators of “The Last of Us” using this particular fungi was genius in my book, and made everything so much scarier than your typical “oh this person got really sick and bit a bunch of guys.”

Though the initial infection went very quickly in the game, they also made the following years realistic.

The game lays out multiple stages of infection — runners, stalkers, clickers, bloaters and shamblers.

The infected slowed down as years went by, some of them became overrun by fungus to the point where they can’t see anymore — making one of the most frightening creatures I’ve ever faced in a game: clickers.

The audio design on the clickers specifically haunts my dreams — the player is really put on edge. Just imagine being echo-located by a big mushroom murderer.

On top of experiencing the game firsthand, I have watched MANY playthroughs of it and it is a common enough choice for me to throw on the TV for background noise. I still get chills when I hear the clicks of a clicker for the first time in a while.

I will save some of my raving about this game for my next article on the sequel and subsequent remake of the original.

I really hope that anyone interested gives this game a try — you won’t be disappointed!

“The Last of Us” is available on Playstation 3 and 4, and the remake is available on Playstation 5 and Windows.

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Breanna Hanley is a reporter for The Express.