The first reviews for The Last of Us are finally out and it looks like we might just have gotten the best video game adaptation here. With the response being overwhelmingly positive, critics can't stop raving about the series calling it a huge triumph and HBO's next big hit. With the performances of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey being praised, let's take a look at what the critics are saying. The Last of Us: Review, Release Date, Time, Where to Watch – All You Need to Know About Pedro Pascal's Series Based on the Hit PlayStation Game.

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Rolling Stone: Though Ellie has learned a lot about the past from a school run by what’s left of the military, she still enjoys hearing Joel explain things to her. In one episode, he runs down the rules of football. “So basically,” she asks, “just moving in one direction.” He agrees, “Basically — but violent.” This is something of a metaphor for The Last of Us as a whole. It is extremely straightforward and simple in what it’s trying to do, but hard-hitting about it. I’ve never played the game, but Druckmann and Mazin have turned it into something that works incredibly well as a television show.

IGN: You really get a sense that Druckmann is relishing revisiting his story and adding in sections, such as an early stopover in Indonesia, that just wouldn't have made sense to have in the game. It also takes time to explore themes shared with Mazin's previous work on Chernobyl – primarily the valiant fight of working-class people against hopelessness and failures of government. Never once, though, does it take its eye off of the very personal human impact that a world changed forever makes on its people in different ways. There’s a real sense of a creative partnership working at the peak of its power here as old and new ideas blend, and ultimately triumph.

BBC: And yet, it doesn't feel even remotely controversial to call this the best video game adaptation ever made. For fans of the game, it is an adaptation of the utmost skill and reverence, yet one still capable of surprise; for people who have never picked up a controller, it is an encapsulation of the game's heart and soul – its full-blooded characters, its neat plotting, its mature themes of love and loss. It is, to finish Ellie's joke, "outstanding in its field".

Screen Rant: The Last of Us is a towering achievement of the video game medium, having pushed the form in new directions upon its release almost 10 years ago. If anything, video game adaptations have proven that there is no true stand-in for inhabiting a character for 25+ hours over the course of a grueling game experience. One thing HBO's The Last of Us does prove, however, is that television is the place to do it. Even with its flaws (of which there are only a few), The Last of Us is an excellent adaptation, bolstered by stunning performances from a great cast. The nine episodes (all of which were made available to critics) allow the story to be told to its full extent. Considering how poignant and affecting that story is, that's all one could hope for.

Empire: And yet for all its vast canvas, for all its monster mayhem, the focus remains at all times on the characters. In particular, Ramsey’s Ellie convincingly balances wide-eyed innocence (having lived her entire life in a quarantine zone, she has never even sat in a car before) with intense grit and even goofiness, leavening what might otherwise be quite a bleak watch. Pedro Pascal, meanwhile, is perfectly cast: he offers great cowboy-squinting and craggy-faced toughness, but it’s always a front, masking deep trauma and the sheer terror of being a father figure. He has never been better. That the show ends as the game does — with Joel making a brutally ambiguous choice — shows an implicit understanding of these characters, their moral murkiness, their confused humanity. The Last Of Us, the game, never offered easy answers; the TV show doesn’t either. It is all the better for it.

 

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 10, 2023 02:02 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).