Grave Gamer News & Views — naughty dog

Get 50% Off The Last of Us Remastered By Upgrading Your Copy

The PlayStation 4 re-edition of Naughty Dog’s magnum opus is arriving as soon as Tuesday. The game’s price is hedged only slightly, dropped from the typical $60 price point to $50.

However, even if you’re still in possession of an original PS3 copy of The Last of Us – and of course you are; how could you part with it? – Sony has no upgrade discount in place as we’ve seen in the past with current-to-next-gen hop on’s like Call of Duty: Spooks and Assassin’s Creed IV: Pirate Face.

Low and behold, here comes Gamestop, benevolent multi-billion dollar corporation and friendly choke hold on video game distribution in the market, to save the day. Bring in your vanilla copy of TLoU between July 27th and August 2nd and the retailer will slash Remastered’s tag down by 50%. If my team of mathematicians are correct in their calculations, that’s a savings of $25 (don’t quote me on it, though).

The Last of Us Remastered, if you don’t know, features the original new-classic brought up to full 1080p resolution and optimized at 60 frames-per-second. The game as been re-textured, re-did, and recombobulated. Included is every piece of DLC released to date, featuring the seminal Left Behind and its exercise of precision storytelling. Want to poke around Naughty Dog’s head, too? Well, good thing a developer’s commentary is worked into the package.

The Last of Us is Bound for PS4

I’ll get through the bad news first: The Last of Us 2 ain’t happening anytime soon. Hey, come on. Don’t make that face. We pretty much knew that already.

Here be the good slice of news: A Sony higher-up has stated that the original Last of Us, including its sublime piece of DLC, Left Behind, is heading for the PlayStation 4 in all of its post-apocalyptic, giraffe-petting glory.

The news comes way of an attentive NeoGAF user (but doesn’t all juicy news, though?) who spotted a Mr. Sercan Sulun, PlayStation Eurasia’s Software Market Manager, giving an interview to CNN Turk. Thirty-six minutes in, Sulun fielded a question asking whether or not we’d see The Last of Us 2 (aka The Next to Last of Us) anytime in the near future.

“There is no information about a new The Last of Us game,” said Sulun, “But I can share this knowledge; as of this summer, The Last of Us will be on the PS4. Both on PSN and physically.”

Naughty Dog’s instant classic and the freshly released single-player DLC will be graphically enhanced for the PlayStation 4. It’s currently unknown if the port will take advantage of any PS4 specific features such as the touchpad. Honestly, I could give a shit if they program horse farts through the controller’s speaker; I’m just beyond stoked to see this brilliant masterpiece brought to the next-gen.

Stay tuned for more official news (or the Shakespearean tragedy of an official debunking).

Screens Gems is Putting The Last of Us on the Silver Screen

Another property is making the jump from the interactive medium to the passive viewing magic of the big screen. Screen Gems, the production studio responsible for the eight-hundred Resident Evil films released since 2002, has signed on to distribute a feature film based on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us.

Ghost House Pictures, the studio behind horror hound movies like Drag Me to Hell and last year’s superb Evil Dead remake, is set to produce, automatically attaching famed director/producer Sam Raimi to the project. Wisely, the game’s co-director and scribe, Neil Druckmann, has been tapped to write the movie’s screenplay as well as warm up a producer’s chair. Bruce Straley, the other co-director on the game, and Naughty Dog co-presidents Christophe Balestra and Evan Wells join in on the fun in producing roles.

“Since our game released last June, we’ve talked with many companies about making a film,” said Evan Wells, “but we couldn’t have found better partners who share our creative vision and high standards. We look forward to collaborating with Sam, his team, and Screen Gems, to make a movie that will thrill fans of The Last of Us and general audiences worldwide.”

Seeing as how Sony owns Screen Gems, they were destined to handle the rights to the PlayStation 3 exclusive. Ghost House is an inspired choice to tackle the material, though their track record is spotty (more than half their ventures are B-movie horror flicks; before Evil Dead, the American Grudge films were their only totem poles… very unfortunately).

But having a veteran such as Raimi on the project, especially given his keenness toward video games – this was the man originally meant to bring World of Warcraft to theaters – and allowing Neil Druckmann and company to lord over the material are classy ass moves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still nervous. The Last of Us may be an extremely cinematic game, but what the game gets right, which is a lot, might come off wrong translated to film. It’d also go a long way in my book if the studio that cursed us with five Resident Evil mistreatments wasn’t anywhere in spitting distance of The Last of Us, but that’s just me (obviously it’s just me since those films are the most financially successful game adaptations in history… very unfortunately).

Still, if even a modicum of The Last of Us’ powerful, affecting narrative – one that touches on loss, humanity, and hope juxtaposed against constant hopelessness – endures the transition, I think I’ll be happy. Pretty excited to see how this one plays out.

Watch From Dreams - The Making of The Last of Us: Left Behind

DLC add-on’s are typically just that: add-on’s; an addendum that, honestly, isn’t a crucial component to the main experience, but serves as an extra caveat for fans hungering for more.

Left Behindis a groundbreaking triumph in that regard by serving as a completely necessary expansion to the core themes of loss, love, and survival...