Honest Question: What's so good about the Last of Us?

[eFKac]

Very good points brought up by KBG29, I'll also post on behalf of Bananaking, as I think he also nailed it:
"the gameplay was out of this world, it had so many options and every one was extremely polished, shooting enemies WAS not easy, and enemies react to you quite brilliantly. some of these details really helped as well. if i was in a gun shoting and me and an enemy were under cover, if one of my pistols were empty while the other had bullets i would wait until he is under cover, aim and shoot with the empty one, he would hear the sound of it shooting blanks and get out of cover, once he gets away a bit from cover i would either aim with my shotgun or another gun and blast the shit out of him. these details are awesome, also during fights AI really DO help, ellie saved me a lot actually. the melee was just fantastic, the way they reacted to every hit and how the animations are extremely well done, every hit had a perfect reaction, this level of detail in melee combat is unbelievable and unseen before. the way that the envirmont is used during melee is also amazing, basically you could slam anyone to a wall or anything you are next to while combat. for people who say mario or halo has great gameplay and this doesnt, please explain why. this game is just on another league IMO"

And that's only combat mechanics. Keep in mind, that there are also great survival elements, stealth gameplay, story, character development, character interactions, atmosphere that adds to the tension (not really horror imo), amazing audio design, and soundtrack, and of course impressive technical side of the game (Digital Foundry article comes in handy here). I'll try to elaborate on all of those when I have some more time, cause it would make pretty much a whole review. If you ask me, easily the best game I have played this generation in comparable genres, a maybe my favourite this generation, this game or Uncharted 3.

Also I don't know about you, but when it comes to "core" games, especially those heavily story oriented, I like to play them in specific environment, to get the full experience. I don't play less than an hour in one sitting, in a dark room, with headphones on, so that none external means disturb me, and I can get fully immersed into the world of the game. Playing half on hour, in the store stand, is like a total opposite of this, with brightly lit room, with a lot of people, a lot of different sources of sounds, for me that wouldn't even be a half-assed experience.