Almost unexpectedly, Naughty Dog has given us a brand new trailer to enjoy right before E3 next month and once again it showcases the breathtaking graphics that seemingly defies what the PS3 is capable of. Personally, we’re struggling to find a better PS3 game that looks as good as The Last of Us does.

The trailer previews a truck ambush that takes place and if you have been paying attention to those stories regarding Ellie, you may notice that her appearance has been changed slightly to look a bit younger. The clip is short, but enough to leave you wanting more and those facial animations on the guy’s beard is something to behold for sure.

We still don’t know when The Last of Us will release, but we’re guessing that a release date will be given at E3 in June – at least we hope so. We have a feeling that given the sheer amount of game releases already scheduled for 2012, this will end up being one of Sony’s crown jewels for 2013 and the one exclusive that can really drive sales before the PS4 arrives.

Here’s a challenge for you – watch the trailer below and let us know if there is any current PS3 game that can challenge these visuals shown here. Ok it’s a shame that we still don’t have any actual gameplay, but these cut-scene teasers that Naughty Dog are dropping are mouth-watering to say the least.

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There’s lots to get through, but before we carry on we must point out that if you carry on reading this you might read some spoilers. Before we get started with anything which may ruin the game for you let us just tell you that it has been confirmed that there will be some form of online game mode, nothing’s been detailed, but Naughty Dog’s game director Bruce Straley had this to say:

“We’re going to have some sort of online component, we’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome.”

Over at NeoGAF they also suggest that the game will be released in late 2012 and the game’s main campaign is single-player, we hope that some sort of co-op online mode comes to the game, how about you?

If you’ve watched the trailer you will have seen the game’s two main characters, we now know that the young girl, Ellie, is 14 years old and lives in a military quarantine zone where she’s safe from the infection which is spreading across the world, she is said to be fascinated by what she regards as relics (books and CDs). The man we get to see in the video is Joel, he’s in his late 40′s and smuggles items into and out of the quarantine zone, he was asked by a dying friend to escort Ellie to a safe place, he does, but is caught and the game sees them both flee across the entire country.

You can see full details regarding all of the following spoilers here, in our article we will highlight some of the most interesting information.

It is thought that this game will have a mature rating, apparently swearing during combat won’t be a rare occurrence (especially from Ellie) and there will be quite a lot of blood and gore, also there’s plenty of hints suggesting that there will be follow-ups to this game, perhaps just like there were for Uncharted.

Here’s some other things we can confirm: the fungus can transfer by the air if the concentration is high enough, weapon selection effects the behavior of the enemy and if they see a friend die they may get frightened, melee-based combat will occur frequently as there aren’t many bullets, you can hit the enemy with bricks and planks and stun them, however if all else fails you can kill an enemy with one bullet. If you think you are about to die there will be health packs, but they take a while to use so use them wisely! Finally it is worth knowing that you won’t always be facing the infected, due to the lack of resources you will battle it out with scavengers – interestingly some humans you come across may help you.

As you can see we are finally beginning to build a picture of what to expect from The Last of Us, the lack of ammo, the intriguing enemy AI and the time it takes use a health pack should ensure that the campaign will be a tense affair, not to mention the fact that Gustavo Santaolalla is composing the game’s music (he has 2 Oscars, see his IMDB profile here). We think that Ellie’s AI is very important, apparently she will help during combat and become more useful as the game progresses – in our opinion if she became too much of a burden it could perhaps ruin the game’s fun-factor, so Naughty Dog’s developers will have to find the perfect balance.

Do you have any concerns about this game? Or will you buy it on its launch date due to Naughty Dog’s past? Let us know in the comments section below…

More About: naughty dog, The Last of Us

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Let’s start with the obvious, The Last of Us is a PlayStation 3 exclusive which is being developed by Naughty Dog, expectations are very high following the success of the Uncharted franchise and many beleive that when it arrives in 2013 it will be the best-looking PlayStation 3 title of all-time. Wikipedia describes the game as a “third-person survival horror action-adventure”, one game which also falls into this specific genre is 2009′s Resident Evil 5.

There are two trailers which you need to watch, both of which have been embedded at the bottom of this post. The first of these is a teaser trailer which shows a real parasitoid fungus that infects ants, once infected the term zombie ants is widely used to describe them and eventually the ant will bite into the vein of a leaf and die with a stalk extending from the back of its head – nasty eh? Check out Wikipedia for more information about Cordyceps unilateralis.

The next trailer is made up of in-game footage, you get to see the two main characters and the enemy, also you get to see what looks like an eerily empty world. As many have mentioned it looks a lot like the 2007′s ‘I Am Legend’, a blockbuster movie which starred Will Smith.

We didn’t really pay too much attention to the trailer, well apart from drooling over the stunning graphics, but then we saw an interview with two guys from Naughty Dog (embedded at the very bottom of this page). One of the guys says the following:

“Keep watching the trailer over and over again, lots of clues and little teasers in there about what the game’s about, you will be finding out more in the coming months”

After hearing this quote we watched the trailer over and over in the hope of finding something exciting which we spotted, sadly we didn’t! But here’s a few thing which we have found:

The young female character is called Elly and many are pointing out that she looks a lot like Ellen Page. We don’t know the male character’s name (perhaps Noel) but some are saying that the male character looks like Viggo Mortenson. The voice actors playing these people are said to be Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson.

The game’s name, The Last of Us, suggests that to their knowledge they are the last normal people alive and ammo must be low as Elly seems extremely happy to find a few bullets from a fallen enemy. If you check out the screenshot below you will see that the enemy looks like a mutated human being with something growing from his face, it looks like a similar parasite to what the zombie ants get.

At the end of the video Elly says “this is our routine, day and night all we do is survive, in never lets up. He tells me how these streets were crowded with people just going about their lives, it must have been nice”, this suggests that the world has been like this for quite some time as Elly (presumably a teenager) has no recollection of a crowded world. Something which many YouTube viewers find interesting can be seen in the second video, at roughly 1 minute 44 seconds – you will see the main character seemingly seeking approval of Elly before cocking his gun, only after she nods does he cock it. Could this mean that Elly is more than just a young female character who has been dragged into this situation? So many questions and so few answers…

Check out all the videos below, can you spot any of the things which Naughty Dog describe as “clues and little teasers”? If so leave us a comment…

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The game appears to be a mix of horror survival and Uncharted-esque action adventure and for those of you thinking Naughty Dog wouldn’t be able to top the graphics shown in the recent Uncharted 3, consider that a non-issue as The Last of Us is arguably the best looking game on the PlayStation 3 to date.

Even more impressive and mouth-watering for fans is that the whole of the teaser trailer that Naughty Dog and Sony unleashed at the VGAs was apparently based completely on in-game PlayStation 3 visuals, with no use of pre-rendering on PC whatsoever. Heavy Rain featured some pretty stunning graphics on the PlayStation 3, but The Last of Us shows what still can be done on the current generation of home consoles.

Don’t forget that Naughty Dog has just taken home a ‘Best Graphics’VGA award for Uncharted 3, so does this mean that a 2012 VGA for The Last of Us is already in the bag? We would like to see a title that competes with what we have just seen on a graphics point of view anyway.

Unfortunately, there is no indication of when the game will be coming out. Let’s hope that it is a Q4 2012 release, but we wouldn’t mind if Naughty Dog announce this as a 2013 release. Check out the teaser trailer below for yourself and let us know what you think of it.

Have you seen better graphics than this before? We can’t wait to see more footage, consider us pumped for this one.

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