Last of Us

In perhaps the biggest announcement of the year, The Last of Us: Part 2 has officially been announced.

We've all wanted it to happen, but none of us ever knew whether it would actually come to be. Thankfully, Naughty Dog has seen the love that was given to the first game and as a result, a sequel is now in the works.

We don't yet know much about the second game, although the game will definitely star Ellie, and Joel will most likely play a big part too. Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann has commented on the announcement of The Last of Us: Part 2 by saying, "In the first game, the theme was the love between these two characters... this story's the counter of that. It's about hate."

That's a pretty big spoiler for the plot point for the sequel. Obviously after the ending of The Last of Us, including Joel and Ellie again seemed like a brave move by Naughty Dog. However, they believe no other characters could have fit into a Last of Us sequel without it feeling like a completely

If you hadn't heard already, Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann is currently working on a movie adaptation of The Last of Us, and he recently revealed more information on the content that the movie would portray of the Sony exclusive title.

Whilst the Last of Us movie will still be based on the same story the video game was created for, changes will be made to the movie to help it fit on the big screen. Neil Druckmann revealed that In two hours you can't tell the same kind of story that you can in a game like The Last of Us, which is 15 hours," which suggests that the upcoming The Last of Us movie will be stripped down to ensure the experience captures the whole story basis within the limited time available.

Adapting a book to a movie can often be a difficult task, but adapting a video game into a movie is an entirely different world. Neil Druckmann mentioned the difficult task ahead of him in an interview with MCV. "I'm in the middle of [writing] it now, and it's been super difficult

A new piece of concept art has just been revealed by Naughty Dog that shows off a character very similar in design to Ellie from The Last of Us. In fact, not only does the concept style feel very similar to the concept art from The Last of Us, but the character art almost like an older Ellie, and if it were Ellie, perhaps it could mean we can expect a new The Last of Us that is set a good few years after the first game.

The image was revealed on the Facebook page of a concept artist working for Naughty Dog, along with the caption "Let me tease you something… It's coming... ;]" If I were to make a guess, I'd assume that the concept artist is referring to a second The Last of Us game - the character art looks similar to Ellie, and with the success of the first TLOU game, it wouldn't be a surprise if a new title game out as part of the same IP.

Of course at this point there's no point jumping to conclusion, as last time we heard anything official about a second The Last of Us,

The Last of Us was definitely one of the best games of 2013, and with it being right on the edge of a console generation shift, it wasn't strange for many fans of the game to wonder whether the title would ever be remade and resold as a next gen title.

Of course, at the time the likelihood of this actually happening to the Last of Us was pretty low, but since then it seems that Naughty Dog have went over their choices and have decided to go full steam ahead with a relaunch for The Last of Us on the PlayStation 4.

The name of the PS4 title will be The Last of Us Remastered, and as the name suggests, the game won't simply be ported to PlayStation 4. It will be fine tuned, tweaked and improved. Some of the changes include a resolution upgrade to 1080p and higher detailed character models.

All of the shadows, textures and lighting will be redone for The Last of Us Remastered, too. To bundle it all up, Naughty Dog have got back together with the voice actors of the game

If a game sells well, most game developers these days will be quick to make a sequel in an attempt to bring back the same success that the first game did, but for some development studios who care a bit more about just money, considering a sequel to a popular game can actually be quite a hard decision.

This seems to be the case with Naughty Dog, who haven't yet decided on whether their insanely popular The Last of Us PS3 exclusive in 2013 deserved a sequel or not.

Despite the post apocalyptic world of the Last of Us gaining a huge amount of critical success and praise from gaming communities world wide, I can understand why Naughty Dog may be finding it hard to make a decision on whether to make the Last of Us 2 or not.

Whilst the first and only DLC story pack for The Last of Us is planned for this month, Naughty Dog seem concerned that they won't be able to create another story worth playing in the same universe as the first game, and they seem to be putting a large

I've said it before and I'll say it again- This year has been an absolutely amazing year for gaming. It kicked off with BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider, both of which are amazing titles with beautifully compelling single player story lines.

We've seen God of War, and Injustice, Metro: Last Light, Remember Me, and of course The Last of Us.

The Last of Us has so far been the king of this year's releases though. The game has managed to amass an amazing 3.4 million sales already, with the release being less than a month ago. Tomb Raider managed to hit that in four weeks, and despite it being a great game, it seems the excitement and hype leading towards the Last of Us has lead the game into an amazing pit of success. It's even more amazing to think that this game is PS3-only.

Of course we have some more titles gearing up for release later this year, and I would be surprised if Grand Theft Auto 5 doesn't take the 'fastest seller' title straight out of The Last of Us' hands.

So far, the Last of Us has looked like a promising game, a very promising game.

Over the past week or two we've had scores coming in from various professional sources, and so far reviews have been stellar.

EDGE Magazine has recently given their score as well, rating Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us a solid 10 out of 10, making it the 15^th game to ever be scored a full 10 from EDGE.

OPM UK Magazine also gave Naughty Dog a 10/10 for The Last of Us, stating that the game is "A work of art in which amazing sights and sounds fuel an emotionally draining, constantly compelling end of days adventure. This is Naughty Dog pushing the PS3 to its limit. Over to your PS4."

With Tomb Raider, Bioshock: Infinite and now the Last of Us, it's certainly been a successful year from some of our favorite games and developers, and we can only hope the same will continue through the year till the release of GTA V, a game that is almost guaranteed to score highly in reviews.

Naughty Dog like to leave little hints around in their world for gamers to speculate about, and the last time this happened, a date left in a bar in Uncharted 3 turned out to be the release date for the Last of Us.

Gamers have now found a calendar in the Last of Us with the date October 2013 written on it. Whilst this could have just been a randomly chosen date for art and immersion purposes, it could be possible that the date on the calendar is hinting towards an October 2013 release for Naughty Dog's next game, Uncharted 4.

Uncharted 4 would sit nicely on the PlayStation 4 right ahead of the release date of the console, and if the game is released in October, perhaps this could mean the PS4 could be released before or around the October 2013 date as well.

There is no way of really knowing what the meaning is behind the Calendar, but a lot of gamers are convinced that the October 2013 date in the Last of Us is more than just artwork. What are your opinions?