Drum roll please! Here it is, the one you’ve all been waiting for. This is what we chose to be our number one gaming moment of all time. The top 10 consisted of individual moments for Peter and Danny, as well as a couple of joint ideas, but this was easy. No competition, both in complete agreement.

Our number one comes from a game which blew both our minds. A story as compelling as any film ever produced and gameplay which left me personally wanting to reset the game and start all over again (and I did).

The Last of Us left a feeling of bitter sweet in the end and whilst you felt liberated and happy, there was a sense of doubt and also a feeling of in-completion to the story. Not in a negative way might I add, in a way you expected the game to produce. Moments throughout this game leave you laughing, crying, jumping out of your skin and in this particular moment, feeling relaxed, tranquil and pensive.

To explain the real impact of this scene, we have to explain the character Ellie in a little more detail. Ellie is 13 years of age. She’s young, impressionable but very strong-willed. She’s grown up in a post apocalyptic world as opposed to main protagonist Joel, who had to endure the change from normal life to a world overrun by the outbreak of the fungal pandemic. Ellie knows nothing of the world before; she’s never experienced sleepovers, birthday parties, Barbie dolls, horse riding, and any of the other usual shit a 13 year old gets up to (don’t ask me!). The point is, this is a life completely different to what we can possibly imagine. We take a lot of things for granted and we do this without knowing most of the time; and in this particular scene we get a moment with Ellie which once we stop and think about we understand how important it is.

I wanted to explain the scene more detail, but I think simply watching it does the job. It’s absolutely beautiful and makes you stop and realise what you have. Ellie has never experienced this before, she’s probably never even “seen” this before even in pictures and it makes you sad about how much kids have missed out on his this new world of seclusion, death, destruction and chaos. Even once the scene concludes and you watch in the distance, the music continues playing, enticing you to enjoy the moment of calm the game is providing.

This massive break in pace and the message the game provides makes it one of the best games I’ve ever played and for me the most important moment in gaming in my experience. If you haven’t yet played this game, you’re truly missing out and I’d recommend changing that immediately.

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