If you’ve never played The Last of Us (paid link), then you’re in for a treat—it’s one of my favorite games of all time by one of my favorite gaming studios of all time. I love the attention to detail that Naughty Dog puts into their games and one of my lifelong friends worked there so it’ll always have a special place in my heart.

To give you some background, you’ll often be moving from area to area while surviving and killing the infected. Parts of the story are revealed as you make your way to new areas and this continues until the game is over. I’m being really vague here because I don’t want to spoil the story because it’s really good. So with that out of the way, here are 5 things you should know before starting a new game.

#5 Easter Eggs

Naughty Dog loves to put easter eggs in their games and The Last of Us is no exception. I’m not going to reveal any right here—I’ll leave that to you. But this world is highly detailed and you’re rewarded when you explore every nook and cranny with all sorts of easter eggs. There are gobs of newspapers that you can read if you position the camera just right. In the remake, I assume the new photo mode will make this easier and with high resolution textures, I suspect there will be even more to discover.

#4 Resources and Difficulty 

This is a survival horror game at its heart so as you increase the difficulty, you can expect resources to become more scarce. Since humanity has mostly died out there are limited resources. Ammo and crafting supplies are incredibly valuable but also incredibly rare depending on the difficulty. On easy, ammo is plentiful and crafting materials are scattered around everywhere. There are no supply chain issues here. Your crafting materials will often be full and you’ll be forced to leave things behind so don’t be afraid to use them. However; on the hardest difficulty, missing a single shot can make or break a playthrough so be sure to check every locker, open every drawer, search in all the cabinets, you name it because you can’t go back to previous areas so if you miss a lot of supplies it can make the game a lot more difficult.

#3 Always keep 1 Shiv on hand

Early on in the game, you’ll get the recipe for making shivs. These make killing the clickers, which is an enemy that is difficult to kill barehanded, a lot easier. You can chock and melee normal enemies but the clickers are immune. However; don’t waste all your shivs on clickers because there are shiv doors throughout the game that have a lot of resources behind them. Blowing through all your shivs makes these impossible to access so always keep at least 1 on hand.

#2 Fight or Flight

There is a lot of combat in this game but some of it is skippable. This can be exploited especially on higher difficulties where resources are few and far between. Simply make your way to the exit without getting detected. If you manage to do so, then you won’t waste ammo and other resources which as I’ve said before are scarce. The enemy might get a few shots in but that’s still better than wasting tons of bullets.

#1 Bricks, Bottles, and Bats

When resources are scarce, there’s nothing like bricks, bottles, and bats. To do this technique, throw a brick or bottle at the enemy and charge at them with a melee weapon. If you can make it to them while they are stunned and swing your weapon in time, it will always 1-shot them. There is only 1 enemy in the game where this doesn’t work and I promise you’ll know them when you see them. Also note that there is a big difference between bricks and bottles. Bricks are silent whereas bottles will shatter and attract a lot of attention.

I’d love to hear what you think about the remake. Do you plan to buy it? Do you think it’s a cash grab? What are y’alls thoughts on it?