Since calling TLoU an "interactive setpiece movie" is one of the greatest lies in videogames, I'll post what I've written elsewhere:
Let's start by establishing TLoU is NOT like Uncharted. I like UC2, but I never thought the gameplay was anything special. Its appeal to me was, and remains, its audiovisual presentation, and the way it shuttles the player through a variety of technically impressive set-pieces. But again: I never thought the gameplay in UC2 was anything special.
The Last of Us is a whole different beast, though. Most players will hardly ever shoot their guns in TLoU. Those who do will find themselves scouring every nook and cranny of the environment looking for bullets. I usually only had three bullets per gun -- maybe seven or nine, tops. So when you resort to your gun, you make sure "every shot counts," as Joel says. And when the bullet connects, there's none of the "sponginess" of Uncharted. In TLoU, bullets obliterate enemies, as they should; hell, shotguns will even dismember and disembowel (though there is an option to disable gore). It's raw, it's brutal. Your character doesn't fare well, either; power weapons will knock your character on his ass, and it can be a struggle to get back to your feet.
So, you often avoid direct combat. You crouch and tip-toe around the environment. You survey your surroundings for enemies. You slip through doorways and hop through open windows, effortlessly seguing straight back into a crouching stance. You throw bricks and bottles to distract enemies, drawing them to the opposite corner of the room. You lure them away, and sneak by... or maybe strangle them, at the risk of causing noise... or maybe grab them to hold them hostage as a human shield... or maybe throw them to the ground and hold them at gunpoint, forcing them to beg for mercy... or in most cases, if you've crafted a shiv from sufficient bindings and blades you scrounged up in the cabinets and closets and drawers, you stick them in the jugular, bleeding them out. Their comrades won't hear the kill, but they might find it later... They'll grow alert, intensify their patrolling... If they see you have a gun, they'll change their strategy completely, going on the defensive... They can spot you by the shine of your flashlight, so you'll want to turn it off. You can cause a stir to lure them into nail bombs you crafted, or hide behind furniture and wait for the opportune moment to throw a Molotov you scrapped together from rags and liquor. You can arm yourself with planks and pipes and hatchets and machetes. You can power up your blunt bludgeoning devices with blades. You can silently snipe enemies with a bow, provided you account for the trajectory and time it just right... Then you can retrieve the arrow, if it doesn't break on impact. You can flank your enemies, stalk them, elude them, up and down flights of stairs, through holes in the walls, down fire escapes, up ladders, in and out of bathrooms and utility closets, behind bars.
And those are just the human enemies. Then you have the runners, the stalkers, the clickers, the bloaters. All well within your ability to handle them, provided you're patient and observant. The controls in TLoU are streamlined and sensible, weighty and deliberate. None of the over-sensitive fiddly-ness of MGS controls... Nothing frustrating or unfair about the enemies. The enemies are smartly placed, in multi-tiered environments with numerous ways in and out, with copious bricks and bottles, with many solutions to the same puzzle, each encounter playing out like a clockwork construct no matter which way you approach it. The enemies telegraph their routines well, but they still have enough spontaneity to make them seem alive. The effect of the experience is something dynamic, something organic, with layers like an onion -- I'm on the final stretch of my second play-through, and it's remarkable how differently my enemy encounters played out this go-around, and how much tighter this replay feels, which is saying something, since the first playthrough was also well-paced and immensely gratifying.
BOTTOM LINE: I wasn't hyped for The Last of Us, and I've never considered myself a Naughty Dog "fan." I was merely so-so on UC2 and UC3. But TLoU is a legitimately excellent GAME... It's deep yet accessible... Tightly designed... Deftly paced... It's a subtle game, with lots of quiet downtime, lots of meditative moments... It exercises remarkable restraint I would've never associated with ND after the Uncharted trilogy. And semi-frequent enemy encounters are richly rewarding in their tactical complexity, in the way they encourage improvisation and experimentation. Many sequences are harrowing in their odds; you frequently feel vulnerable, and running away, hiding, sneaking and avoiding enemies altogether is often a viable strategy. It's that back and forth between predator and prey, the way it's executed so confidently here, that makes the action in TLoU so addictive. And then the world is so well-realized that you're not only driven to see the next story beat, but to pore over the background narrative cobbled together with notes and recorders and environmental details that trace the trajectory of mankind's struggle in a post-pandemic world.
Soooooo GOOD!