So I thought I would try something different and new, and talk about one of my favourite past times which only the people closest to me know and that’s that I enjoy playing video games!

It all seemed from when I was a child and we got a PlayStation 1! I loved it, and I would go on it any chance I got! Before and after school and at the weekends. I would only really play football and wrestling games because I found them the easiest to play. But once I had got older around thirteenth or fourteen I would want to play more story-driven games. I had heard of this game called ‘LA Noire’ a story-driven game where you play a 1930s detective and go around solving crimes and Los Angeles! I loved finding all the clues and interviewing all the suspects, then charging them with the crime! 

But some somethings were very challenging because of my visual impairment. For example, when finding the clues at each crime scene, because they weren’t lit up or glowing, only an audible chime and my controller vibrating, it was always a little hard to find the right item to pick up. There were also more action-packed moments like car chases and shootouts. Now I am awful at driving in video games even today, but now I don’t mind it so much because I just find it fun when I crash into something if I’m not in a car chasing sequence, But If I am in a car chasing sequence when I would find incredibly frustrating that I would keep crashing all the time until the game would pop up with a prompt that said ‘Would you like to skip this section?’ and I would nearly always say yes and lets not even talk about the number of times my character would die because an enemy would shoot me. After all, I couldn’t see them as the area was so dark.

These days of course technology has progressed so much since that game was released. Sadly it’s only in the last couple of years that more and more video games have become more and more accessible to people with a visual impairment, but there was this one game that had started it all, and that is what I am going to talk about…

Back in 2020, when the world had decided it was going to eat itself, a game company ‘Naughty Dog’ were just about to release their newest game that fans of the franchise had been hotly anticipating called ‘The Last Of Us Part 2’. Now I had heard of this gaming franchise before and had heard great things about the first game, but because I was an Xbox gamer for most of my childhood and early adulthood I had never had the chance to play the first game. However, a lot of blind and visually impaired people on Twitter including some big names, were singing this game’s praises for the amount of accessibility they had put into the game not just for blind and visually impaired people but for all people with a disability! So I started following this game online and started watching some videos on YouTube about it. But it wasn’t until ‘Naughty Dog’ released a trailer for the game talking about the accessibility features that they had added to the game, I watched it, and thought to myself, “Oh okay, they mean business then”. So a few months after the game had released I went out and bought a PlayStation 4 bundle that came with the game (as well as some other games I had been wanting to try). Took it home, set it up, and the first game I downloaded onto it was The Last Of Us, and within the first thirty seconds I was blown away! So let’s watch about one this game was so awesome!

To start, even before you get to the main screen, you are greeted with accessibitly options you can turn on a tweak, for example, a screen reader, and options to change things like text colour, and type of text so whether or not you wanted the medium or large text, what colour you wanted the HUD (Heads Up Display) to be! Along with all this you had various combat options available e.g. when you grabbed an enemy could they escape you, or when you go prone you have the option to either be seen by enemies if you go near them, or after a certain time, or not at all! This sort of setting is amazing and something that has never been done in video games before. There were even presets for different disabilities e.g. ‘visual aids’ or ‘motion sickness’ as well as alternative controls for people with physical disabilities! I am going to focus on settings for people with a visual impairment, but if you have other disabilities I will link ‘Can I Play That’, they are an amazing website that reviews video games for people with disabilities by people with disabilities so they are worth checking out!

So when playing ‘The Last Of Us – Part 2’ you have several accessibility options available to you. As the game is semi ‘Open World’ with a lot of places to go and explore, you can get lost quite easily, so the first feature I want to talk about is ‘Navigation Assistant’ which when walk about the game gives an audible tone in the direction the game wants you to go, it is worth saying however that it is best if you wear a set of headphones whilst using this feature as the audio will be in the direction you need to go. There are also audio cues if there is something in your environment that you can pick up, this can be anything from supplies such as a health kit, or some alcohol to a collectable such as a firefly pendant or note.

I talked about changing the HUD earlier on, well it turned out that this ended up being a fundamental feature for me, because I chose the colour yellow (other colours are available) I was able to easily see things like my health bar, how many bullets I had left in my gun, what weapon I was holding at the time, along with button prompts when I could pick things up or had to mash buttons together during a certain cutscene or a ‘Quick Time Event’ where you have to press buttons in a certain order to progress. There is also the ‘HUD Scale’ which allows you to make the icons of the HUD on the screen either bigger or smaller. So if you need to make certain icons bigger if are far away from your TV or even close to your TV you can do so which I found a great help. Inducing the crosshairs. which I found helpful when shooting enemies as I was able to see more easily where or what I was shooting. 

One of the accessibility I found I was using the most was ‘High Contrast’. This is where the area or game environment is greyed out, and the only visible thing is the character you are controlling, the enemies you are facing, and any items you can pick up. These proved to be my saving grace during certain areas of the game because there are some areas in ‘The Last Of Us – Part 2’ where you either have to sneak around or fight enemies in almost complete darkness aside from a red flare, fire light or moonlight. Another helpful thing ‘High Contrast’ does is highlight certain things to avoid. Whilst playing the game at some point you have to avoid walking into these wired trip mines, which if you do will explode and kill you. But because they were in long grass, they were in real struggle to see, even some sighted gamers said they struggled with this part of the game. But because I had ‘High Contrast’ on I was easily able to avoid them.

The game has a ‘Text-To-Speech’ option available both in the menus and their HUD. Along with the audio prompts and the audio navigational directions you can play this game even if you are completely blind! Unfortunately, there are no Audio Descriptions within the cutscenes of this game, but a remake has recently come out of the first game made completely from the ground up including all the accessibility features of the second game along with Audio Descriptions for cutscenes! Which I found so amazing when I played it recently, and it made the story that much more real and heart-wrenching! But sadly that game is only for PlayStation 5, but to my delight a Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered has just been announced set to be released in January 2024!

One thing I wanted to mention, isn’t necessarily an accessibility feature within the game but a feature when you decide to pay for PlayStation Plus, Sony’s subscription online service which allows you to play online with friends as well as some other benefits. Within that subscription is a feature called ‘SharePlay’ which allows a sighted friend to see your screen, and even control the game should you wish them to. Whilst playing ‘The Last Of Us Part 2’ I had a close friend in my headset telling me important information I needed to know, for example, if I had missed an important health kit I needed because I was about to die, or if in a combat situation where all the enemies were, and where they were walking so I knew where to go to able to avoid them. Although, sometimes I did want to just have an old-fashioned shootout just for fun, die, and then try and do the encounter again all stealth-like! Not only was this extremely helpful but also a lot of fun, as we got to go through and experience the game and story together. Which we continue to do with other games to this day!

Because of ‘Naughty Dog’ and the amount of time and dedication they put into making sure that anyone can play their game no matter who they are or what difficulties they face, many people including myself have fallen in love with a hobby that I loved when I was a child again. The sense of achievement.when I completed the ‘The Last Of Us – Part 2’ and now ‘The Last Of Us’ remake. I can play something which I thought I would never be able to do again. Now, the amount of love I have for this franchise and that studio, words can not describe it!

If after reading this post, (and if you have well done) it has made you think ‘You know what I might give this a go?’ then honestly go for it, you won’t regret your decision at all! 

I know I normally give a rating in terms of accessibility so here it is, if you are blind or visually impaired, can you play this game? YES! Yes, you can! I hope you have as much fun as I did!