Source: The Last of Us Part II review
It’s hard to blame Naughty Dog for taking seven years to release a sequel to The Last of Us, a game so good it’s widely considered one of the best both thanks to a 2014 remaster for the PS3 as well as for the PS4.
We now know that part of the developer’s approach to the problem was to rely heavily on Crunch to release The Last of Us Part II in June, just months before the PS5 launch.
That makes it at least a little awkward to admit that Naughty Dog nailed it. A worthy sequel in every respect, The Last of Us Part II advances the gameplay of the original while adapting its story into an even more harrowing second part, available for download worldwide now.
Once upon a time in the apocalypse
The game begins in Jackson, a peaceful(ish) post-apocalyptic community where Joel and Ellie have settled. Anyone who’s followed the game’s marketing campaign will know this before a long tragedy strikes and sends Ellie on a cross-country quest for revenge that will take her back to Seattle.
No spoilers here, but it should come as no surprise that the game is interested in more than a kick-ass revenge fantasy. Throughout the 15- to 20-hour story, Naughty Dog repeatedly questions ongoing cycles of violence and asks players to empathize with Ellie’s – and thus their own – enemies and victims.
There are no easy answers, and I suspect this story will prove more divisive than the first. It certainly takes more risks and repeatedly undermines expectations in the way it tells its story, even if it fits into a familiar form of cautionary tale of revenge quite well.
The game is smaller in scope, largely confined to a few days in a single city, but explores a larger, more diverse cast within that setting. Ellie and Joel return, along with Joel’s brother Tommy, but are nearly overshadowed by newcomers Dina and Jesse.
The script, written by Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross, repeats the first game’s trick of infusing even supporting characters with more heart and soul than most AAA titles muster for their protagonists. Sentence for sentence, moment for moment, this is the best-written big-budget game since at least God of War, and it’s that quality that will keep players invested through some otherwise familiar story beats.
This is aided by the return to musical endeavors of Gustavo Santaolalla, playing with a familiar if expanded palette. Music plays an even bigger role in the game through playable guitar sections. They’re admittedly a mixed bag, responsible for some of the game’s cutest moments as well as one of its clunkiest missteps, but when it works, it really works.
Enhanced motion capture and animation ensure the emotional payload lands. You never quite forget that you’re seeing animated characters rather than actual actors (we’ll have to wait for the TV series for that), but the more subtle touches of an eyebrow-raising here, or a twitch there, lend weight to procedures few games manage.
There are story missteps along the way — most notably a slow-developing factional war between the militaristic Washington Liberation Front and the cult-like Seraphites that lasts too long to say anything deeper than “war is bad.”
But most of all, Naughty Dog knows how to treat their characters like people, and that’s what makes The Last of Us Part II one of the all-time greats of this generation.
Loot, shoot, repeat
Of course, this is a game, not just a story, so it has to play well too.
Again, Naughty Dog hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but polished its craft to a high gloss – perhaps aided by the decision to ditch multiplayer and focus its full attention on the campaign.
The immediate difference is that for the most part you play as Ellie, not Joel. This makes you smaller, quieter and sneakier, but also faster and more agile. The result is a renewed emphasis on stealth, with an improved toolkit for tracking enemies, hiding, and dodging when things go wrong.
That means crouching or crawling through grass to avoid detection, firing silent headshots with your bow or silenced pistol, and using smoke bombs or trip mines to keep enemies off your back – with a powerful swing of one with Spiked baseball bat for reinforcement.
Ultimately, combat unfolds with a similar rhythm to the first game – sneak, kill, blaze the guns when all else fails – but there’s a bit more variety on the way to that inevitable firefight.
The type of enemies you fight remains mostly the same as before – infected mushroom zombies and groups of heavily armed humans – and if there’s one disappointment in the core game loop, it’s that there are no more new enemy types.
The only addition worth mentioning are the hounds, which use Ellie’s scent to track her from behind any cover. This forces you to always keep moving when dogs are around — no crouching to wait for stray jerks — and brings with it the added challenge of trying to eliminate a dog and its handler at the same time, without yourself to betray to all different.
It goes without saying that fighting dogs ultimately means killing dogs, and The Last of Us Part II doesn’t fall into the Uncharted trap that separates story from combat. Yes, Ellie does have to turn violent – often in awkward ways – but that’s part of her arc through the story, as it leads you to clobber whimpering dogs and execute unarmed combatants. This isn’t a game for the faint of heart, but it does deal with that violence rather than quietly excusing it.
Improved enemy AI amplifies the effect. One of the biggest shocks in the game for me came when I emptied my pistol and fired at an enemy, only for them to actually notice and yell at their buddies that I was out of ammo. Reader, I panicked.
Smarter enemies obviously add more challenge, but the game mostly manages this well, with an ebb and flow of intense, challenging encounters and more manageable moments. The pace as a whole is equally strong, with only a few missteps when Ellie falters with an hour-long trot across Seattle to get to the next plot point.
Finally, a salute to the awkward bedfellow of difficulty: accessibility. Naughty Dog has really gone above and beyond to add options to remap controls, tweak graphics and audio, and even accommodate those with color blindness, motion sickness, and visual or hearing impairments. You can even access all of these settings before the first cutscene begins. None of this can bother you in the slightest, but it’s fantastic to see so many options out there and the industry should champion that.
Verdict
The Last of Us Part II isn’t a perfect game, and it’s not even a particularly revolutionary one. But it is Great Game.
Naughty Dog has approached the sequel with a level of craftsmanship and detail uncommon in AAA, and from a writing perspective alone, this game is almost second to none.
The Last of Us 2 is powerful, occasionally shocking, and often challenging to play – both emotionally and in a more traditional sense. It’s not always pleasant or funny, but it’s hard to imagine a more worthy sequel to an all-time great.
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