Before I start my review, I’ll state that I don’t concern myself with the controversy surrounding the Last of Us: Part II and the comments and opinions of those that are bashing aspects of the game based purely on unwarranted hatred, discrimination, or those that have chosen to hate a game they haven’t even played yet. My review will not discuss any of this as frankly, this review is of my opinion soley of the game and I don’t care to partake in any of the discussions surrounding any controversial topic made about it.
I also do not write any review in the hopes it gets me clicks as I don’t profit or make money on this site at all and whether ten people or a thousand read this review, it doesn’t aid in anything I am looking to do here. I purchased the game of my own free will and am not swayed one way or another in what my score does for exposure. This site is a hobby, and regardless of anything, my opinion is mine, and it doesn’t have to allign with yours. Ever.
Contrary to popular opinion, I wasn’t too hot on the original Last of Us. I found its combat and gameplay to feel largely clunky and generic, and while I adored Joel and Ellie, and much of the story, I found it a mostly ‘by the numbers’ adventure with excellent production values. That said, Naughty Dog has had a long time since then to figure out how to improve upon the original and while there are times I found myself uncomfortable with what it wanted me to do, this followup is simply outstanding, despite a few flaws and gameplay choices that had me question if I was actually enjoying myself or not. Do games have to be fun to be well made is something I am not sure I know the answer to.
A week before the game launched, the press that gained access to an early review copy mentioned that their embargoed reviews were being restricted on what they could actually talk about. Sony had implemented a vast description of details that were off-limits to discuss. Having beaten the game, I can understand why. That said, I will do my best to honor aspects of that same demand to make my review as non-spoilery as I can, but I will have my review contain a discussion about some of those spoilers and will mark off when they start and when they end so that you’ll have the choice to read them or ignore them and then glance at my score and move on with the information you want from it. I will also have to dance around certain things, but it’s also very likely that even discussing the plot will hint at some of those “certain” things.
From the very onset, you can certainly see the visual jump in what Naughty Dog has been able to do here. Last of Us: Part II is one of, if not the best-looking video game out there, platform be damned. There is a staggering amount of detail to every single aspect of the game from some extremely high graphical fidelity of its environments to the unbelievable facial capture tech across its many characters we simply haven’t seen to this degree before, blowing almost every other game out of the water. The jump from PS3 to PS4 allowed Naughty Dog to make vastly larger locations and pack them with more people and objects and threats that there are times I wondered what PS5 could even really give us to complete with this. If any game was going to be a technical showpiece for the current-gen console era, this is it. In fact, I don’t see many studios crafting better-looking games on Sony’s next-gen hardware than what Naughty Dog has already done this generation, it’s that good. Should we get a PS5 version of this game, well, it’ll certainly be something spectacular.
That said, graphics are only part of the story and the game does a lot else to balance itself into being a very solid if a bit uncomfortable experience. Its story, one largely based on revenge, dives into hatred across almost every single character. The game ties into a lot of themes that are hot topics in today’s world and does a decent enough job of speaking to them in ways that got to me. Now, being a straight white male, I cannot fully understand or grasp at what it speaks to those that are actually suffering and being targeted because of these subjects, but I can do the best with it as I can and hope to at least be compassionate about it and the people it tries to identify with. While many of the game’s characters are written mostly well enough, the story does lose a bit of its charm about halfway through the game and while I did enjoy much of the gameplay during the journey, the overall narrative is lacking when compared to other Naughty Dog games.
By large, The Last of Us: Part II plays very similar to that of the original. While you’ll start off as Joel, in a brief moment of gameplay, You’ll soon transition to Ellie, who is more or less the star of this adventure. While you don’t take over as Joel for the rest of the game, there is still a good deal of interaction and story beats that feature the two together in many of the same ways that made their relationship so endearing the first time around. During an event that takes place on a patrol, Ellie is launched into a quest of revenge, one that she will complete with an utmost vengeance. Game Director, Neil Druckmann, who is also the Vice President of Naughty Dog, who co-wrote the script with Halley Gross, have done a miraculous job at weaving in and out various time periods to convey the most effective use of emotion to allows scenes to punctuate far greater if they had been told in chronological order. One scene, in particular, where you visit a dinosaur museum, has an emotional weight to it that wouldn’t have been as effective had it been told elsewhere in the story. I’ll also mention that this scene in particular is my favorite part of the game by far.
The Last of Us: Part II follows the events of Joel’s decision at the end of the first game, and in fact, it’s the catalyst of the whole narrative. Nearly everything that follows is because of that choice and how certain characters learn to come to grips with that truth is what sets a lot of things in motion. Much of why this game works is down to the characters of Ellie and Joel, two characters that share in a great deal of the game here, and rightly so. Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker give award-winning performances, right down to the end credits. There are more scenes here across my 25 or so hours that had me in tears, or at the very least, on the verge of them. This is heightened not just by some stellar writing, but the drastically believable emotion given to their digital faces. It’s going to be a well I go to often here, but this game is stunning in what it tries to convey through its characters. If I had to critique one single component of the story, or rather in the way it’s told is that at the halfway mark, the momentum of what has been progressing does take a bit of a dive, and I’ll discuss that more in the spoiler section.
Without writing an endless amount of paragraphs detailing its combat, I’ll break it down somewhat quickly. Much like in the previous game, you’ll be able to duck behind cover, pop out with a gun and aim up that satisfying headshot, or sneak around, and this time through tall grass or underwater, and strangle your opponent in the most violent way possible. The tall grass is new to the series and depending on your difficulty and accessibility options, it can make you pretty much invisible, even when they are right next to you. This is further enhanced by the ability for Ellie to go prone, reducing her visibility and allowing new ways to escape combat or engage in some stealthy shenanigans. Enemies can also pack dogs with them that track your scent, and while you can avoid killing the dogs should you maneuver around them, there is one dog that cannot be avoided, which is unfortunate. While combat does feel naturally the same, it feels vastly more polished and the level design is far more open and detailed, thanks in part to the new options granted to you. It’s in these new features and the level design that opens up combat in a way where it’s leagues better than the previous game. You simply have more options, more verticality, and ways to engage or escape combat that truly set up some fantastic moments to be a part of or narrowly escape and continue on your journey.
Ellie can still craft items like you could in the original, but she’ll have access to skill manuals that open up new skill libraries to sink your supplement pills into. As you find more manuals, you open up more tactics like increasing your pool of health or being able to craft more efficiently. It allows for different builds during your first playthrough as you cannot unlock every skill in a single run, making you complete it via the new game plus mode that opens up once you’ve wrapped credits. Alongside crafting, you can upgrade your weapons, with visual and practical enhancements like adding a sniper scope to your bolt-action rifle or boosting the damage of your pistol or shotgun. One thing I greatly enjoyed with the crafting menu is the wrench icon that details what you can currently craft with it blinking out if your resources will deplete as you use those components on another crafting item. It’s a nice visual touch that lets you know if your resources are better used elsewhere. Speaking of UI, I’m still not a fan of the weapon selecting outside of your holster, as holding square to cycle through your weapons in a tense battle just isn’t fun or intuitive. It was easily my least favorite thing about the original and it’s unfortunate that they chose this same clunky method yet again.
By combining the ability to stalk from the shadows with an upgraded arsenal and wealth of crafted items, how you play will determine if you’re bleeding through bullets and healing supplies or if Ellie’s stealth approach with a knife will hog all the fun. With a rather quick re-load upon death, you can easily retry an area over again, or save and re-load if things aren’t going your way. One issue I have with saving is it doesn’t save to your then and now but rather to the previous auto-save or checkpoint. It’s a tad annoying having to tackle a few things all over again upon a reload but hardly a major issue. Combat scenarios are largely against human opponents as the narrative has shifted a bit more about surviving against other survivors than that of the infected themselves. That said, there are still some long stretches of gameplay where you’ll encounter them and some of the new threats that rear their ugly and mutated heads. Even so, the human forces themselves are still fun to put down, or to lure some infected towards them, especially the infected in the last section of the game which I wish had more of an appearance than in just 2 locations, and while the game can often get extremely violent with some of the more stabby ways of dealing with them, many of the more visceral kills are done at the command of a cutscene or the results of what tapping or holding the prompted button will do.
As I’ve mentioned, shooting just feels more fun and not as clunky as it felt before. And while the game still retains a lot of what makes Last of Us its own thing, there is a great deal of Uncharted 4 here in its DNA as well as Ellie can use a rope to climb up and swing across to out of reach locations. When this traversal system was first shown off, I expected much of the game to use this or maybe have Ellie pack a bit of rope to aid in exploring or have it as a new way to push through a dilapidated structure, but that really isn’t the case here. In fact, there are not as many moments with the rope as I’d of liked, given how interesting some of the physics can be with it, that and the gameplay reveal video seemingly making it a bigger deal than it ended up being. You can climb up, swing, and even throw a bundle of rope through glass or over beams to find ways to bypass a locked door or a gap too far to jump. In fact, this game makes a bigger deal about jumping than in the first one, with even giving Ellie jumping attacks that can be extremely satisfying when they connect.
Ellie can also dodge attacks, making some combat scenarios feel very different and new to the franchise, especially since Ellie can knife almost anything in a single stab. While shivs do make a return in the latter half, the game’s relative use on dodging grants you access to a few almost fighting game type encounters, that can at times feel a bit off due to how weird they sort of feel here. When the first encounter started I was kind of taken aback for this type of combat being included and more often than not, I lucked out with a solid punch or a dash to the left or right at the last second. It isn’t my favorite new addition to the game, but if they don’t bring it back in a sequel, I wouldn’t say I’d miss it.
What I enjoy so much about what Naughty Dog has done here is through many of its character moments and the environmental story-telling through its several unique locations. Ellie’s story takes her to several wide-open locales and while it’s easy to say “open-world” it’s really not as you’ll more often than not be funneled into extremely linear locations, which is, to be honest, what I want from The Last of Us. You’ll visit a few massive sprawling environments, but the game is at its best when you’re in small cramped locations wondering what is around the corner or about to spring out from the fungus covered walls, or what lurks at the bottom of an abandoned medical facility. The sound design, when mixed with your listening ability, can often give you all the information you need to know about what is lurking around you, but the game still does that thing where listening to the nearby threats won’t work on cutscene enemies and you’ll still be put into a jump scare moment that doesn’t make sense given your ability to hear nearby enemies.
One of my biggest gripes with gameplay to the original game was how it felt like it was solely a combat encounter then a cutscene and then repeating that loop over and over again without anything to break up the moment to moment gameplay. You’d have the occasional vehicle level or be held up in a building sniping at the infected on the heels of your friends, but these moments were extremely rare. Here, there is quite a bit to break up encounters with numerous vehicle, horses, and boat levels, not to mention a ton of swimming, and a mini-game of sorts with your guitar that finally uses the touch bar on the controller in a way that makes that gimmick feel actually worth it now. Much of the action-focused moments I mentioned just previous feel like more of Uncharted’s DNA influencing this series and frankly, I am all for it.
The Last of Us: Part II also goes a long way into making the game accessible for pretty much anyone, even those who are largely sight-impaired. You can customize everything from having text-to-speech to changing the size of all text options, to fully remapping controls in case you’re unable to hold the controller naturally. There are settings that aid hard of hearing players as well such as vibrational cues via the controller or changing up how the subtitles function. You can set different visual modes to allow collectible hunting to become easier or sound cues in case you’re next to a ledge and may possibly fall to your death. In fact, reviewer and journalist Laura Kate Dale even played through the entire first hour and some of the game blindfolded, with only allowing the audible cues to guide her. While some aspects like fine-tuning your interaction with a door were met with some issues, it largely proved that Naughty Dog has done something special here and other games need to take notice of this. That said, this is only a sliver of a fraction of the total choices, making this game incredibly accessible for almost anyone to play.
The Last of Us: Part II has a significant amount of content that could be considered spoilery and it’s hard to really discuss what I didn’t care for or other parts of the game that I found incredibly stunning without at least mentioning them, so let’s dive into some of the lesser big moments. Early into the game, you are tasked with escaping a horde of infected through a character named Abby. At around the halfway mark of the entire game, you’ll cut to her for somewhere around 10 hours of gameplay, making your time with Ellie come to an end for quite some time. The problem I had with Abby is she is introduced in a way where you instantly hate her and it’s really hard to see her side of it or feel for her after the thing she’s done. The supporting cast around Abby was decent enough, especially the Mel character, played by Ashly Burch, but again, it all comes down to the game wanting you to get to know Abby and why she’s done the things she’s done. She does have a decent enough arc in the last few hours, but I still couldn’t shake the fact that I did not want to like her whatsoever. This effectively had me at odds with almost half the experience the game offers, which is not exactly a good thing. While there are lots of people who did enjoy her role here, I am simply not one of them. I think Laura Bailey does a stellar job bringing her to life, but again, I just couldn’t get on board with her role here and what she brought to the overall experience.
Abby will have her own set of attacks and weapons to use and her story will roll out during Ellie’s timeline, so you’ll weave in and out of what you did with Ellie, encountering characters that will still be alive before Ellie comes into contact with them. She will also have her own skill manuals that allow you build up her skills in the same way you’ve been doing as Ellie, and I struggled to want to even make her more effective given I couldn’t care less if she lived or died. There is one encounter, in fact, it’s the final moment you play as Abby where what they wanted me to do was sickening and frankly, I didn’t want to do it. While I enjoyed playing as Ellie a bit after this moment, the task at hand was something where I questioned if I was even having fun. Had Abby just been a character left out of being playable and worked into the background of Ellie’s story as her central antagonist, then I personally would have enjoyed the game far more.
Much like Abby, Ellie will have her share of scenes that are connected to what Joel did at the end of the last game. Each of them is connected in some way and I really enjoyed the way in which Ellie and Joel were able to converse about what he did, giving some weight to his choice, and the consequences he would have from it. The final moments of the game does a great job at having the two understand one another and frankly, it’s one of the more emotional moments of the journey, given what Ellie has gone through to that point. It’s these moments where The Last of US: Part II expertly nails and digs into you in ways I wanted from it. While Abby has her own narrative that results in her looking to make something of her life, especially with protecting a young trans boy from being killed from his own people, a character I quite enjoyed, by the way, much of it doesn’t feel written that well and doesn’t quite get the pay off you’d want, or at least, from what I wanted. In fact, I was furious at parts of the ending as my want and desire from it felt drastically unfulfilled.
The Last of Us: Part II was certainly created to pull an emotional response from its player base and there are certain aspects of the story and its characters that I can easily see why many who have actually played the game have a right to complain about their time with it. For me, the game had about 14 hours that really kept me entertained, and if you read through my spoiler discussion, then you’ll know exactly what I didn’t enjoy here. That said, the gameplay was always top-notch with some really amazing performances that do make the game work on several levels, despite the issues I have with it. While the violence is certainly heightened and far more visceral than in the previous game, it’s the uncomfortable nature of it where Naughty Dog wants you to settle into, even if you don’t quite agree with it.
The Last of Us: Part II was purchased by the reviewer and played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.
All screenshots were taken on a PlayStation 4 Pro.