The Last Of Us Part II Review
Naughty Dog’s stunning PS4 swan song was worth the wait
There are specific moments from The Last of Us Part II that keep replaying in my head. There was one encounter with a group of infected (the game’s zombie equivalent) that escalated so fast and then ended so dramatically that I’m haunted by the image of the final, broken enemy crawling towards me, only to have its life ended by my boot. There are views that made me gasp, and a particularly neat visual trick used to convey height that I found delightful whenever I encountered it. I can vividly recall the first time I made a man explode, and a very tense section where I hunkered down under a bed, blasting shotgun shells into the legs of enemies as they ran into the room. My PlayStation 4 is full of video clips waiting to be edited down and watched back in appreciation.
But the one that has really stayed with me was much less dramatic, and completely non-violent. It’s from a cutscene, early on, featuring returning protagonist Ellie and Dina her obvious crush. Dina is asking Ellie a question about something that happened the night before, and midway through she pauses, thinks it over, and bites the corner of her lip.
It’s perhaps the most subtle bit of motion-capture performance I have ever seen in a game. With that lip bite, Dina (played by Shannon Woodward) communicates a complex emotion through performance, making her feelings subtext without needing to spell them out. It’s the kind of thing I didn’t realise was possible with motion capture, and it’s honestly revelatory — and that’s before you dig into the fact that it’s a romantic moment that occurs between two young women in a huge AAA blockbuster. Ellie and Dina are just one part of the game’s push to feature characters who aren’t all straight white cis men and women, and this cute small interaction between them is one of the lighter moments before the whole game plunges headfirst into the darkness.
The Last of Us Part II will, I think, mean a lot to many people. It’s also a game that many players will have a complicated relationship with. As both a sequel and a game unto itself, it’s extraordinary. On a technical level, it’s flat-out absurd what Naughty Dog has achieved here, and the level of fidelity is astonishing. It’s a game of incredible surprises and huge ideas. It’s also a game that reviews — this one included — will need to tip-toe around a bit to avoid spoiling, and one that won’t necessarily give you the same itchy feeling of being truly new and special that the first game did. And above all of this, it’s exceedingly, distressingly violent.
This is a game that really flexes the Part before the II in its name. The first game was a lightning-in-a-bottle landmark title, and Naughty Dog has wisely not tried to make a sequel that renders the previous one obsolete. Mechanically, Part II is very similar to The Last of Us, with subtle improvements and tweaks rather than any sort of dramatic overhaul.
The game, which picks up several years after the first (Ellie’s 19 now), assumes you’ve played and can remember the original. As before, a lot of the gameplay involves sneaking through environments (which are now dramatically bigger), gathering items to craft useful tools to fight against both human and zombie enemies, and — if you’re anything like me — trying to stealth your way through each encounter until you’re inevitably spotted and either have to shoot everyone or leg it to the next “safe” spot. Both possibilities are equally thrilling, especially against human enemies. The combat is satisfyingly weighty and fun, and the moments where I found myself on the backfoot, fleeing from packs of gun-toting enemies or hungry infected or those damn dogs that can follow your scent trail, were some of my favourite parts of the game.
The Seattle setting feels much wider and deeper than the previous game’s environments, and the path forward is usually littered with optional buildings to explore and loot. I found myself obsessively gathering every supply, reading every note, taking down every hidden enclave of infected enemies, constantly worried about running out of ammo or health packs, but also just keen to explore. This is a stunningly well-realised apocalypse, and each space you can enter feels real and lived in. The ropes from Uncharted 4 also make a return, and there are a handful of very satisfying traversal puzzles that require you to throw them around to create makeshift paths forward.
Despite all this expansion the game feels very familiar, and that’s not a problem — The Last of Us is a masterpiece, after all. Human enemies are now more human than ever, reacting realistically and speaking dialogue that sounds far more natural to the human ear than henchmen are usually given (although the way they now cry out the names of individuals who have been taken down is often more amusing than upsetting). There’s still only a few types of infected, and I found myself wondering whether the dread I felt when I approached them was because of the amazing sound design that makes their clicks and screams so uniquely terrifying, or because I was getting kind of sick of them by the end. I think it’s a bit of both, ultimately, but there are plenty of thrilling encounters throughout the game that make it all worthwhile.
There are a lot of smart decisions that have been made with the game’s pacing, and the way it plays into and against certain tropes. It’s a little too easy to predict when an infected enemy is suddenly going to pop up and give you a scare, but sometimes they really got under my skin — an early encounter in a toilet meant that for the rest of the game I was nervous every damn time I walked into one. The game transitions from an open world into story-critical cutscenes so organically that I often found myself marvelling at how expertly I had been guided to exactly where the game needed me, even when I felt lost or was simply running straight forward in a panic.
The game is a technical marvel, but it’s not a miracle. There are still video game-y walls everywhere — overgrown plants and debris that you can’t possibly traverse because they’re just slightly higher than the walls and plants you’re otherwise able to clamber over or through with ease. But it’s easy to forgive this when so much of the game’s world feels extraordinarily reactive. The game does such an incredible job of guiding you through its enormous environments. Often when I stumbled upon one of the aforementioned cutscene triggers — turning a corner and getting ambushed, opening a door and being tackled to the ground, getting pulled aside by an unexpected friend as I sprint down an ally, enemies in pursuit — I found myself awed by how well the game integrated my presence as a player into a story that I was, in no way, the author of.
The Last of Us Part II is very focused in its storytelling, and openly has no interest in the player influencing the plot. I felt more like a passenger rather than a participant in the story — but I mean that as a compliment. There are further compliments I could throw at the game and its story, as well as a few gripes, but I live in fear of spoiling even a single plot beat for players. Suffice it to say that the game is about a lot of things — the fallacy of revenge, the importance of inclusivity in a revolution, the things that can, will, and should make us change. It’s about Ellie and Joel, and it’s about other characters who are just as rich and complex and interesting.
It’s also, in a very real way, about how fun it is to shoot a bunch of monsters with a shotgun, and this is the latest in a long line of games that both indulges in and aggressively critiques extreme, cathartic violence. But the game manages to effectively have its cake and eat it too by absolutely stripping away any semblance of choice from the player. You’re taking the shots, swinging the hammers, and stabbing the enemies by your button presses, but you’re never implicated, never told that you’re part of the problem for enjoying it. There’s no “would you kindly” here — there’s a story to be told, and the medium it’s being told through just happens to be ergodic. The game is perfectly comfortable with the fact that it’s making you uncomfortable, and there’s a clear divide between your actions as a player and the decisions being made on-screen.
Having said that, the violence in this game really is horrific. You’ll see bodies being put through gruesome torture, all perfectly rendered; the motion-captured faces can show extreme pain, too, and the game leans into its own brutality. It’s part of the story that Naughty Dog is telling, although there are scenes where the camera could have cut away without the game losing anything of value. But there are also moments of beauty and grace in the game, including one extended, combat-free sequence early on that borders that is, at its peak, transcendent. You’re given plenty of reason to care about Ellie and Joel and everyone else. You’re also given reason to be angry at them, to reject them, to wish they made different choices.
It’s also worth noting that The Last of Us Part II puts accessibility front-and-centre. Not only are the accessibility options the very first thing you see upon loading the game up, but Naughty Dog has gone the extra mile to make sure that everyone can experience the game. It features a text-to-speech system and can be played purely with audio prompts and has been tested with both the vision and hearing impaired in mind. It’s a commendable, important effort, and while I’m not the right person to critique exactly how effective it is, presenting players with these options before even the title screen sends a clear message.
I played through the 25-hour campaign in The Last Of Us Part II across four days, and since it wrapped up I’ve been thinking about which game I prefer and why. There will be people who have very strong feelings one way or the other, but the more I think about it, the more irrelevant it seems. This isn’t The Last of Us 2; it’s The Last of Us Part II. Together, the two games make a single whole. If the first game was lightning, the second is the terrifying crack of thunder right after — and it’ll reverberate in your head for years to come.
