The Last Of Us Part II is an action adventure game that was developed by Naughty Dog and was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game is a sequel to 2013’s The Last Of Us (see our review here). It is available exclusively on the PlayStation 4.
When first hearing about the The Last Of Us Part II many years ago when it was first teased, I was excited to see what they could do with the story. The Last Of Us Part 1 was one of the best games on the PS3, it had one of the best stories and as a player I felt truly attached to the characters by the end of it, so being able to go back to that once again was something I was very interested in doing.
The Last Of Us Part II is a bit different to what players may expect. One of these differences is with the characters you play as. In the first game, you primarily played the game as Joel and occasionally got to experience Ellie. In The Last Of Us Part II, you will play as Ellie for the most part, Joel for only a little bit and you’ll get to experience a new character known as Abby. I don’t want to say why there’s not much of Joel in this game because it’s a spoiler, but don’t go in expecting another Joel game, The Last Of Us Part II is Ellie’s story.
The Last Of US Part II Review – The Story
This game is essentially a revenge story. In this game both Ellie and Abby are enemies and I don’t want to go into the reason why this is because I’d rather my readers experience the game fairly fresh as I did. Essentially both Ellie and Abby are on a quest for revenge and as a player you follow them both on their journey to get this revenge. As you play through the game you will learn about the two of them and you’ll gain a lot of insights into their characters as you see them grow.
One of the things that shocked me about this game is that it’s actually fairly violent. In my first few hours with the game on the first weekend, I thought it was actually a bit too much. The game will aim to shock players fairly early on with increasing amounts of violence and for many people out there, I think this game is going to be a little too strong. There were a few times when I was playing through this game that I actually took a break for a while and didn’t really want to play it. It’s an odd thing because when playing The Last Of Us Part II, I wouldn’t really describe my experience with this game as ‘fun’, I’d say it felt more like watching a story unfold in which really you don’t have much control over the outcome, more like a movie.
I want to bring this point out about the lack of control over the story in this game. It’s hard to talk about this without spoiling the game, but I will try. There are certain sections in the game where I was playing as Ellie and I found myself actually disagreeing with what Ellie was doing and I didn’t want her to be doing the things I had to do. However, the game doesn’t give you a choice, you have to act everything out in the way the story is meant to unfold and it actually did bother me a little. I know that the creators want to tell a story, they want us to experience the tale of Abby and Ellie, but this is also a game and as player of that game, I would like to feel that I have some impact on what unfolds. Give us an alternate ending at least!
I will post another shortened spoiler filled discussion here where I would like to write a bit about some of the gripes I have with this game’s story. This will be for people to read that have already played through the game, so only come there if you finished it already. I’ll keep this review spoiler free as this review is intended for people that have never played it before.
The Last Of US Part II Review – The Gameplay
The gameplay in this game good. If you’ve played through The Last Of Us Part 1, you will know what to expect as it’s actually pretty much exactly the same experience. As a player, you have a variety of weapons. Some will be melee weapons like a shiv or a crowbar. Others will be guns such as as hand guns, shot guns, rifles, crossbows or bow and arrow’s. These weapons will be used to take down human enemies and also the infected hordes.
The gameplay helps to compliment the survival horror/adventure story line that is The Last Of Us. While you do have a lot of weapons to choose from, it’s not like you can just run through the game shooting everyone like Rambo does. There’s some element to stealth in this game and characters like Ellie will often crawl through the grass like a snake to down enemies silently. There’s multiple sections in the game where you will need to stealth your way through them, by hiding in the grass, Ellie cannot be seen in the grass.
As a player I never really got bored with the gameplay aspect of The Last Of Us Part II. The tension from the game’s main story does translate across to the gameplay moments. When I was playing as Ellie, I never wanted to get caught, I cared for this character, I was always careful with what I did in each of the game’s levels. Sneaking through and taking down enemies was a joy.
The game does have an emphasis on resources and the scarcity of them. You will always be scavenging around and picking things up. The stuff you pick up will always be either ammunition, health packs or things to craft weapons or health packs. Over time as well, you will gather a lot of scrap and you can use it to upgrade your weapons and make them more powerful. This section of the game is pretty much similar to what we saw in The Last Of Us Part 1.
The Last Of US Part II Review – The Graphics & Sound
There’s not much to say about the graphics, it’s one of the best looking games on the PS4. I did not play this game on the PS4 Pro and am still using my launch day PS4. For me as a person who has already transitioned to PC gaming, when I first played the game, I did actually feel that things looked a bit old, but it’s no big deal and I quickly adjusted to it. I feel like it looks pretty much like The Last Of Us Remastered did. I haven’t done any comparison, but I feel like the graphics are pretty much the same.
The character models are all very good. I really liked the character design of both Ellie and Abby and playing as these two did feel slightly different.
Level design is a strong point and there’s a lot of tiny details in each of the levels for the player to stop and look at. I loved exploring the levels in this game and even though I got lost a few times because I didn’t know where I was supposed to go, I found it amazing to explore this world.
The weapon noise is excellent. The Last Of Us Part II is one of the few games where things are mostly silent, but when a gun shot is fired, it’s so loud and realistic. Almost scary in a way. I love the gun sound effects. Music is also really good, the game doesn’t have that many tracks to listen to, but when it does, they do have any impact.
The Last Of US Part II Review Final Comments
My experience with The Last Of Us Part II is positive overall, although I did have certain issues with it that I found very negative. While I did find The Last Of Us Part II to be overly violent and at times not really fun to play, I do not mean this in a bad way, like I’m not saying don’t play this game because of that. The story did actually affect me in a way no game ever has and that means something to me as a long time gamer. It is very hard to talk about the game though, without discussing spoilers, so I will be posting another discussion article where I talk about them, but only come to read that if you have already finished the game. You can find it here.
