Well guys I did it. I just beat the most controversial video game of last year. One of the most corporate ridden Triple A products of the disastrous 2020. A game with so much trash fire, hatred, offense, and corruption surrounding it that it very well may be a symbolic disgrace to the video game industry. I just played through the entirety of The Last of Us: Part 2…. and I didn’t hate it. Actually I ended up really enjoying my time with The Last of Us 2 despite how miserable it made me feel at times. A while back I wrote a very lengthy article uncreatively titled “The Video Game Disasters of 2020.” (Has been deleted now) It was my way of venting on all the terrible events that happened that year and how developers along with their publishers could prevent such actions from happening again. Normally I would talk about good games or events on my review site, but there was this hidden rage building within that wanted to burst out like an unearthly scream. When it came out all it could do was pour out tragedy after tragedy. One of the sections of that article was dedicated to talking about The Last of Us 2.
The game had been in development since the release of the remaster for the first game and it was headed by none other than Naughty Dog’s latest and striving director. Same director of the first game and Uncharted 4 which was made alongside the sequel, Neil Druckman. The team at Naughty Dog discussed for days what to do for the sequel. The first game wrapped itself up so beautifully that the writers didn’t know how to follow up. Making a video game sequel is challenging at times, but making a sequel to something that was deemed near perfect is even harder. Naughty Dog wanted to keep to the themes that the first game had while expanding upon the ideas and designs that made The Last of Us so enjoyable. The Last of Us: Part 2 would be their biggest project yet. Bigger than the first game and bigger than Uncharted 4 which back in 2016 was considered their crowning achievement. Neil Druckman would write the story, previous actors like Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson would reprise their roles, almost 2,200 developers across fourteen studios were working on the game, and the game had a higher budget than most of the projects funded by Sony.
Development on The Last of Us: Part 2 wasn’t revealed until an expo in 2016, and it wasn’t until two years later at E3 that Naughty Dog revealed some physical gameplay on the game showcasing how it would play and what it would look like. There was a lot of hype surrounding this game, and when I say a lot I mean alot. Millions of individuals were excited to see a follow up to one of the best narratives in gaming, and the preorder numbers for Last of Us 2 were higher than some of Sony’s best selling games for the Playstation 4. Nothing should have gone wrong with what was leading up to what could be a perfect sequel, but then some really concerning stuff happened.
A couple of developers at Naughty Dog begin to leave the company and reveal how it feels to work for a money-powered Triple A team. Some of those workers even stated through articles that the heads at Naughty Dog are forcing the developers to work harder than they really should. This was a small number of workers at first and it was difficult to confirm if what they were telling was the truth. Months before the game could be released someone who supposedly used to work for Naughty Dog leaked the game’s plot and major points of the story online for the whole world to see. Some of these plot points ended up being true, some of them were inaccurate, and some of them were made up. However, those who read the leaks were very displeased with the plot was heading. A good chunk of the pre-orders were canceled due to the leaks.
Around the time of release, it was confirmed that overtime was in fact enforced on the developers at Naughty Dog. Crunch culture, when a developer is told to work more than they should and gain nothing in return. The Last of Us: Part 2 does come out and those who played it also confirm that some of the leaks were true. Naughty Dog was under so much fire at this point that they had to find a way to keep the sales of the game at a reasonable level. If their fans, even the hardcore ones who have stuck with them for years, didn’t want to play their game then maybe they could pay review outlets to promote it. IGN, The Guardian, VG247, Metacritic, OpenCritic, they were all giving The Last of Us: Part 2 near perfect scores. This raises the concern level because not only does it show a disconnect between game journalism and critics who dive into the game, but it also shows how easily manipulative a Triple A studio and even company can be. The user score on Metacritic is drastically different from the website score, because the user score is filled with those who boycotted the game by review bombing. Some of the critics and content creators I know gave the game a fair amount. Skill Up, Matthewmatosis, NeverKnowsBest, AngryJoe, Internet Historian, GmanLives, Miracle of Sound, and even Yahtzee Croshaw choose The Last of Us: Part 2 as his worst game of 2020 for representing everything wrong with the video game industry.
Neil Druckman was bombarded with several comments online and rather than deal with them responsibly he refused. He refused to take criticism and claimed anyone who disrespected what he did to his staff were all just haters. So a man with high amounts of praise is getting thrown under the bus because he deserves it. That’s what happens when you refuse to take in the truth. On top of it all, when it came to the end of the year Game Awards, the game was nominated for multiple categories and ended up winning a majority of them. Why would the most controversial game of the year be noted so much? The team had connections to the host of the show, Geoff Keighly. The Last of Us 2 won the overall Game of The Year award and everyone was pissed. There is so much wrong with everything surrounding this game that I just wanted to avoid it.
I wanted to stay away from whatever the f*ck was happening with it. One year later after all the controversy, the game is on sale for half price and since there isn’t anything interesting coming out this year I decided to say, “screw it”. I emptied all the negative thoughts in my head and went in with low expectations. The first two hours started off low, but as time went on my view of the game began to enlighten. Guys, I think I like The Last of Us: Part 2. I do have to clarify a few things right now before we move on. I do not like how crunch culture was enforced onto the Naughty Dog staff, I do like some of the statements and action made by Neil Druckman, and I can understand the audiences who either love or hate this game. The Last of Us: Part 2 doesn’t deserve the perfect scores and awards it got, but it also doesn’t deserve all the hate and ridicule it got. When I look at this game all I see are a bunch of tired and stressed out developers who are praying to god and hoping what they were forced to make for all these years was worth it. For the most part it was. This is my review of The Last of Us: Part 2. I won’t be leaning towards either side as I want to express my honest opinion on this game. There are spoilers ahead for both the first game and sequel, so proceed with caution. I hope you understand and enjoy this written review.
Story
Let’s recap the events of the first Last of Us so you understand what happens in the sequel. Before the fungal zombie outbreak started, Joel had a daughter named Sarah who lived together peacefully until that fateful night. Sarah was shot to death by government officials during their escape, because an officer believed they had the infection. He then spent the next years of his life working as an illegal smuggler behind the government’s back. One day he and his work partner are tasked with transporting a girl named Ellie across a fungus infested city to a group known as the Fireflies. They are notorious for their work across the United States, but whatever they are doing is truly something mysterious. More than halfway through the city Joel notices a bite mark on Ellie’s hand meaning she is infected, but the bite mark has been there for several months. Meaning Ellie is immune to the fungal infection and that there must be something in her blood that will allow them to make a vaccine or cure. Joel’s work partner is gunned down and the Fireflies didn’t come to pick up Ellie. Joel is left with nothing but a little girl, so it was up to him to travel to the Fireflies’ homebase.
Along the way Joel and Ellie make a lot of friends, some of which were other survivors amongst a dead decaying world. Joel reencounters his brother Tommy and they both learn how to mend their relationship. As time goes on Joel and Ellie build their own connection and Joel realizes god is giving back what was taken from him years ago. A daughter. Someone he could care about. Once the two of them reach the Firefly outpost, Joel learns that the operators there would have to kill Ellie in order to reach the infected part located within her brain. Joel, refusing to see his new daughter figure die without her even knowing, fights his way through the outpost and kills all the Fireflies within it. Joel saves Ellie just in time and the two drive away at a rocketing speed. Ellie, being unconscious during the whole event, asks Joel what happened. Joel, wanting to not let her know the stone cold truth tells Ellie that the Fireflies found other children who were immune and that they no longer needed her. Ellie believed that lie ever since that day and the only individuals who know that she is immune and what happened are Joel and his brother Tommy who he told days later.
Fast forward several years and we are now at the events of the sequel. Joel and Ellie now live in Jackson, a valley town run by Tommy and his wife. Ellie works for one of the town’s patrol groups as they are sent out each day to take care of nearby infected. They go out and hopefully come back. She even got herself a girlfriend, a nice jewish girl who luckily survived the outbreak named Dina. The night before at a party they kissed and a small fight broke out. Not a colossal fight, but enough to stir some attention. Dina used to date Jesse who is one of Ellie’s close friends in Jackon, but Jesse doesn’t mind because he gets to see his best friends getting along. One day during a cold winter patrol, Joel and Tommy go missing and Ellie and friends have to travel through the blizzard to locate them. Meanwhile miles away from the town of Jackson, a young woman named Abby and friends are plotting how to get into the town. Their goals are uncertain, but what we can tell is that they're looking for someone. Someone….special.
Abby navigates her way through the blizzard, but she is then bombarded with a hoard of infected. This is it, this is where she dies alone. Luckily, she is rescued by two mysterious strangers armed to the teeth. The three of them make it back to where Abby’s friends are hiding and the two strangers reveal their names. Tommy and Joel. Abyy’s gang recognizes one of those names and before you know it Joel gets one of his kneecaps shotgun blasted. Tommy is then knocked out and Joel is shoved in the corner and beaten some more. Flashback to Ellie and she quickly gallops through the blizzard in search of Joel. She coincidentally finds the building he is being held within, and when she rushes down to the basement she is ambushed. Abby’s friends hold Ellie and she sees Joel heavily wounded. She begs Abby to stop and leave Joel alone, but Abby then furiously swings a golf club and lodges it straight into Joel’s head. Killing him instantly. Ellie’s mind is blurred out with nothing but rage and she plans to kill every person in that room. Ellie is left unconscious, but she is then saved by Dina and Jesse.
Weeks later a funeral is prepared for Joel and the entire town mourns for his death. Ellie practically just lost her father figure and is left to live in Jackson alone. She remembers the badges the murders wore and she pinpoints their location. The W.L.F, an armed faction stationed in the capital of Washington. Tommy ventures out to hunt down his brother’s killers which leaves his wife worried. Ellie and Dina plan on venturing out as well, but Tommy’s wife asks them to locate Tommy and bring him back safely. Ellie and Dina make their way to a run down Seattle with one goal in mind. Locate Abby and her friends, take revenge, and bring Tommy home alive. Okay, so I do want to add what Abby is doing while Ellie goes on a revenge rampage. Abby and her friends are busy taking out a group of cultists terrorizing Seattle known as the Seraphites. Their beliefs and traditions are extremely twisted, and several negotiations were made to make peace between the W.L.F and Seraphites. So Abby now patrols a ruined Seattle to kill any Sepharites she sees. What will these two do to survive?
Gameplay
A lot of people complain that The Last of Us: Part 2’s gameplay is very outdated. It’s generic, it’s not innovative, and it’s the same exact game that we all played back in 2013. I can agree that this isn’t an innovative game and that it doesn’t strive to do anything new for Naughty Dog, but what I do think is that it is a really well made game. In fact, I think the gameplay of The Last of Us 2 is far better than the first game. It follows a lot of similar rules and design choices, but it does rework some of the problems the first game had. The Last of Us: Part 2 is a blend of third person shooting, survival horror, and exploration. The game even takes a few key notes from Uncharted 4 by expanding the traversal options and having segments where you have to use the environment and the physics of certain objects to get to where you need to go.
Throughout your journey you unlock a diverse arsenal of weapons to use and when used in the right scenario they can have devastating effects. Let’s use Ellie’s arsenal as an example. Two of her basic handguns are the revolver which has a long reload time and ammo capacity, but compensates for it’s high damage. Then she has a magnum which has a bigger ammo, fires quicker, is easy to reload, and can be equipped with a silencer if you decide to take a more stealthy approach. She also carries around a bolt-action rifle which can snipe enemies from a long distance, a shotgun which is deadly up close and can take out two or more enemies if aimed properly, molotov cocktails which can light enemies ablaze and are especially helpful against the infect, a bow which takes time to prepare but can take out enemies quietly, and much more. That’s just Ellie’s arsenal of guns, guns, and killer craftables. I warned you at the beginning of this review that there would be spoilers, so you would probably know by now that I would bring this fact up. After progressing through a good chunk of Ellie’s story you switch over to Abby and the way you play the game somewhat changes. I could explain to you Abby’s arsenal, but then the review would drag on longer than it really should.
Taking the lethal approach first to fight may not be the wisest decision in the world. Sometimes you’ll face a group of enemies larger than you can handle and remember that this is the apocalypse. You have a dwindling supply of ammunition and when you’re out you are left out in the open. You have the stealthy approach like I hinted earlier and stealth in The Last of Us: Part 2 has been heavily reworked. No longer do you just hide behind cover and distract unaware foes with throwable items. Now you can hide beneath certain objects, go prone and hide in tall grass, or grab an enemy and stab them. The grabbing I forgot if it was in the first game and going prone is definitely not anything new for video games either, but The Last of Us: Part 2 has far better stealth than its predecessor. If you are spotted while sneaking about you are thrown into the fray. You either fight back with whatever you have on hand or you take flight and locate the exit to the arena. It’s the fight or flight action I expect every survival game to have. Stealthing around reminded me of when I played Metal Gear Solid V. They felt identical to be honest, but they are both really well designed.
There are resources lying about in safe locations for you to loot and others being scattered around the battlefield. Sometimes you’ll have to navigate carefully, sometimes you want to clear out the room before you get them, and other times you’ll have to avoid getting them. Your choice. With these resources you can craft a wide variety of consumables, throwables, and even ammo types later into the game. Hey, you ever wanted to make your arrows explode!? Well now you can! Sometimes you’ll take on a hefty amount of damage and unlike most shooters you don’t regenerate your health. You can heal yourself using a medkit, but it takes time to use it. Your medkit animation will cancel if you take damage and if you take too much damage you die and get sent back to a previous checkpoint. There are also piles of pills and gears scattered all over the environment. Gears can be used at workbenches to upgrade your weapons and improve different traits of them. Sometimes certain upgrades will change how you use a weapon. Think of: New Vegas where a scope impacted how you took on combat.
Pills on the other hand upgrade certain stats and unlock new skills. I forgot how the skill trees were in the first game, but I feel like The Last of Us: Part 2 has better skill trees. You start off with one category at first, but as you explore the environment you uncover magazines that unveil new categories each with new skills and perks to unlock. These upgrades include increasing your maximum health, the ability to hold your breath and have steadier aim for a few seconds, increased movement speed while aiming or in listening mode, getting more supplies while crafting, or unlocking new recipes which I said a few sentences ago. Some of the upgrades you unlock can make the game much easier or later sections more passable. It’s what makes a good skill tree. Stuff that you actually need or want to unlock for future purposes.
Enemies range from humans who will try to gun you down or slice you up, to the several stages of the infected. There are the basic zombies, Clickers who can kill you in one bite and are attracted to noise but can’t see a damn thing, ones who scurry around quickly and take you by surprise, and ones who are bloated and consume multiple bullets. It’s best to deal with the infected or areas filled with them as fast as possible. Outside of combat and resource management there aren't that many interesting things to talk about. There are a ton of safes to stumble upon each containing supply caches. Sometimes the code will be written onto a nearby piece of paper and others will require you to look for clues. Sometimes there are rooms you can’t get to, so you’ll have to think creatively and figure out how to get in. Imagine an immersive-sim where the most obvious answer isn’t the easiest answer and you have to think creatively.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there is close range combat which requires quick reaction and well timed dodges, but engaging in it can be dangerous because other enemies will be gunning you down. You can bring strong melee weapons to make melee combat easier, but melee weapons have a durability level. That’s all I have left to say or offer. Hopefully, with your natural instincts you’ll be able to navigate across Seattle and take revenge on those you wish to kill the most.
Thoughts
Well, this is the most spoilery part of the review so if you’re a person who skipped to the end I do have to warn you. Here we f*cking go. The Last of Us: Part 2 is not a perfect video game, is not the masterpiece review outlets are stating it is, and certainly isn’t a Game of The Year contender. It’s not just that Neil Druckman enforced crunch culture and that they manipulated critics in a way to promote their game. I can definitely understand the people who probably didn’t enjoy this game and didn’t love it as much as the first. In all honesty though….I liked this game. It’s not the best example of how to do a sequel, but in some way The Last of Us: Part 2 holds up to the first title.
The combat has been vastly improved by offering more options on how to approach a situation and it packs more of a punch. You can feel your selection of weapons grow as you unlock more and upgrade them. The bullets piercing through hostile skin, blood gushing out into puddles, and the enemies screaming in pain as their comrades call out for their loss. I don’t know whether or not to call this one of the most beautiful games on the Playstation 4 alongside others like Horizon Zero Dawn and Ghost of Tsushima, but the game is visually impressive. Seattle in The Last of Us: Part 2 is amazing to navigate through. The luscious overgrowth stretching across each building and the sky gazing brightly above you. The level design is another factor I believe is better than the first game. There are more rewards for straying off the beaten path, there are collectibles like cards and coins hidden cleverly, and some weapons like the shotgun and hunting pistol can only be unlocked by searching for them.
The audio is top notch and the voice acting is...oh my god the voice acting and roles Naughty Dog chooses for their games will always be of fantastic quality. Ashley Johnson returns to play as Ellie once again and she nails her performance. Troy Baker as Joel, Jeffrey Pierce as Tommy, Shannon Woodward as Dina, Stephen Chang as Jesse, and many more. One person I didn’t even know played a part in this game is Ashly Burch as Mel. If you don’t know, Ashly Burch is one of my favorite actresses in gaming and she voiced one of my favorite video game protagonists, Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Laura Bailey played as Abby and she did an excellent job with her role. I think she may have played my favorite role from this game. Not my favorite character, but her performance was near perfection. I felt really bad when I remembered she got harassed online for voicing Abby. Death threats. F*cking death threats folks. I can understand why people could go and hate a character, but jesus christ it’s a damn video game. These are actors and actresses. They have no control of what their character does or says. They just paid to play a role and hopefully do a good job at voicing their given character. You must have some real mental issues to go and send death threats to someone doing their job.
Now the story and characters are obviously where The Last of Us: Part 2 gets most of its criticism. There are parts of the writing where it feels really inconsistent and there are the occasional sections of the game where they slow you down to stretch out the run time. A lot of people think the writing is garbage because of certain moments and how they were executed, but it’s not a totally bad story. It starts off at the lowest point within two hours because of Joel’s death, but it gets better after that. No offense, I predicted Joel would die in the second game. In some way it helped create a plot and drive the player forward. I like the interaction, the cast of characters and those little moments where you get to relate to them. Ellie and Dina’s relationship I especially enjoyed and how cute it was to see them bond. I don’t get why that was another factor that people sh*t about as well. What’s wrong with having a character who is LGBT? I mean I’m a straight guy, but allow people or writers to have their own preferences.
The game makes you play as Abby for ten hours after you get through a huge chunk of Ellie’s story and when it happened I thought the game would get dragged out to a point where I would stop playing the game. It didn’t and my time with Abby was actually well spent. As Abby you get to learn her side of the story as she has to deal with the events after the massacre of the Fireflies and after murdering Joel. You get to explore Seattle alongside her friends and connect with them. Humanize, sympathize, and appreciate them as characters. There are individuals who absolutely didn’t care when Abby’s friends died, but when you go through Abby’s story you feel bad. You feel bad because you just killed a bunch of people who were trying to survive the apocalypse much like Ellie. Abby ends up befriending a Seraphite named Lev and by end of her journey he is all Abby has left. The only person that could care about Abby and protect her from danger. Abby is alone and she now has to walk across a dead decaying world. The way they handled Lev, how they explained why he’s transgendered, and how it fit into the story was another factor I really appreciated. It’s to f*cking bad though that people pulled sh*t on this as well. I am trying to take this review as seriously as possible, but it’s hard when the audience is inconsistent and it’s hard to tell what they want.
Do you want to know why it’s very hard to make a protagonist or diverse selection of characters these days? It’s because of that. I secretly love representation in games especially when they explore different cultures or ideas. The sad thing about representation though is that it doesn’t add anything. It doesn’t make a game better or worse, it’s just there. It’s still really cool to have characters you can relate to though. Zagreus from Hades, Morgan Yu from Prey, Emily Kaldwin from Dishonored 2, Jin Sakai from Ghost of Tsushima, and the previously mentioned Aloy. I don’t want to go back to having generic video game protagonists. I don’t want to go back to having just gruff hairy dudes. The only exception of gruff hairy dudes I like would include Kratos from God of War and Joel, but at least they have some personality.
Anyways, the plot and little tidbits after the opening two hours are pretty good. There are a few flashbacks that show the father and daughter like binding Ellie and Joel had, and they are really wholesome. The game's ending may be questionable to some, but in my mind it made sense. Do any of you remember Spec Ops: The Line from 2012? It was a sad depressing story disguised as your typical military shooter. It showed the horrors of war and how video games tend to mask it by promoting devious actions. It was outside of the box and I think that’s why it is still remembered to this day. The Last of Us: Part 2 is taken by many as a story mainly about revenge. There’s more to it than just revenge. If you have noticed there are countless battles happening around Ellie and Abby. A good chunk of them are absolutely brutal and the two protagonists are involved in some way. It’s a cycle of violence. Spec Ops and Last of Us 2 have one thing in common and it’s that violence could have been prevented. Death and destruction could have been prevented if you just stopped. Yet you kept marching forward, because you are the protagonist and they are always defined as “heroes”.
Now I do have to bring up more problems with The Last of Us: Part 2 so I can balance out everything nice I’m saying. There are those moments where they slow you down on purpose which is really annoying. The “puzzles” that require you to push a box object next to a wall to climb are still annoying seven years later. Immediately once you get into Seattle you are dumped into a somewhat open sandbox which I really enjoyed. I thought to myself, “maybe they’ll have an even mix of linear and open levels”. Kinda like what Metro Exodus does. Straight after that the game gets very linear which made me a little bummed out. Finally due to it being a narrative focused game it lacks replay value. Certain moments only work once and it is a slog to go through those slow sections again during a second playthrough. Those are my major complaints.
Usually by now I summarize my overall thoughts and slap a review score onto a game, but this time it’s different. I have expressed my honest opinions on The Last of Us: Part 2 and the readers who came up all the way to this point are probably those who can understand where I am coming from. Still, I know there are people who hate this game after an entire year and will torch anyone who likes it. There are also those who absolutely love this game and will torch those who do nothing but hate it and give it a score lower than they want. So instead of giving it a score or showing the score I want to give it, I’m just going to say that I liked The Last of Us: Part 2. It’s not perfect and is very hard to forgive with how sad it makes you feel, but the developers who spent years making this game deserve a pat on the back for getting this game out there. Art is art. There are occasionally screw ups here and there, but what matters is that the artists tried. Thank you for going through this long review and I will see you next time.
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