Review: The Last of Us Part 2 is a worthy successor to Naughty Dog's masterpiece

Seven years ago, Naughty Dog released a game about a roadtrip in the zombie apocalypse. Set against the backdrop of a fallen America that never recovered from Outbreak Day, a smuggler and a young girl immune to infection embarked on a cross-country journey to save the world. The Last of Us was about the lengths people would go to for love. In The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog explores how far they would go for revenge.

On almost every level, this game is a massive improvement upon its predecessor. While The Last of Us painted a rich portrait of this broken, zombie-infested world, its sequel fleshes things out with a greater degree of nuance and detail. Gameplay and exploration feel familiar, but polished to a sheen. As always, Naughty Dog presents us with a colourful array of memorable characters - though the journeys they take are bound to spark no small amount of controversy. 

Before I go on - The Last of Us is one of my favourite games of all time, and it would pain me to spoil its continuation for anyone else. This review will contain no story spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 - but I will go into detail while describing its many mechanical features. Let’s dig in. 

Five years later

Let’s rewind the clock a little to the events of The Last of Us. After a long and tumultuous journey, Joel and Ellie found themselves at a hospital filled with Fireflies - the end of the road. These people could produce a cure for the widespread infection that had plagued the world for so long. The only catch? They’d have to kill Ellie to do it. Joel didn’t hesitate - he saved Ellie’s life by ending dozens more in that hospital, and escaped safely with her. 

After lying to Ellie about these events, the duo settled down in a town called Jackson, run by Joel’s brother Tommy and his wife Maria. Fast-forward five years, and The Last of Us Part 2 begins. Jackson is now an established community full of life, and has been for years. Ellie has grown up and found friends, having built a new and full life in this town. 

But nothing lasts forever. After a horrifically violent event sends Ellie spiralling and those in charge are reluctant to give her justice, she decides to make her own. On a quest for revenge, she sets out into the sprawling city of Seattle - a broken place where several warring factions struggle for power, and the Infected roam free. 

Violence begets violence

Tonally, The Last of Us Part 2 is worlds away from the first game - constantly filled with a deep sense of dread that only swells as Ellie inches closer to her destination. While the first game at least allowed for small moments of levity as Ellie and Joel got to know each other, this game mostly has her in a state of unbridled hate. 

The people who accompany her on this journey have been close to her for years. You’ll meet several characters shown off in previous trailers - such as Ellie’s love interest, Dina and Jesse, one of their shared friends. While we don’t get to see the bonds between them slowly form like in the first game, Naughty Dog does a great job of making their relationships feel as lived in as possible. It's a joy to explore areas with them in tow, and learn about their lives as they make small talk. 

Jesse and Dina constantly reference their messy romantic history together. Ellie references a night at the bonfire, while serenading Dina to the guitar-strummed tunes of A-ha’s Take On Me. Joel and Ellie go to a pretty special place for the latter's birthday. Jesse talks about his mother, and how supportive she's always been of him. These character-building sequences are exactly what Naughty Dog games excel at - making us fall in love with these characters during the smallest, most fleeting moments in their lives. 

Make no mistake, however - The Last of Us Part 2 is still a vicious game. Tonally, it resembles a twisted revenge thriller - forcing players to get uncomfortably close to Ellie’s barbaric murder-spree across Seattle. She does desperate things to survive, and even worse to pursue her misguided sense of justice. As someone who adored the first game through and through, even I had to take sanity breaks every once in a while - because this isn’t the fluffiest game to spend your weekend playing. 

How does the story stack up against the first game?

As a sequel to one of the most beloved games of all time, it’s admirable to see just how far writers Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross were willing to go in its writing. The story is almost The Last Jedi-esque, with a brazen confidence to take familiar characters in extremely unexpected directions - directions that longtime fans might not necessarily like. 

Since finishing The Last of Us Part 2, almost all my time has been spent puzzling over its story, and how it serves as a continuation to the 2013 game. I have issues with the way it’s paced - the story seems to haphazardly slow down at parts, and then drag on elsewhere - but strong gameplay pulled me through those moments with ease. The ending will likely be discussed with a lot more vitriol than the first game’s, but I personally loved it. 

It would have been so easy to pump this game full of fanservice. Most of us would have settled for more of Joel and Ellie adventuring together, but that’s exactly what this game is avoiding: more of the same. In musical terms, Part 2 almost feels like a beat switch halfway through a song. Both games are radically different in theme and tone, but manage to compliment each other in a really satisfying way. 

Movie-like cutscenes

Naughty Dog’s unbelievable tech only further enhances this story. Cutscenes ooze with cinematic realism, straight out of a movie - and that applies to character models as well. The studio’s updated engine clearly boasts even fancier motion capture tech, resulting in facial expressions that are head and shoulders above their previous game, Uncharted 4. 

This wow factor isn’t just present in story cutscenes. During gameplay, you can see enemies' faces physically contort with grief after finding fallen friends, or in pain when attacked. Once in a while, when all but one enemy was wiped out, they would fall to their knees and goad me forward, whereupon Ellie would slaughter them with a brutal finishing blow. The level of detail really shines in these small moments - when you’re forced to confront the amount of violence you’re visiting upon others. 

Naughty Dog wants you to feel bad for all the blood left in your wake. They have succeeded, by making every human being’s presence in this game felt. Enemies call out to each other by name during combat - hell, they even do the same to their dogs. The people you kill writhe and scream in pain as they die. They do not go gentle into that good night. And all the while, Ellie believes her violence is not only justified, but necessary - creating a disconnect between her beliefs and hopefully, the player’s. 

It almost feels like Naughty Dog is making a statement on violence in videogames. A fairly big turnaround for them, after the Uncharted series had Nathan Drake slaughter armies of people in foreign territory without so much as a whoopsie-daisy. 

Finding beauty in a broken world

Just as Naughty Dog pushed the limits of the PlayStation 3 with The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part 2 does the same with the PlayStation 4. At the tail end of this console generation, it’s hard to even think of a game that looks as good as this - only God of War (2018) and Final Fantasy 7 Remake come close. It’s not just the game’s graphical beauty that is staggering, but the level of intricate detail weaved into its environments. 

One of the first places Ellie visits in-game is the town of Jackson, Wyoming - a small slice of civilisation that has been revived in this long-dead world. Jackson has come a long way since the events of the first game. Electricity is now freely available throughout town, which is immediately clear due to all the warm Christmas-like lights draped over its buildings. Children chase each other around, make snow angels in the ground and build snowmen in the streets. 

It's a bustling place filled with life, and packed with people just going about their everyday routines. In contrast, Seattle is a city in a dire state, even by this world’s standards. There, the Federal Disaster Response Agency (a government-ruled militaristic force seen in the first game) has been usurped by a new faction - which in turn, is waging war against another group of cultists. It’s absolute chaos, and you can bet that the Infected aren’t watching from the sidelines either. 

The game’s greatest strength

All this history makes Seattle an absolutely fascinating place to explore. Every environment you explore is eye-poppingly gorgeous. The earth has continued to reclaim its land undisturbed, which means that almost every area Ellie visits is covered by large swathes of foliage. Enemy factions have taken over various parts of the city, and Ellie will unfortunately stumble upon many of them during her travels - whether it’s gun-toting militia in a coffee house or hood-wearing cultists in a park at night. 

In typical Naughty Dog fashion, environmental storytelling is heavy everywhere you go, making exploration a much more enticing affair. Levels are huge and sprawling compared to the first game’s tendency towards linearity, with massive open-world environments peppered throughout the game. These areas are extremely well-designed, and encourage you to wander off the beaten path - even if it’s just to follow a chain of letters between a husband and his sick wife. As you might imagine, that story doesn’t end well for either of them. 

These are the bits I loved the most. This world is so rich and full of history at every corner, and I would constantly walk into ramshackle cabins or streets littered with bodies and wonder, “What happened here?” The developers have done a fantastic job of fleshing out each environment, almost always including little notes and letters that add to their lore. 

Exploration in the previous game always felt like breathing room in between the story’s most tense moments, but it’s a lot more complicated here. A Runner might be hiding behind any door you open, and enemy patrols might stumble upon your scavenging activities. These events are clearly scripted, but they keep you on your toes as you move around the game world. You never know what’s lurking around the next corner, after all. 

Endure and survive

As a playable character, Ellie is a clear upgrade from Joel - with a nimbleness that allows her to navigate environments in entirely different ways. For example, she can go prone and crawl under vehicles, or squeeze through cracked walls and fallen bookshelves. 

Other small additions help diversify gameplay, allowing you to maneuvre through environments in many different ways. Almost every sheet of glass you find in the game can be shattered to pieces, which means that Ellie can break windows and glass shelves. Ropes are carried over from Uncharted 4, but players will now have to aim them at specific objects to solve puzzles. Exploration in the previous game boiled down to unlocking a hundred different doors with shivs - but those days are long gone. 

All of these new mechanics translate to some very, very interesting combat scenarios. Enemy-filled levels can now be stealthed through in what seems like a hundred different ways, with Naughty Dog giving players a level of agency they never had before. I'll say this: I ended up replaying multiple parts of the game not for the story, but to re-do combat sections in different ways. It's so much fun!

As if Clickers weren't bad enough...

Enemy AI has been given quite the upgrade as well, posing a challenge that only ramps up as you make your way through the story. Human enemies can be almost annoyingly alert on higher difficulties, noticing you in a matter of seconds if you wander out into the open. They call out your position to others, bark orders to flank you and bum-rush you when you’re out of bullets. It can be really intense, but the new Dodge button helps out with those close melee encounters. 

Infected such as Runners and Clickers remain as dangerous as they’ve always been, but this sequel sees the introduction of multiple new enemy types - such as the Shambler. The Shambler essentially functions as a minituarised Bloater, spraying clouds of corrosive acid at you if you get too close, and tanking more bullets than you might have to spare.

Weapons feel even better than the previous game, and the crafting system has undergone a huge upgrade to accommodate that. Scavenging parts allows you to physically change how your weapons look, and add to their strength in combat. Where Joel only had six skills in total to unlock using pills, Ellie has multiple rows of upgrades which offer new crafting options and upgrades to gunplay - and much more.

This is categorically the biggest and longest game Naughty Dog has ever made. To keep things fresh, it constantly throws new things at you at an often-breathless pace. Every time I felt like the game had outdone itself with a certain level, it just outdid itself again. A part of me is still in disbelief at what they’ve accomplished here. 

The most accessible PlayStation game yet?

Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Last of Us Part 2 is its diverse list of accessibility options. The long list of options are almost overwhelming at first, because Naughty Dog has specifically included settings for players of all abilities - focusing on fine-motor skills, low vision and impaired hearing. Theoretically, you could play through the entire game with your eyes closed, which goes to show how far development has gone on these settings. 

For example, difficulty options don’t just range from easy to hard anymore. Players can now finetune how much damage Ellie takes, along with the behaviour of enemy AI, how involved her companions are in combat, how stealth works and the availability of resources in the game world. The options go this deep on every aspect of gameplay - be it HUD colour or text-to-speech options. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s truly industry-leading stuff. 

A lot of effort has clearly gone into sound design as well. While it was raining, I stepped under a satellite dish and could hear the realistic pitter-patter of rainwater on the dish above me. Outstanding foley work is noticeable in equally small moments, such as Ellie wiping dust off a guitar and plucking at its strings. On the topic of audio, those who loved the first game’s music won’t be disappointed. Mac Quayle’s intense combat music will have you gripping the controller a little too tightly, reminiscent of his great work on Mr. Robot. Gustavo Santaolalla’s sombre score is beautiful as always, bringing depth to the story’s softer moments. 

Verdict

Yes, The Last of Us Part 2 is worth playing. Much like the first one, it’s a game I think everyone should play - if they can stomach its subject matter. Its core gameplay loop of fighting enemies, exploring a fallen world and going through story beats is downright addictive, and as close to perfect as gameplay can get. Visually, it’s spectacular - running laps around every other PlayStation game with ease. 

As a continuation to Ellie and Joel’s journey, it’s also the only way forward that makes sense. Inconsistent pacing and fairly predictable story beats might marr the experience, but everything still flows cinematically - a roughly 30-hour playable movie dripping with drama. One that will keep you hooked from beginning to end. One that challenges the thin grey line of morality - and where we thought Joel and Ellie stood on it. 

One that might even challenge where you stand on it. 

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