THE LAST OF US PART II REVIEW

OVERVIEW:

The Last Of Us Part II, was launched on 19th June 2020. It is an action-adventure game, developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment exclusively for Sony’s PlayStation 4.

Neil Druckmann returned as the creative director of the game soon after the release of The Last Of Us Remastered for PS4 ( a prequel to Part II which was originally made for PlayStation 3) and co-wrote the game with Halley Gross.

Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker have reprised their respective roles as Ellie and Joel, along with a new character of Abby played by Laura Bailey. Gustavo Santaolalla returned to compose and perform the score.

Some story concepts for The Last Of Us Part II had conceived during the development of The Last Of Us in 2013. Later on, after the release of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy in 2017, the entire team of around 350 people began working on the sequel of The Last Of Us.

It is a post-apocalyptic game which is based on the theme of revenge, retribution ,and violence.

It has been praised for its performances, characters, visual fidelity, and gameplay mechanics, hence, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive game of all time, selling 4 million copies worldwide and surpassing giants like Marvel’s Spider-Man with 3.3 million copies and God Of War(2018) with 3.1 million copies.

THE LAST OF US TRIVIA:

It is a post-apocalypse game based on the story of Joel and Ellie.

The game starts with the outbreak of a Cordyceps fungus infection which turns Humans into aggressive scavengers.

In Austin, Texas, a man named Joel Miller loses his daughter Sara during an attempt to escape all the chaos happening around along with his brother Tommy.

Twenty years later, the infection has spread across the globe resulting in a minimal surviving Human population.

Joel turns into a smuggler in Boston, Massachusetts and along with his partner Tess(Annie Wersching), gets a job of smuggling a 14 years old girl named Ellie to Fireflies (a private organisation formed to find a cure for the infection) who were believed to be putting up in Massachusetts State House.

While doing so Tess gets infected and upon discovering Ellie’s immunity against the infection she makes Joel promise her to get Ellie to Fireflies.

Throughout the game, both Joel and Ellie travel across the country of The United States of America in search of Fireflies, in turn developing a father-daughter relationship and bond, due to which Joel kills the entire Firefly group in the end of the game after discovering that in order to get the cure they will have to kill Ellie.

Joel rescues Ellie from the hospital in Salt Lake City. Later, he told her a lie that the Fireflies stopped looking for a cure as they couldn’t find one and then takes her back to Jackson city where Tommy was residing with his family.

THE LAST OF US PART II PLOT:

After the events of The Last Of Us, Joel tells the truth of Fireflies to his brother Tommy(Jeffrey Pierce).

Four years later, Joel and Ellie had made a life in Jackson City, though their relationship was turned into a disagreeable one, after Ellie got to know what Joel did to Fireflies in Salt Lake City to save her life.

After knowing the truth Ellie was devastated as she felt she could have contributed towards reinstating this world to normalcy, which would have made her life meaningful.

While on patrol on a regular day, Joel and Tommy rescue a girl named, Abby from an infected throng, who takes them to an outpost run by Abby’s men.

Upon reaching there, those men surprisingly attack Joel and Tommy. After hours of torture, Abby finally beats Joel to death and avenges her father who was a doctor at Firefly hospital in Salt Lake City and was killed by Joel.

Seeing Joel die in front of her eyes, Ellie promises to make Abby pay for that.

Tommy sets out for Seattle, Washington take hunt down Abby, followed by Ellie and her girlfriend Dina. Ellie later gets to know that Dina is pregnant.

After three days of violence and ambush, Ellie and Abby ultimately come face to face. In this encounter, Abby kills one of Ellie’s friends named, Jesse ( Dina’s ex-boyfriend), shoots Tommy and impairs him ,and beats down Ellie and Dina almost to death, but eventually spares them and tells them to leave Seattle.

A year later, Ellie and Dina are living on a farm raising Dina’s son, when Tommy arrives with a piece of information regarding Abby’s location in Santa Barbara, California.

Ellie leaves for Santa Barbara and upon her arrival finds out that Abby has been captured by a group name Rattlers. She rescues Abby and forces her to fight her. In their second encounter Ellie overpowers Abby, during which in a desperate attempt to survive, Abby bites off Ellie’s two fingers. Ellie was about to kill Abby, but due to a change of heart lets her live.

Abby sails off to remaining Fireflies and Ellie comes back to her abandoned Farmhouse. She remembers Joel, reminisces about tries playing his guitar with her damaged hand and later leaves.

GAMEPLAY:

The Last Of Us Part II is a post-apocalypse action-adventure survival game played with a third-person perspective.

The post-apocalyptic environment in the game such as collapsed buildings and forests certainly makes the player feel that the world has come to an end.

The player can use firearms such as pistols, rifles, bows, grenades, or upgraded melee weapons such as knife, sword, hammer, baseball bat, iron rod, etc, or could simply fight and survive using bricks, bottles or bare hands.

Hostile enemies using artificial intelligence, are now smarter and do not follow a fixed pattern. They may use a player’s weaknesses against him. In situations, when gamer is out of ammunition or is distracted, the opponents may call for assistance, take cover and use stealth to take down the player.

The players are expected to have a stealthy approach by incorporating and using their environment by hiding behind and under cars, buildings and other objects ,and taking cover in tall grasses, etc. Further, in the cover system, not only players can crouch in a regular position but can also crouch in prone position to evade enemies.

‘Listen Mode’ has been re-introduced, using which players can track and locate enemies position by heightened sense of hearing. The Game has introduced a new concept of ‘Guard Dogs’, which track the scent of the player, that can be seen using listen mode.

Players will have to constantly look for supplies, to keep their inventory and ammunition full, which is extremely important for surviving the harsh environment of the game.

Most parts of the game are playable with two characters, i.e, Ellie and Abby, where Ellie amounts to almost 60% of the game and Abby goes up to 40%. Players may also play briefly with Joel as well at the beginning of the game.

FINAL VERDICT:

In terms of graphics, sound, performances ,and gaming mechanics, this game definitely steals your heart and you may love Naughty Dog for creating such a beautiful cinematic piece of art that gives you thrilling and terrifying moments and yet leaves you with an exhilarating experience.

But what you may not like about the game is its storyline. To simply put it, it was just a revenge action-drama that did not have much to it. Despite, Naughty Dog’s numerous attempts to make players connect to and understand the characters, it doesn’t happen.

By the end of the game, you may feel that all the violence and vengeance were unnecessary and inconsequential. It is very unlikely for a player to take away anything from the game, as you don’t fell bad for any character except for Joel, where the guy could have got a farewell he deserved.

All in all, the narrative of the game could have been better.