I’m going to be very lazy with this review of The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered, and copy/paste my original review of The Last Of Us 2. I am doing this for three reasons:
- It was an easy decision for Sony to “re-master” a game that is already readily available and playable on the PlayStation 5, while Sony has many games in its library that are compatible with the PlayStation 5. 5 are not playable, and if Sony can slow down, so can I.
- What’s added in the “remaster” doesn’t add enough to justify a second purchase (or an upgrade, as Sony thankfully offers an upgrade option for those who previously owned the game itself), and;
- I’m currently on a cruise vacation and while I’m paying a fortune for internet (seriously, $300 for six days of slow wifi access), so I’d rather not spend much time writing this. Things are a pointless review. Nothing about this remaster will change your original opinion in any direction. If you like it, you’ll like it. If not, you won’t.
In short: I won’t discuss the game’s narrative or themes that I covered in the original review. I’ve already done this in depth and there’s nothing in this “remaster” that’s genuinely new that substantially enhances or challenges it.
Having said that here is my evaluation of The Last of Us II (Remastered):
Neil Druckman, the creator behind the game, is one of those insanely poor writers who mistake emotional manipulation for intellectual depth. You’ll definitely come away with things feeling his game, but as far as philosophy goes, the whole experience is almost painful and juvenile. Druckmann’s vision for the American Wild West is akin to the American Dream, in which small and insular communities form together with minimal legal or governmental involvement. Moreover, these communities are presented as inherently free of the human filth we see in more mainstream Westerns that challenge the idea that this state of life is utopian. It is only when hostile forces threaten the gleefully independent and anarchist Wild West that Druckmann’s world is allowed to become anything other than a kind of “easy times,” in which children throw snowballs. Teenagers and young adults indulge in drugs and hump for free. and people are more concerned about accepting a sandwich from a fanatic than they are about actually eating it.
You compare it to a show like Deadwood or a movie like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which highlights the moral dilemmas of living that kind of freedom (and are downright practical about it). How do these kinds of societies wake up when they really wake up? The Social Contract and the Law), and The Last Of U Part II come off as dangerously naive. This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t allow for the violence of this sort, because as I mentioned, there are threats from outside, and there are also “zombies”, but because everyone is armed with teeth and guns. is careless about taking around, and no one seems particularly concerned by these things. Not enough, at least, to allow it to impede their access to drugs and free sex.
Nor do the supposedly constant threats to utopia prevent individuals from embarking on elaborate missions of revenge, harming those around them, or the consequences of what they leave behind. Here, frankly, the whole concept of The Last Of Us Part II, the kind of people it portrays, and the setting itself come across as a vision of a utopia that comes dangerously close to matching it. What you expect to see in a prep. NRA propaganda.
All of the above is pretty accurate in my reading of this game, and yet I can’t prove a single word of it without looking for it in the “spoilers”. To attempt to go any further with the narrative analysis would be to provide poor, unsubstantiated criticism, as I would leave you with more questions and holes than I could fill, and I would certainly defend myself. I will not be able to position through narrative evidence. If I were a betting man, I’d be inclined to throw the dice on the idea that there are embargoes (NB: on the original release of the game – this is still my copy/paste from the original review) precisely because Sony Aware that the discussion of The Last of You Part II will shift to the construction of its own failures as a narrative. But, with all the above in context, since we cannot discuss the narrative here, we are not going into this review. We’re going to discuss the gameplay instead. That’s why you’ll see the score you do below because it’s really great, but I felt it was important that you read the rest of the review in its entirety to give my usual critical approach to the narrative. Can’t apply around. This game.
Of all the big-budget games I’ve ever played, none were as fundamentally compelling as The Last Of Us Part II. From the level and environment design to the AI and the developer’s ability to find interesting things for players, The Last Of Us Part II is a masterpiece of highly refined gameplay. I’ve got about thirty pages of notes here that I made while playing, and not once did I note a single problem I had with how it was running. It’s not just that it’s a bug-free experience (though that itself was impressive). It’s that there’s never a moment when a single thing goes wrong in the game.
I made a lot of notes because The Last Of Us Part II is a particularly long game at a few dozen hours in runtime, though rarely for blockbuster space, it doesn’t feel overstuffed with content. The game establishes a steady, rolling rhythm of narrative sequences, stealth bits, and action moments, and then makes sure players move through them so quickly that they never outstay their welcome. It does this in a long story that uses context cuts, flashbacks, a revolving door of secondary characters, and important micro-objectives within the wider game to ensure you’re never bored. shall be. I don’t think Druckmann can write an effective or intelligent story, but he has a mastery of form and how traditional narrative works in conjunction with gameplay. At this technical level, Druckmann is unparalleled, and The Last Of Us Part II is a learning opportunity for many other developers and gamewriters. A lot of people want to make their games “cinematic”, and in doing so make the mistake of failing to account for the fact that games run too long to work as cinema. The Last Of Us Part II is a rare example of a game written specifically as a game, and instead of trying to adopt stylistic and structural ideas from a different medium, it keeps its conventions and pacing, and It does this by producing tone.
The moment-to-moment gameplay is also brilliantly designed, and in my mind, the best example of this is every chase or action sequence where you need to move quickly. The sequences are so fast that you don’t have time to actively think, and the environment feels very open. This could have been a disaster, with players reacting intuitively to running in the wrong direction, but the sequences are so carefully designed that you always effectively move in the right direction and Without realizing that you are – small, almost imperceptible cues telling you to turn right here, the object is to jump there. Sure they’re heavily choreographed, but to prevent the trial-and-error frustration of accidentally turning into a horde of zombies and restarting a checkpoint, most people follow the short visuals first. Will try to complete this series. Audio cues, quite subconsciously. This allows developers to give players thrills and adrenaline rushes without risking frustration.
Stealth and gunplay are equally effective. Naughty Dog gives you all the tools you need to tackle stealth sequences fairly. For example, at any time, you can enter a “listening mode” that lets you identify nearby enemies, even through walls, and observe their movement patterns. By doing this you can plan to catch enemies unawares and take them out, or just navigate around them. First, it’s almost too easy, even on higher difficulty levels. But then you run into dogs. Dogs with names. Now as an aside, this is a dirty attempt at emotional manipulation by the developer because in theory you’re meant to empathize with the dogs more when you hear their names being called, which makes it more likely to shoot them. It hurts. However, in practice, it’s presented as such an obvious mechanic that you’ll know how obvious it is every time you hear the name.
As a mechanic, though, those dogs are fantastic enemies for both stealth and stealth games, as they can smell and follow your character’s scent, meaning that when you’re sneaking Trying to move around, you still need to be constantly moving, or they will eventually catch up to you. Also, you won’t get a free stealth kill if you get behind an enemy, since they now have their dog. You can shoot the dog, and the human can sound the alarm, you can kill the human, and then be killed by the dog. Or you can try to get past this dangerous enemy combo. The satisfaction of navigating a minefield of enemies, and their dogs and the need to keep moving is something else, especially given that the levels are, once again, beautifully designed. There are many different paths you can take to get around any hostile environment, and maybe even stumble upon some loot along the way. It really encourages creative play, and I love that.
When you get into a gunfight, The Last Of Us Part II offers a wide range of different weapons and some excellent AI, which really knows how to use the environment and harass you. If I have one criticism of the game, it’s that some environments are clearly designated “shooting zones” with lots of things to hide behind, encouraging you to move around and try to shoot the enemy. Are spread out at just the right distance to enable For a game that otherwise aims to be as natural as possible in its level design, these moments of arbitrarily placed covers are jarring, though nothing unusual from the same studio. Which brought us to Uncharted. That aside, the combat is both strategic and challenging, and you’re given enough ammo to encourage you to use the full range of weapons available to you, while also feeling That the ammunition you have is not unlimited, so you need to. Be careful in its application.
One final gameplay element I need to mention is the “zombie” enemies, and I’m mentioning them last because they almost feel like an afterthought. They serve as too much of a distraction in the midst of important conflicts between humans, and in fact, they only seem to exist because they are fundamental to the last of us. That’s not to say that no effort has been put in – there are a few new enemy types to deal with, and of course, the clicking of clickers and the weird-looking monsters are as annoying as ever. But truth be told, these moments were at least essential within the game as a whole in terms of what they add to the overall experience.
Now that the copy-paste task has been completed, let’s quickly review the new material:
- No Return Mode: This is the biggest new feature in the game so far. It takes everything you know from The Last Of Us 2, and turns it into a roguelike survival mode. You kill waves of enemies, and when you’re done, you get to go back to base, do some leveling up of gear and such, and prepare for the next, more difficult wave. There are a few different objectives, and then “boss fights” every several levels, but it all comes down to the same basics: you use all the mechanics from the base game to deal with enemies in arena-style levels. It works, and in fact, because it’s based entirely on gameplay with no narrative, it would actually allow you to get the best of Last Of Us 2 without going through Druckmann’s writing to get there. But it’s also derivative as a roguelike and doesn’t really add anything to The Last Of Us 2. It just dumps the existing content into a different package. It was clearly added rather than having any particular creative drive behind it.
- Speedrun Mod: It honestly amazes me that Naughty Dog would be willing to admit that the narrative, setting, and storytelling were so inconsequential to The Last Of Us 2 that an official mod would get people to look at it. Will encourage style. However, that doesn’t matter much more than showing the true value of the game’s narrative.
- Guitar Freeplay Mode: This barely counts as a minigame.
- Lost grades. There are three missions and after seeing the visions for them you’ll hopefully understand why they were originally cut.
And that’s it. According to Sony, that’s reason enough to pay a second time for a game you can already play on the exact same console.
Look, I agree that The Last Of Us 2 does a good enough job of manipulating the audience so that they feel connected to it. And while I find the narrative shallow, derivative, and shallow, the gameplay, art style, and technical merits are anything but. I gave the original game a 5/5 and I stand by it. In a world where the least marketable content we’ve seen outside of Hollywood is celebrated and book reading is in decline across the board, The Last Of Us 2 is one of the most beloved pieces of content for modern audiences. It is a wonderful example. Suits gave the people what they wanted, and criticizing the game in that context seems pointless.
But.
Even if you love The Last Of Us 2.Even if you believe it to be the video game equivalent of Citizen Kane. Even if you think that Shakespeare himself would have thrown in the towel after seeing this play, realizing that he could never match it as a storyteller, you will surely realize that A game that is four years old and easily available on your current console. No need to remaster. Of course, you understand that this is a ridiculous overkill, done purely to milk revenue from fans, and it’s especially disappointing because Sony is sitting on dozens of incredible properties. That this would leave them all on ice and inaccessible to release this pleasure is not acceptable.