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The long awaited sequel to the 2013 smash hit by Naughty Dog is finally here. The Last Of Us Part II is violent, emotional and maybe not everything we were hoping it would be.
We think it’s safe to say that when The Last Of Us dropped seven years ago, it truly took the gaming world by absolute storm. Regular gamers were loving the story, the characters and the emotional depth that the story held and people who don’t regularly pick up video games were loving it too. The game immediately became one of the best selling games of all time selling 1.3 million units within the first weak of release.
Following the success, there was immediate buzz and demand for a sequel and players finally got what they wanted, the sequel was announced in December 2016. Although the sequel release had to be pushed back a couple of times down to the game not being ready in time and then Covid-19, June 19th finally came along with the release of The Last Of Us Part II.
The Last Of Us Part II takes place five years after the events of the first game and players play as fan favourite Ellie as she begins to settle in her new life of quiet living forming new friendships and relationships in her community. But, of course, that tranquility can’t last because we mean, come in, it’s a video game. So, when a new character to the series, Abby commits and unforgivable crime.
This leads to The Last Of Us Part II becoming a revenge story with little substance. Not only is the first part bathed in Ellie trying to get revenge for what Abby has done, we are then forced to play as Abby, a character we all loathe and genuinely hate as she wants to get her own revenge. What makes this even more of a kick in the face is that Ellie and Abby are so similar, it’s hard to really tell the difference when playing as the two characters.
In the first game in the series, Joel and Ellie truly felt like these real characters with some much emotional depth to them, they’re sharing the traumas of what this horrific disease can do to people yet in The Last Of Us Part II, the characters seem to lose that emotional depth. Ellie feels like a cardboard cutout of her former self and Abby is just insufferable. If the characters felt less stale and the game felt more “open world” then maybe it would be a different story.
Having said that, The Last Of Us Part II is beautiful. The graphics of the scenery are just so crisp and truly, truly stunning. Even in the simple things like the horse tracks that you make through the snow stay there so it looks authentic. All of the nature and the buildings all look so realistic and makes you feel more immersed in the story and the world itself. Every few seconds we were tempted to just stop and post a dozen screenshots to Twitter because the game itself is just truly so stunning. As well as the graphics, the combat was solid. It was all very fast paced and kept us on the edge of our seat especially in scenes where it felt like the enemies truly wouldn’t stop coming.
The violence in this game is also truly relentless. Everything that can be extremely and sometimes unnecessarily graphic in terms of pure gore is. Between animal carcasses you find to people that you kill, everything is very grim and violent. You can truly hear every single scream, every single breath and struggle of your own victims and it will make your stomach coil in some places. It truly brings the reality of this world and the violence in it to the forefront. Not only that, but we get the names of most of people victims that we kill, even the obsessive amount of dogs that you have to kill. It truly made us feel repulsed at our own violence at times and bought into question about the violence in video games and where characters should be held more accountable for it. You will feel uncomfortable playing The Last Of Us Part II and maybe that’s the point.
Overall, we can admit that we felt a little disappointed by The Last Of Us Part II. The story just didn’t feel as deep and emotional as the first installment of the series, the big death didn’t even feel like a massively devastating blow. The characters felt one dimensional and stale through a lot of the game and it just wasn’t everything we wanted. Having said that, we are looking forward to the prospect of a third game in the series as we do want more of Ellie and want to see the beautiful graphics of these games once again.
Have you played The Last Of Us Part II yet? Let us know what you think by tweeting us @Fuzzable
(Disclaimer – this review is subject to the writers opinion on The Last of Us – Part Two. Other writers within Fuzzable have differing views, and as a team of many writers, we accept all opinions.
Why not check out our article about The Last Of Us winning game of the decade here!
