The Last of Us Part II

So as the credits roll on my second playthrough I consider going back for a third, because this wonderful story does feels so good to play. It’s a game that’s never held down by the weight of its predecessor’s importance. Its writing and its performances feel pitch-perfect throughout, driven by the fact no movie or book or soon-to-follow HBO TV show could properly replicate the story it tells. It’s a video game and it could only exist as such. Now, just be sure you see it through to its incredible end.

But it's not fair to appraise Last of Us Part 2 as some kind of futuristic hybrid. It is a game -- a thrilling, harrowing and thoughtful one. Prepare to be riveted, surprised and, yes, traumatized.

Can a slick, mainstream action game really reckon with the violence that drives it? The answer is yes - messily, but powerfully. [Eurogamer Essential]

The first game’s story was polarizing; this one’s will clearly be as well. So many people worked on this game for so long, and at such cost, that I want The Last Of Us II to be more than the experience I had. It’s a visually beautiful game that feels distinct to play, and the story it tells and how it tells it, at the most basic level, certainly pushes the edges of what games have done before. None of those accomplishments elevated or redeemed it for me. Like the nature consuming Seattle, or the outbreak consuming humanity, its ugliness overshadowed everything else.

The Last of Us Part 2 depicts individual people who are instead ruthless, capable, yet self-absorbed, and whose perception of violence is limited to how it affects them and their chosen family members. They are almost unbelievably unable to see the bigger picture. Part 2 ends up feeling needlessly bleak, at a time when a nihilistic worldview has perhaps never been less attractive. Its characters are surviving, but they’re not learning, and they’re certainly not making anything better. Maybe the most surprising thing that The Last of Us Part 2 offered me was the surety that, while the game was made with great skill and craft, we are actually much, much better than Naughty Dog thinks we are.

This sequel has more false stops than Return Of The King, and by its operatic and downright biblical finale, it begins to flirt heavily with pure bombast, with a self-seriousness as overgrown as any Bloater. But it’s usually smart to bet on Naughty Dog sticking the landing, and Part II invests so heavily in these characters—new but especially old—that by the time the actual ending finally arrives, it’s gutting in a wholly different way than the original’s.

It's decent. It's a good little game...The violence is inherently fun... I don't think I've seen a bigger gap between promise and reality since I played Fable 3. [7.5 out of 10 "if I were doing review scores still..."]

Yet, I’m glad I pushed through — because those dark, disturbing moments are what make The Last of Us Part II so powerful. It’s not just a game about violence. It’s one that grapples with the impact of that violence and shows players the consequences.

While the violence of the first game served a compelling moral tale, the over-the-top bloodshed of Part II is all in service of a rather clichéd and tiresome lesson about the endless cycle of revenge. The banter that elevated the first game above mere dystopian fantasy is gone too, as Ellie often navigates this ultra-violent world on her own. It makes for a lonely, depressing experience at a moment when many of us are already feeling lonely and depressed...Still, it’s a rare AAA video game that will take any sort of risk — and Naughty Dog takes a lot of risks.