Ellie Keeps on Slaying the Competition

(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

If the award for the game of the year was given out, The Last of Us Part II would win by a large margin. This game has everything from great graphics, fun gameplay, and even a little controversy. It is not just great all around; Ellie and her crew are selling at record rates, according to an NPD report. With the release of grounded mode, the gameplay gets even better. There were some initial naysayers complaining about a problematic story, easily confused AI, and sexuality of the main character Ellie.

Ellie returns to post-apocalyptic action and it gets intense with two new ways to experience the drama. Grounded mode minimizes the user interface, ammo given, and increased enemy damage. Did Elly fire all 5 rounds from the handgun or does she need to pull out the shotgun? In this new mode you will have to guess right or suffer the consequences. Permadeath on the other hand is an additional option for players looking for a serious challenge since you only get one life.

The melee options may be the last resort when battling zombies and fellow survivors. Depending on where you decide to engage your foe and with what weapon, the options for attacking and killing your enemy are seemingly infinite. When you get to the other major playable character Abby, those options seem to get more personalized for her. We straight up call her “Arms” for a good reason, Abby will put those beautiful biceps into the melee action as she uses them to squeeze the life out of her enemies. When fighting smaller groups of enemies neither heroine is afraid to use a table or a wall to her advantage saving the ammo for later.

The cleanest way to handle survivors is to unleash zombies on them with a little noise or explosion. You could patiently wait while the humans clear an area, or you could engage them all. Silently and slowly taking out individual members of a human group allows you to leave the bodies as a distraction for the rest. Some argue that this made the AI for the humans a little easy to confuse, but to me it added personality and realism. Besides, not every enemy faction falls for the downed cohort trick.

(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

The entire arsenal of ranged combat weapons got an improvement from the first installment, including the bow. I have never been more terrified of an arrow attack than in this game. Sure, they do not sound like much when whizzing by you, but the gameplay changes dramatically when your hero is struck by an arrow. In the first game the bow was your ally but now it is in the capable hands of enemies that will perforate Ellie with brutal efficiency.

Upgrade tables are the oasis in the vast wastes that reward those that have found the right parts. Unlike other games with upgrade tables, when Ellie improves anything, she performs all actions for upgrading the weapons. She properly restrings her bow and fully dismantles her rifle to swap out barrels. Other games that use upgrade tables barely show some awkward movements then the item is completed. This is not true for Ellie; you get to witness her prowess and ingenuity with equipment every time. There is a reason why Ellie is still alive.

(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

The zombies got better tactics and a visual update to give you something to fear and hunt. The spore effect on the runners shows the start of the infection, but the deformities on the Clickers are both biologically terrifying and beautiful. The virus really looks like it is growing throughout its victim and leaves something less human behind. Some of the zombies are truly grotesque because the virus mutates them further with armorlike pustules, or bloats others to explosive proportions. Even the virus feels intrinsic to the world and not just added flavor, mutated zombies show up in logical locations, for example bloated zombies are found in the rainy Seattle region.

The main storyline is not the only tale told in this game, and the astute player can uncover tragic stories including a heist gone horribly wrong. Each survivor group tells a tale through their environment, for instance one group shuns anything tech for nature. They use wood reinforced torchlit outposts, while the other groups integrate electricity and steel. 

The Last of Us Part II storyline begins with revenge and its consequences. Both Ellie and Abby give up post-apocalyptic paradise to pursue vengeance. Abby pushes her party thin while venturing out into unfamiliar territory, costing her a toll that she is willing to pay. Both Abby and Ellie gain some redemption in the end, but even that has a cost. Abby is no longer the beast she was at the start, and Ellie’s chord choices on a guitar are severely limited. The world Naughty Dog built is harsh for everyone and either character could have walked away saving some of their old lives, but that would lack the real emotion of the traumatic loss felt by both characters.

(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

Some may see an issue with Ellie leaving her love behind in the farmhouse to pursue Abby for the death of Joel and her promise to Tommy. Joel’s demise before I could really play him was shocking but fit since Ellie is quite capable of protecting herself now. The sad part of Joel’s death is that Ellie was never able to fully forgive him, and it becomes a catalyst for her revenge against Abby. Ellie had to honor the promise she made to Tommy, since her anger with Joel is that he gave his word and then betrayed the Fireflies. Besides, the farmhouse was a nightmare for Ellie because there were triggers for her PTSD everywhere that had her stuck in a tragic past that she could not escape.

Naughty Dog proves that a female led videogame can compete and dominate with The Last of Us Part II. There are a few games coming out with the next generation of systems that will be in the Game of the Year talk, mainly Cyberpunk 2077. Currently, Ghost of Tsushima is giving some competition. However, the samurai’s swordplay does not compare to the melee finesse of Abby and Ellie, and their dramatic storyline makes others seem tame. Adding in Permadeath and Grounded may have made this game unstoppable. When the awards for game of the year are finally passed out for 2020, look for The Last of Us Part II on most nomination lists.

The Last of Us Part II

• Platform: PlayStation 4

• Developer: Naughty Dog

• Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

• Release Date: June 18, 2020