The Last of Us Part II Review and Rating | Should You Play?

This is our spoiler-free review of the game The Last of Us Part II (TLoU2), as well as our rating. Find out what score Game8 game The Last of Us 2, and use it to decide for yourself whether or not the game is worth picking up.

Last of Us 2 Review Score from Game8

Overall
34/40
Story	Gameplay	Graphics	Enjoyability
7/10	7/10	10/10	10/10

Who Should Play This Game?

• ★ Fans of the first game ★
• People interested in the story
• Players who like high quality graphics
• People who like hearing a story from multiple sides
• Players not deterred by gore and graphic content
• Those who have a tolerance for dark stories

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Last of Us Full Review

From a story of “Love” to a story of “Revenge”

The Last of Us Part II (henceforth referred to as TLoU2) picks up where the original left off. It is set roughly four years after their journey from the original ends. While the first TLoU's theme was about “Love”, and the lengths a father would go to to protect his daughter (Ellie being somewhat like an adopted daughter), this one is a tale of “Hate” and “Revenge”. You can easily see this just by glancing at the cover art.

If you've managed to avoid spoilers up to this point (including dodging any leaks that spread around the internet), you may be wondering what it is that could cause a game to take such a dramatic shift in themes. However, we will remain Spoiler-Free in our review, and leave that part out. However, we will say that our staff who were fans of the original were quite surprised at the changes to Ellie for this game.

We would love to delve more into the game's storyline, but with how tied into The Last of Us it is, we are worried that even one wrong word could be a huge plot spoiler for our readers who haven't played yet.

The meaning of playable characters

Abby, who you will gain control of in a few segments of the game

To say just one more thing about the story, we want to bring up Joel's actions in the first game. While his actions could be seen as ultimately “done in order to save Ellie”, they likely had a large psychological impact on the players. In the same way, TLoU2 has you control certain characters in order to see the story from multiple perspectives and understand how they feel.

TLoU2 is very cinematic in that sense, weaving you through both sides of a watchable story. This is no surprise to anyone, as Naughty Dog has a track record of games like Uncharted, which make use of graphics and cinematics to pull you in to the story.

However, even if it does sometimes feel almost like a movie, TLoU2 is still a game. If our desire is to play the game to the end, we will pick up the controller and play the character on the screen. This game's unique charm is how it forces you to see other perspectives more deeply by having you control characters on differing sides of the plot.

The importance of “playing” the game

That's all we'll say about this game's story. While we feel that it may be hard to describe everything we felt when playing without giving it away, we do highly recommend playing the game and enjoying the story for yourself. We also feel that certain parts of the story can really only be taken in by playing the game for yourself, so once again, we think it is best to enjoy the story and the game together by playing through it.

Graphics that have improved on TLoU Remastered

TLoU Remastered	TLoU2
Enlarge	Enlarge

Now to talk about some things other than the story. The first thing that will catch your eye is the graphics. At this point, saying anything about how good Naughty Dog does graphics almost seems redundant. But we cannot stress just how good this game looks from a graphics perspective.

Finding a PS3. A Vita can also be found

On top of the stunning graphics, it is also worth mentioning how you don't really feel like you have to wait too much for loading screens. There are many checkpoints in game, and you can easily backtrack when needed, but we have to tip our hats to the short amount of time this takes. These loading screens aren't enough to take away from the game experience (although loading from a save does take a bit of time).

You should also observe the expressions shown in characters of this game. It's hard to really see the expressions of the character you're controlling, but they are plainly visible. The attention to detail here is another one of the game's highlights.

The action is like that of the first

A new infected: The Shambler

Now we'll take a moment to talk about gameplay. For the most part, we didn't feel such a big change in the action from the first LoU. There are for sure a few mechanics in the gameplay that feel a lot smoother this time, as well as Prone and Dodging, which weren't in the first Last of Us, along with Skill Branhes, Guard Dogs, and Shamblersーa new type of infected.

While the guard dogs were a constant annoyance, and they required you to act a bit more strategically, there wasn't any dramatic changes to the game's action. However, this doesn't necessarily hurt the game in any way. In fact, we feel like this makes it even easier for fans of the original to pick up the controller and play the game mostly how they remember it.

Lots of options to choose from

This game offers a plethora of options, like changing difficulty mid-game, and many accessibility options that let many different types of people play the game in a way that is most comfortable for them. From changing the run button to holding the L1 button or just pressing it once, you can change practically all actions on your controller to suit your preferences.

The Accessibility presets also allow anyone, even the inexperienced, to fully immerse themselves in the game. One thing we really have to applaud is the Motion Sickness setting. While our editors have never personally experienced motion sickness in games, we did feel that the many features put into this game made it feel very inclusive, so that virtually anyone could play it in a mode that they enjoy.

Enjoy everything the PS4 has to offer

With the PS5 announced, and the release being planned for just around the corner, TLoU2 seemed to make it a personal mission to demonstrate just what the PS4 is capable of. With the superb graphics and expressions of characters diplayed in the Last of Us 2, we feel that much more excited to find out what the upcoming PS5 has in store for us.

Even without thinking ahead to next-gen consoles, this game alone is a very enjoyable experience. From the highly lauded story of the original, this sequel will surely be remembered as one of the monumental games that released during the PS4 lifetime. If you are a PS4 owner, this is definitely one worth picking up and playing.

Last of Us 2 Price and Product Information

Title	The Last of Us Part II
Release Date	June 19, 2020
Price	$59.99 USD/ $79.99 CAD
Platform	Playstation 4
Genre	Survival Horror, Action-Adventure
Developer	Naughty Dog
Publisher	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Official Site	The Last Of Us Part II

Where to Buy

• PlayStation
• BestBuy
• Amazon
• Walmart
• Target
• GameStop

Note: Depending on inventories, the links shown here may or may not be stocked.

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