History repeats itself. In 2013, The Last of Us beautifully ended the PlayStation 3 era - sure, it wasn't the last game on that platform, but there were no big exclusives after it. In 2020, the sequel to the hit from Naughty Dog is going to pull the same trick with PlayStation 4. Whether The Last of Us Part II will become a "swan song" for the console, we tell you in the review.
The Last of Us by Friv2Online wasn't to everyone's liking, but it was one of the few games that demonstrated that video games could tell adult, serious stories. Throughout the storyline, gamers watched the characters change and, if they didn't even accept Joel's choices, they at least understood why he made them.
The sequel raises the bar even higher. You can't really treat the narrative in a one-size-fits-all way. There are no clear-cut heroes and villains: Ellie can do things that give you the chills, and some of her adversaries are not adversaries at all, but rather hostages of circumstance who just happen to be on the other side of the barricades. This makes the story unusually down-to-earth, vital and authentic, unlike many games where conflicts are built on the level of "we're good, they're bad: here's a weapon - kill them".
The key message of The Last of Us Part II, in my opinion, is humanity. To be human - are people in the post-apocalypse capable of it, driven by rage, revenge, fanaticism? How far can they go in their desire to punish their enemies? Can irreconcilable opponents see in each other something more than a target for attack?
The screenwriters do not preach their point of view, do not try to whitewash the scumbags or deliberately bring the protagonist to the "dark side". No, they show that the characters in the friv game are human beings first and foremost, and therefore capable of different actions, both bad, like executing a surrendered enemy, and good, like saving a sworn enemy. For me, the reactions of Ellie's companions to the murders she commits are iconic - brutal, merciless. If even they are impressed by the girl's bloodthirstiness, is she really a "heroine"? And does her motivation justify what she does? I don't even know.
I'm intentionally not revealing details of the friv game's plot. In the case of a narrative-centered work, it's better to dive into the story on your own, possessing only general introductions at the beginning of the adventure.
And they are as follows: at the beginning of The Last of Us Part II, Ellie is 19 years old. She, along with Joel and his brother Tommy, lives in Jackson, a town where life is relatively well-established: there are schools, bars and hospitals, there are parties and celebrations, and there are plenty of children and teenagers. Ellie is a typical young girl: she likes to go out, indulge in light drugs and alcohol, play guitar (there's even a mini-game associated with it) and have fun with her friends. In her house you can find various posters, figurines, comics and a PS3 console.
The idyll lasts until one day some events occur that force Ellie to leave Jackson and head to Seattle. The city is torn apart by the squabbles of local groups - paramilitary organization and cultists, and the heroine has to make her way through the hostile territory to her goal.
Like the original The Last of Us, the sequel is a strictly linear friv game with a clear structure of levels, without open world, towers, fast movement and other excesses. However, there is a bit more freedom here than in the previous installment. In one of the episodes, the developers give the opportunity to explore a spacious location - as it was in Uncharted 4 in Madagascar. It's a fairly large area that you can traverse on horseback, filled with many points of interest.
There are some levels that aren't quite as large in scale, but no less intense. Even a small street or alley can hide doors leading to stores, apartments, warehouses and other buildings. And everywhere you can find something interesting - a note that sheds light on the fate of the people living here, a safe with valuable loot (codes for them are usually located somewhere nearby), or even a group of enemies. Here it is useful to deviate from the main route: it is in the optional branches that upgrades and resources are hidden, and if you rush forward without distracting yourself with outside activities, you will only complicate your life - you won't get an additional holster, you won't find the books that open new branches of pumping, you won't get enough materials to improve your weapons.
In keeping with its commitment to detailed environments, Naughty Dog fills buildings with a lot of detail. Each apartment is unlike any other, and you can always infer the lifestyle of its previous owners from its décor: this one collected butterflies, and that one was a terrible slob. Even the loot almost always corresponds to the place where it is located: in the grocery store you can find food and rags, in the pharmacy - alcohol and medicines, and in the workshop - parts for crafting.
I would like to praise the developers for the competent leveldesign. They coped with a difficult task - to make the locations authentic, well readable and at the same time do not interfere with immersion in the friv game world. Naughty Dog has done away with elements that hint at their use, like the eye-catching scratches and scuffs on cliffs in games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider that indicate they're there for the taking. No, you won't find anything like that in The Last of Us Part II, but still you'll always realize that you can't climb on a truck overgrown with ivy, but you can climb on an untouched green one, that you can crawl under a table, and that you can climb on a collapsed part of a wall. It's an unnoticeable but actually formidable job, worthy of admiration.
Ellie travels great distances during her adventure, and this is also reflected in the gameplay. If the landmark the character is moving towards is visible somewhere on the horizon, rest assured - you'll spend at least an hour to reach it. Of course, there are some glitches here, and sometimes the developers give you a shortcut with the help of a horse or a boat (the latter, by the way, is controlled very clumsily), but in general the friv game gives the feeling of a great journey.
The interiors of the buildings are also well done, in terms of level design. If Ellie is alone with the enemies, she always has several ways to escape. Here you can jump over window openings and squeeze through gaps in the walls, crouch behind shelters and hide in the tall grass.
And it's not always possible to hide - the authors expanded stealth, making it more believable. So, the character hiding in the grass can be noticed by the enemies who came close enough, and from the dogs that appeared in the sequel will not save the cover - they feel Ellie by smell and quickly lead the enemy on the trail. That's why you need to be inventive: move quickly around the area, distract your opponents by throwing bottles and bricks, and stealthily shoot patrolmen who have broken away from the group (now you can shoot from a lying position, and the bow becomes an ultimatum stealth weapon).
Enemies have become smarter: they actively scour the area where they saw the heroine, look around while patrolling, talk to each other and rush to the rescue if they hear that their partner is in trouble. Different tactics are used against the groups: the military are strong in numbers and strength, so it's better to keep a low profile in a skirmish with them, while the cultists communicate by whistling (which makes it difficult to read their intentions) and often use melee weapons, which means that they should be kept away from you. In The Last of Us Part II the mechanics of special "hearing", which allows you to illuminate enemies, and it helps to plan actions in stealth sections.
It's much easier to eliminate monsters: here it's enough to slowly sneak up to the snapper, take him in the grip and kill him with one blow. Now you don't need to look for shivs, because Ellie is armed with a sturdy knife, allowing you to quickly deal with the enemy. However, among the monsters there are new opponents that you will have to adapt to: for example, sharkoons release poisonous spores, and stalkers like to hide and attack in groups. When the game locks the character with the creatures, it gets scary: one mistake and Ellie will go to the other world. Or more than one: wide difficulty settings allow you to make the friv game very easy or super hardcore, depending on the player's desire.
Stealth becomes most interesting when both humans and infected gather in the same area. A well-thrown bottle will attract representatives of both camps, and while they are dealing with each other, the heroine can sit in the shelter, and after - to walk through the battlefield and collect resources from the fallen. I never got tired of pulling such tricks, and it was an inexpressibly satisfying experience - and it also saved ammo, which is very scarce in a devastated world.
When it comes to open combat, however, The Last of Us Part II is capable of terrifying. Probably not even Manhunt can boast such naturalistic kills. Enemies scream in pain, wheezing and choking on blood, and what a point-blank shotgun blast does to their bodies is something you don't want to see again.
Each enemy has a name, so you have to take the life not of some dummy, but of a very specific Billy, Ted or Julia. This, frankly speaking, is shocking, considering that the fights here are not tough, but ultra-violent: Ellie furiously rushes to her foe, stabs, stabs, chops, and beats him with a machete. Thanks to contextual animations, the blow comes to the part of the body that is turned to the character, and realistic facial expressions distort faces with anger and pain. However, there's no time to reflex: it's either you or you, and enemies will gladly do the same to Ellie if she hesitates and doesn't dodge the attack. Yes, in the friv game there is an opportunity to dodge, and in general, the heroine feels more agile and faster in comparison with Joel.
The Last of Us Part II earns its high age rating not only by bloody murders: there is sex, drugs and the notorious "gray morality". Against this background, the localization is very disappointing: where in the original sounds "fuck", in the translation the characters can't say anything harsher than the word "damn". It sounds very strange when, after a tense battle, Ellie says something like "Damn, that's a tough one".
The developers have competently arranged the opponents on the locations: if there is a military base nearby - wait for a meeting with militarists, and once in an abandoned area, you can run into the infected. You shouldn't rely on your partners - they don't show themselves very actively and, copying Ellie's behavior from The Last of Us, they hide so ineptly that they almost bump into the enemies, who, in their turn, try not to notice them.
You can compensate for the numerical advantage of your opponents by using weapons and auxiliary gadgets - Molotov cocktails and explosives. They are made from improvised resources, for the sake of which you should "vacuum" the surrounding buildings. Weapons can be upgraded with the help of workbenches found on the locations: each improvement is installed on the "barrel" in real time - that is, Ellie literally disassembles a pistol or rifle and replaces the necessary part.
There is also pumping here - all in the mold of the first part. Increase in health, increase in the number of created items, improvement of "hearing" - it can be bought for pills found in the friv game world. If you have played the original game, you will easily get used to the mechanics of upgrading and pumping.
In general, The Last of Us Part II shows very few new features compared to The Last of Us. And this is the main drawback of the game. Of course, you can understand the authors: it would be surprising if a direct sequel would change the genre or key gameplay elements. Nevertheless, if you decide to refresh your memory and go through the original and then plunge straight into the sequel, you may not notice that another game has already started. Of course, there are small changes, but they are not so significant to take them seriously.
This applies to the gameplay, the story presentation, and the structure of the game, built on the principle - a quiet episode, a stealth section, an open battle, exploring the world again, or a cut-scene. We can't say that this is a clear disadvantage of the game, but it still catches the eye. But the narrative has increased in dynamics: if the first part was a kind of road-movie stretched for months, the sequel became more concise and intense. There is a place for chase with shooting on SUV in the style of Uncharted games, and escape from the horde of infected in the spirit of Days Gone, and other tense scenes. Occasionally, though, the friv game gives you a chance to relax, stroll through safe locations, and explore the scenery in a relaxed manner. One scene even cosplays the famous giraffe episode from TLoU, while in another you can enjoy a delightful painting based on Alice in Wonderland.
But what has changed significantly is the graphics. The Last of Us Part II looks better than most modern games - especially with HDR, where colors get realistic shades (without HDR the image feels a bit "cartoonish"), and the gameplay inexplicably becomes smoother. The authors use the environment, weather effects and color filters to create the right mood: they let the heroes out on a light-filled meadow to let them enjoy the beauty of nature, or they cover the screen with a shroud of rain and make the picture almost monochrome, causing a sense of anxiety.
Of course, the developers had to make compromises: there is little interactivity (up to the chairs "pinned to the floor"), sometimes you can run into invisible walls, and the locations are mostly compact. However, it's expected: an open world with such graphics would put the console on its back, but thanks to Naughty Dog's experience and talent, even on PS4 Fat the friv game runs stably (there were small slips in just a couple of the most "heavy" episodes), and the console is moderately noisy, so you don't have to turn up the volume on your TV.
I don't share the enthusiasm about the plot of The Last of Us - I find it rather simple (although it evokes vivid emotions) and I don't see anything brilliant in it. However, the sequel managed to surprise me. It will probably be received ambiguously, but will definitely be discussed for a long time - all because the authors managed to tell a story worthy of a good movie or a bestselling book.
Last year, at the conclusion of Days Gone review, I noted that the friv game is not worth buying a console, but it is worth buying if you already have a console. Well, in the case of The Last of Us Part II, the conclusion is different - yes, this game is worth buying a PS4 for. This is exactly the case of "one of the best games of the generation". Which, given Naughty Dog's track record, was never in doubt.
