By: JA-Rigs

Last of us 2 is the sequel to one of the greatest video games of all time…

and one of the most controversial games ever made!

I’m sure most people reading this know exactly what I’m talking about but there may also be some who don’t ,so a quick warning that it is virtually impossible to discuss this game without revealing at least one big spoiler so continue with this in mind.

I’ll give another heads up when I get into the rest of them.

*****

This Last of us 2 picks up a few years after the last game ends with Joel and Ellie now settled into a relatively peaceful and tranquil life at Jackson,  a development that is about as close to a normal town as it gets in this world.

Ellie has just met a woman that she cares for and seems content.

Joel looks after her as best he could.

There is definite tension between them,however,because Ellie is convinced that Joel is hiding the truth about what happened with the Fireflies at the end of the last game.

For those of you who may have missed it, the finale of the last game had Ellie on the operating table being worked on by doctors who needed to remove fungus attached to her brain to create the vaccine that could actually cure the virus that had decimated the planet.

There was no way to remove this without killing her, but they thought there was no choice.

Ellie was the only human found to be immune and was heroic in her desire to help and wanted her life to “matter”in a world gone mad.

Though she wasn’t his real daughter, through the course of the first game Joel grew to love and care for Ellie.

He stormed through the fireflies base killing their forces, burst into the operating room and killed the doctors about to perform the surgery.

He rescued Ellie but in so doing, doomed the entire world.

In the opening moments of the game,you see there is a distance between them,the details which get revealed later.

Joel goes out on a routine supply run with his brother and ends up running into a group of people whom he rescues from an army of infected.

In a devastating scene, he is rewarded by being brutally killed by them.

By one in particular.

His death drives the game as it is basically a revenge story with Ellie hunting down those responsible the entire first half of the game.

The gameplay is excellent-unquestionably much better than the original game.

Ellie is tough,fast,and agile -able to jump,crawl and climb this time around, making it much easier to move especially during the combat sequences

The combat is also more fluid and brutal,with several new weapons,traps and explosives.

Good thing too,because you’ll need them to fight the games much smarter and more aggressive enemies.

The human and non human both are some of the smartest I’ve ever encountered in gaming-sneaking up on you,flanking and chasing -making each encounter with them filled with tension and suspense.

The new characters that accompany you as you battle them are just  terrific.

Dina, her girlfriend is a great ally and when you are working with her in the early hours of the game  it does feel like a there real person right there with you.

I’ve seen reviews online where they dismiss her as not very helpful but she sure helped me!

Jesse, Dinas old boyfriend is also a very likeable character and a big help the few times you work alongside him as well.

But ..

we still sure miss Joel.

The flashbacks throughout the story featuring Joel and Ellie were the best parts of the game and really reminds us how important that dynamic was in the success of the original game –

and as much as we enjoy these new characters, they don’t quite capture that magic.

But then, they only have half a game to do it in.

So…

Here comes the rest of the SPOILERS…

****

The entire second half of the game you play as Abby.

She is the woman who beat Joel to death with a golf club.

This is the main reason why there is such division and controversy surrounding this game.

Never before has a video game forced you to play as an antagonist that was so hated for destroying such a beloved character.

The very idea of it seems ridiculous and to many gamers it was completely unacceptable and something they could not get passed, no matter how stellar the gameplay was.

I thought I felt that way as well.

Kill Joel viciously and make you play as his killer?

What were they thinking?

But after actually playing the game, incredibly….

It works.

When you first switch to Abby it is jarring and just feels wrong somehow, but then you slowly get into her story and come to understand her motivation-which was getting revenge on Joel for killing her father, who just happened to be the doctor who was about to operate on Ellie in the original games finale.

It never gets to the point where you forgive her, but you do end up at least seeing it from her point of view.

The Abby character you see depicted here is truly heroic and seems completely incapable of torturing and killing Joel so viciously.

This is a bit of a plot hole and it does seem like they may have been going for some shock value in that death scene.

The game spends a lot of time trying to get you to warm up to her and her friends and allies.

This is difficult at first, of course, since we saw what they did to Joel but eventually you do get caught up in their story.

It helps that they are in a battle with a religious cult called Seraphites who are creepy and evil-communicating with whistles while torturing and burning their enemies.

They are so nasty that it is easy to hate them and side with Abbys group against them.

The pacing in these early scenes with Abby is uneven as they  throw in a lot of flashbacks and try to add depth to her story and to her allies.

These scenes are necessary, however, because they are tackling very big themes here-revenge and empathy-and they really try just about everything to make it work,including having you play with their dog!

Eventually you meet up with two fugitives from the cult-Lev and his sister Yara and it is here where Abbys story hits its stride.

Lev turns out to have a secret and is being hunted with his sister by the Seraphites.

Lev and his sister are great characters and they bring a warmth and humanity to Abby that she did not have before their appearance.

It is only then,when Abby fights to protect them from the cultists and eventually against her own people that we get fully on board and begin to connect with her.

The gameplay in this section is brilliant.

Abby is a powerful character and controls completely different than Ellie-much stronger and resilient , though not quite as quick and nimble.

The combat is exciting because of this, since we could use her pure strength for more effective melee attacks and close up fighting.

She also has the benefit of some of the best sequences in the entire game including the games two best boss battles and an incredible horseback chase and gunfight through the burning city on Scars island.

This all leads up to the two stories coming together towards the end and this is where much of the games emotion and power comes in.

It begins with a boss battle-believe it or not-with Ellie.

This is the most difficult fight of the game simply because no one wants to play it.

No matter how invested in Abbys story we had gotten,there was absolutely nothing the game could have done to get us to root for her against Ellie so we were essentially trying to kill our hero-a character that we all love.

This enraged gamers and YouTube is filled with videos of everyone absolutely furious at having to play this out to continue the story.

Abby and Ellie at this point are both broken-

destroyed by their drive for vengeance.

When it all ends the player is left feeling exactly like the characters.

Exhausted and spent.

****

This game has divided player all over the world.

Most were simply furious at the death of Joel, and were angered at how the original characters that they loved seemed to have been pushed aside in favor of all the new characters.

It almost felt like a betrayal.

I do understand that point of view and there definitely seems to be something to it…

But still…

There is no question that Last of us 2 is an absolutely incredible video game.

The production value and gameplay is excellent across the board with amazing next gen graphics that , like it’s predecessor,pushes its native system-in this case the PS4- about as far as it could go.

It features some of the finest and most realistic acting I’ve ever seen in a game in a story packed with real power and emotion.

We’ve seen this sort of “cycle of violence “story done many times before but never done in a video game quite as well as it is here.

The writing is brilliant throughout and though at times it seems to be trying very hard to get you to feel the way it wants you to, it somehow still manages to do just that.

However….

there are many people out there that still just hate this game for many reasons.

Much of their criticism is completely valid.

I thought I would hate this game as well-mostly because it wasn’t the story that I wanted it to be.

This is where it gets tricky.

I think a piece of art should be looked at for what it tries to do and not what I would like it to do.

I would have loved to see a sequel that exclusively featured further adventures of  Joel and Ellie, but for better or worse, that’s not the story game director and writer Neil Druckman wanted to tell this time around.

So no matter what, this game was definitely going to be missing the great chemistry of those two that made the original so special.

But this one has a plenty of other things going for it.

The graphics and gameplay is better and smoother in every way…

and the story somehow seems even richer and deeper.

Is it a better game than the original?

No.

But…

Is it a worthy sequel that will keep you involved in its story and entertained by its gameplay for many hours?

Definitely.

9/10.