The Last of Us™ Part II Remastered Steam Charts & Stats

I like stories where the main character dies. It shows how everyone's life is just as complex as one another, and how life can be taken away faster than its given. But never have i read, watched, or played a story like this where it feels like a different group of writers take control, delete characters and change the existing ones to fit a different narrative. The gameplay is the exact same, just with a FEW different weapons and different environmental settings. They really just sold the same game twice n made it way worse story-wise 😭😭😭😭

The game crashes constantly making it unplayable. Need to hire new employees who can actually make a working game. Its a great game when it works but not worth the cost of buying as you will crash constantly and lose your progress if the game hasn't auto saved.

One of the top post-apocalyptic games out there, the scenery is stunning, and Naughty Dog’s optimization is on point. As for the story, I’ll let you be the judge...XD

Fair warning: this review contains major plot spoilers. Talk about heavy hitting. The Last of Us Part II explores a ton of themes that are difficult to confront in the real world, even before you try to craft a video game out of them. This story took serious writing chops. Niel Druckman and Amy Henning - you should take a bow for this work. I know the both of you will never read this. But..... in case you do. I thank you. At its core, this story is about revenge - pure and simple. Yet - it's not so simple......is it? You explore the gritty, dark, and unfiltered consequence blind revenge can have. At times - I felt Ellie's plight seemed hopeless, never catching a break, and there was never even a hint that all-is-right-with-the-world brilliant sunset was within her grasp. The decision to kill Joel. That was an unpopular decision - wasn't it? Why? Because he was a *very* popular character. You'd been on this tough journey with him in Part I, and you wanted that sunset for him too. You cared when he died. You were filled with that bitter taste of anger - and that primal urge for revenge yourself at his death - weren't you? Who cares when some bit-character dies, right? Ever watch a AAA movie where some character dies after 10 minutes and you feel you're *supposed* to care? And you just don't? Well - Killing Joel is how that's meant to feel. You've seen it done right for once folks. Powerful - isn't it? The storyline is split between playing as Ellie, and playing as Joel's killer, Abby. An interesting tactic. In the beginning - you want Abby to just *die*. I hated having to play as her. Her stupid story with her love life - Gahh! Who cares! Find me a bridge to jump her off already.... And yet that's how you're meant to feel. Those dark places I mentioned..... Gifted story craft there's no doubt. That's not to say I'm waxing lyrical about being forced to play as Abby. I felt Abby's story was far too drawn out and had far too many subplots. By the end - I was glad to be at the end of her sequence. Abby does have different weapons at her disposal, and a different crafting list which is refreshing but ultimately not enough for the length of storyline given to her. I wanted to be back at the pointy end of the story, rather than wading through Abby's padding. Much has been said about Ellie being gay. WOKE crap people say. Lev being a girl and wanting to be a boy. You feel about those story elements in the way that's right for you I suppose. For me those things being set against the backdrop of war and the despair of human destruction didn't seem out of place, or in any way token, or gratuitous. Ellie is gay. She has a love story with another gay character, Dina. I felt for them. I felt for their struggles to have a normal life - as impossible as that was. Character relationships in games often feel a little cheap - because you're not that invested. Here that's different. There's also no feminism being over-pushed here - for me anyhow. We have female lead characters, who suffer, love, and grit their way through a harsh world. Love is where you find it, not where it *should* be, or where you might have been thinking. The port to PC was largely extremely well done. I say largely...... because there were a number of crash to desktop moments. One *very* nasty bug during Abby's storyline where a cutscene *always* crashed to desktop nearly bought the whole game undone. A google search revealing the solution was to cap the game at 30FPS for that cutscene and a few savepoints after that. Nasty. Very, very nasty. I also had a few visual glitches along the way - such as Abby's pistol having this bullet fire 2D asset pinned to it for a whole section of the game in Santa Barbara. Still - the rest of the game was so well made I did forgive these things. The world has been exceedingly-well crafted, and the scenery has been built and designed to a very high level of polish. A clear design idea has been arrived at and built with care and purpose. This world being overtaken by nature and decay is extremely well realised and presented. Never did I feel anywhere that something had been rushed - and I constantly stopped to admire the small details and art direction on display. No - the game isn't cutting edge. After all, us PC players are *very* late to the party (never again right Naughty Dog?). Yet the water effects, sunlight godrays, and general ambient lighting were all done to a very high level - which I continually appreciated throughout the game. The fog and mist were also things that caught my attention - and how these were blended with overcast lighting for wet rain and dripping forests. My old 5800X3D and 4090 got though this title without too much trouble. That beach area in Santa Barbara was to die for. Two things of particular note. First, the voice acting is simply some of the best I've ever experienced. The actors injected so *much* into their characters. The emotion was real to me, as if the actors were really there and living out the nightmare, and the love, and the tension, and the uncertainty along with their characters. Second - the animation work is also some of the best out there. It does look like some sort of motion matching and warping has been done - or in the least - Naughty Dog made a *huge* list of animations to cater for the different character movement scenarios in the game. There's been effort put into transitions between animation states like Swimming, jumping gaps, climbing ladders, balancing on beams etc. All done with seamless smoothness. Take note studios. The game is violent, there's no escaping it. Too much so? That comes down to where you personally draw the line. It's one of those things that's different for everybody. For me, the violence fit the narrative. The world *is* harsh. The world *is* violent. The weak do not survive. There's this...depravity almost...in the world...that's infected the remaining human population. It's war, it's fear of death, it's hopelessness, it's sorrow...it's the damage that does to a person. To tone the violence down would have been jarring and inconsistent. You can't have too much sunlight in a story such as this - it just wouldn't fit. Though.... that does drag the game to dark places as already said, which *can* feel overly heavy at times. What didn't I like? I felt at times that too many story elements got in the way of where I wanted to be - and that me getting to this location or that location was starting to drag a little too much. We also stayed in the same location for far too long. I would have liked a shorter stay in Seattle and a move to another location to continue the story. I know. More assets. A different art direction and extra story elements would have been needed. Yet - I felt Seattle was thoroughly stale by the time we were done there. And so - to finish... Neil Druckman: Your story isn't done. You made a quite complex, multi-layered, and thought-provoking part II. However, don't be closed to completing the story because you felt that Part II was a masterpiece. Ellie still has her immunity to impart upon the world, and humanity needs to bring itself back from the brink of destruction. That depravity needs to lift - the darkness driven back. Abby and Lev spoke about going overseas - and perhaps that's where the future story lies. Ellie needs to finish what she and Joel started - finding a doctor who can complete the work Abby's father began. There's growth to be had, there's that darkness you portrayed so brilliantly in Part II to lift away and shine a light of hope through. A story can be simple - yet with good writing can also have great depth along the way. I call you out. Finish the story you started. Only then can you lay it to rest. Right now it isn't done. Never leave business unfinished. As Ellie knows - that never goes well.

Its a great game im sure yet its a terribly optimized game, literally unable to run it. I literally have a 4070ti and a ryzen 9 and can run games like bf2042 at max settings. Doesn't even load up litterally unable to play and it annoys and angers me so much. Ive tried everything under the sun and nothing. If you have similar specs beware before buying it.

Beautiful game, the execution is immaculate, but I have never seen a story fumbled so hard in my LIFE. I genuinely feel like I've wasted my time. A horrible and completely unsatisfying conclusion.

The Last of Us series is one of the most emotional, well written, captivating, intriguing games ever produced. What made this games so great is how it managed handle the strong expectations as a sequel of one of the most successful games of the past decade. Part 2 features some extraordinarily vicious combat animations I’ve seen in any game I can think of. It also fits to the respective situations and tones. The most frequently witnessed crime i.e. Ellie sneaking up on an enemy before slicing its throat or stabbing it to death while holding the mouth shut is not even the most brutal animation this game has to offer. Kills with Shotguns can lead people’s extremities getting (partially or completely) blown away leading to the targeted person slowly, excruciatingly bleeding out. Trip wires and trap mines e.g. almost certainly cause the victim to get cut in two halfs making for a terrible and hard-to-digest sight. Furthermore the fact that the POV doesn’t just includs Ellie’s contributes to the already high empathy and understanding developed for the respective characters in this series and allows you to fully find out about what lead to certains events. When Ellie was finding shelter in the theatre along with Dina and Jessie, in her mission to track Abby, I personally thought the game was close to coming to an end, but after Abby pulled up and shot Jesse it turned out it was no longer Ellie and her friends who were the hunters and, instead it was Abby herself. Afterwards Abby was to be played for lots of hours covering many, many chapters showing her story and journey, which lead to the eventual events in the theatre. It shows Abby wasn’t just a soulless, heartless, unempathetic person, who simply enjoys killing people. No, instead it showed that Abby’s father was one of the three doctors shot dead by Joel, right before their planned surgery on Ellie, which would’ve sacrified her for a vaccine, Hence, her succefful ambush on Joel, during which she brutally tormented and killed him. Another interesting element here is quite a difference between all the existing factions and groups as well. On one hand, you got the Seraphites (or Scars), which are traditional, nature-based fighters with bows and arrows using whistling as their form of communication whenever they suspect an enemy nearby, while on the other hand you have the WLF (Washington Liberation Front), which turn out to be a very vocal, transperient and loud group fighting and dressing in a way more comparable to wars and conflicts seen nowadays. And of course, who would‘ve guessed, there are Infected as well. They can be divided into few categories and species, but they all have one thing in common, aside from being dead and attempting to infect others by biting them. They obviously don’t communicate with the other living dead and instead just attack the humans in mobs and head-on in a very simple, yet effective and intimidating way. Onto the special and more advanced forms of Infected: There is the Shambler, who throws noxious, toxic spore bombs at his enemies cutting off potential escape routes or obscuring enemies in the process, the Stalkers, who are able to remain invisible in Ellie’s amazing Listen mode, which massively eases their attempts to outflank and surprise Ellie in their obvious attempt to infect her. Sneaking up on the player is no issue at all for them. Especially when they got more colleagues around, who can simutaneously charge at the played character, whilst the one sneaking up can already grab it until reinforcements arrive. The enemies are just so aware, intelligent and varied in this second part. Once suspicious of any breach they start checking and clearing the surrounding area, which includes bushes, gras and the small spaces under vehicles, right away. This automatically forces you to get familiar with the respective areas and use the environment to your advantage after studying it. Being forced to resort to using the environment properly in order to advance has to be done in a way more creative way than during Part 1, in which you mostly just had to use a floating palette serving as a raft for Ellie to reach and climb up a point, which couldn’t be accessed by Joel from the water. Part 2 is way more different when it comes to that. It offers so many contextual challenges such as angling a rope to swing from one room to another locked one or navigating around a series of well-placed trip wires to name a few. This sequel just makes much, much better use of its surroundings and beautiful environment than its predecessor, preventing it to solely be reduced to some sort of attraction useful for taking gorgeous screenshots and instead fully incorporates that into the players‘ experience and gameplay. That’s a massive plus. Although that game is not open-world, it still allows you to conduct thorough explorations learning about the lost history, short stories and last moments about corpses you’ll come across in the process. Lots of which can be found out about in the rough, beat up and run down remains of a Seattle district destroyed during the pandemic. That very district causes you to be fully immersed its exploration, unlike in anything you could ever come up with. There are so many former shops, ruins and abandoned, yet well preserved buildings awaiting discovery and exploration, which isn’t done solely by the players, but company as well, who keeps exploring while the player is busy reading a left note. That’s a huge Pro to me. The colleagues don‘t just stupidly wait for the player to finish reading, but instead go on to explore the respectives sites all by themselves. Conclusion: The Last of Us Part 2 is a stunning and brilliant masterpiece more than worthy of its predecessor. Now after I’ve just finished the story I can understand why this game has received so much universal acclaim and countless rave reviews. It improved every aspect from its predecessor and raised the bar to a level almost impossible to reach. It just delivered in every aspect. I can’t believe I never touched this game before, let alone watched a Let’s play of it.

While The Last of Us Part II Remastered may not be as good as its predecessor, it is still phenomenal and an easy recommendation. From my memory, the first game, which I did not play until it came to Steam in the form of a remake a few years ago, had better story, better characters, better pacing, and better graphics. However, the first game set an exceptionally high bar, so saying this game falls short in a lot of ways isn’t exactly a knock against it. The Last of Us Part II still manages to tell one of the most compelling and engaging stories I’ve seen, while making some nice gameplay improvements over the first [b]Throughout my review I’m going to try not to spoil anything and use spoiler tags where I feel they are needed, but this is a game that’s really hard to talk about without saying things that some may view as spoilers, so while I will use spoiler tags where I feel they are necessary, if you want to go in completely blind as I would recommend, I suggest you stop reading my review now and know that I do highly recommend this game.[/b] The Last of Us Part II is divided into 3 parts. You’ll know when you get to the second and third parts. In the first part, which took me about 16 hours, you play as Ellie from the first game. I say “about” 16 hours, because I was so engrossed in the game I forgot to write down an exact time stamp. Some years have passed since the first game and she’s older now. I enjoyed playing as her because I like her character, but they definitely fell into something I see a lot of sequels do where they make characters more aggressive, confrontational, and give them other negative traits seemingly just to create drama and lead them down a solo path. I’m never a fan of this, but it felt worse in this game due to the character driven nature of the first one. Part of what made the first game so good was the constant dialog and interaction between Ellie and Joel, but for many parts of this game, Ellie is alone. Even without that though, the first game keeps introducing new interesting characters that Joel and Ellie interact with for parts of their journey. That felt completely gone from this part. It ended up being a really weird experience. It often felt like Ellie was just wandering around somewhat aimlessly without any character interactions to drive the plot, until a random flashback would happen and develop characters and story. At times this made me feel like it was dragging on a bit, but I still found myself very engaged and wanting to see what would happen next. Unfortunately, this also meant that when [spoiler]characters get killed, as Naughty Dog seems to really enjoy doing, there isn’t any emotional attachment to make it feel anything[/spoiler]. Eventually, you get to the second part, which, in an as spoiler free way as I can say it, makes you play the whole game again, but from a different characters perspective. This part wasn’t as long taking only about 10 hours, which I again say “about” since I was still so engrossed in the game that I forgot to make note of my playtime, but I would say this is a testament to how engaging this game’s story is. Normally I really like seeing stories from different perspectives, but the character they choose is someone who had almost no interaction with Ellie or her friends for most of the story and at first I was worried that it would end up feeling like one of those bad TV specials where they give a minor character an episode that adds almost nothing to the plot and feels very out of place, except much longer. While it was true that this other perspective felt a lot more like a completely separate story than a different perspective, I actually really enjoyed it. It did not suffer from a lot of the issue I had with Ellie’s part. You pretty much always had a companion with you talking and progressing the plot, and this part of the game is a lot more linear, which is something I prefer, especially in plot heavy games such as this. Additionally, while the character in this part does a lot of bad things and is far from what I would call a good person, the story is about them trying to be better and break from their pattern, rather than letting rage consume them. I found them to be an interesting character that I enjoyed playing as. The game definitely wants you to see parallels between the two protagonists, but at times it was way too on the nose, to the point of it being super weird. For example, both characters are involved in an awkward love triangle involving a man and a pregnant woman. The third part of the game is really hard to talk about without spoiling anything. It’s much shorter than the other two taking up the remaining of my 28.6 hours of playtime. It starts a little slow, but it is linear and plot heavy like the second part, and while it definitely had some characters acting in ways I did not like it was absolutely riveting, especially towards the end. Outside of story, the game has a few improvements. Something that really stood out to me was how sometimes when enemies get killed, a different enemy will shout out a name, as if their friend just died. I’m pretty sure they were just reusing the same 5 or so names over and over again, but it really added a lot, even though it’s such a small thing. Another nice addition is crawling. I didn’t find I used it much outside of story and exploration, but it was neat, and did have a really neat combat implication. Sometimes when you get shot, you get knocked onto your back, but can still shoot enemies with your gun. This feels so great when it happens and shoot all the enemies before getting back up. Overall, The Last of Us Part II is fantastic. It may not hit as hard as the first game, and the writing, characters, and pacing aren’t at the same level of the first, but this is absolutely still a top tier gaming experience that I would highly recommend.

Let me start this off by saying that the game play and controls are absolutely phenomenal. I truly believe the game play should be the template for 3rd person shooters going forward in the gaming world. The story on the other hand is meh at best in some parts and abysmal the rest of the time. This review will have major spoilers ahead. Its a revenge story told twice except the character we know and love is vilified as a horrible person who should just forgive and forget the people who viciously wronged her, while the character you are going to hate is propped up on a pedestal as a shining example of her community. To go in depth, you play as Ellie for 15 hours, give or take. The whole time, you are on the war path to find and kill the people who killed Joel, specifically Abby. You kill a few of her friends along the way, including a pregnant woman. Then, once you find Abby, the game switches to you playing as her and you see the events of the game and the world around you through her eyes. Joel was a pillar of the community in Jackson, and we know his past is dark and rocky, but after finding Ellie, he found a renewed purpose in himself and becomes a better man now that he has the chance to be a father after his first chance was killed in his arms. When he is killed, he has no idea who or why Abby kills him. Then, when we switch to Abby, we find essentially the same character. She's a pillar of the WLF and people look up to her. Except her motivating factor the whole time was revenge and the satisfaction it brought her. Joel is an awful man for killing her father, but Abby was perfectly okay in killing Joel. Then after letting Ellie live, Ellie goes on the same warpath except it is seen as evil and horrific. Abby is mad that Ellie "wasted" the chance she gave her and Tommy by letting them live when they killed Joel, which is just downright stupid. Abby already traveled hundreds of miles to exact her revenge, but there's no way these people would possibly do the same thing after killing their loved one in front of them. Abby has the audacity to be mad and surprised when Ellie does the SAME THING SHE DID. Dina and Jesse, Ellie's friends, even comment on how this won't be worth it and only went along because Ellie was going to go regardless. Abby's friends all went with her and were chomping at the bit to make Joel suffer and kill him, and once they do that, it was so totally worth it and the right thing to do and Joel should have suffered more. The game also fully retcons key aspects of the first game. The fireflies had no idea what they were doing. Multiple notes you find throughout the game express doubt that they will be able to make a cure, how could they mass produce it with antibodies from only 1 person, and the "doctor" performing the surgery on Ellie is a veterinarian and not a real doctor. This also has to be compounded with, you can't vaccinate against a fungus in the first place. But now, all of a sudden, the cure would have worked absolutely, mass producing it would have been easy and quick, distribution would have been swift, and Abby's dad may have been just a veterinarian but trust me guys he was a genius the surgery would have totally worked. Then, to top it all off, after going after Abby TWICE, the choice of actually killing her is ripped from the players hands and Ellie lets her live regardless of how the player feels. If you're going to tell the story from 2 perspectives, at least give the player the choice of choosing the viewpoint they side with. Don't force us down the viewpoint you clearly support as the writer. The other point of contention being, you already killed everyone else associated with Joel's killing as Ellie. You kill a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, you are past the point of forgiveness and redemption. Then, all of a sudden, Ellie does a complete 180 as a character and changes her mind while in the middle of drowning the woman she was after the whole time and then just lets her go. The story feels like it was specifically written to alienate and be dissatisfying to fans of the first game. As stated, the game play is phenomenal, the graphics are good and the game runs surprisingly well on my outdated rig. Other than that, its not as great as others praise it to be.

The Last of Us Part I was one of the most impactful games I’ve ever played. That’s why, as I began Part II, I didn’t want anything to overshadow my experience. I avoided every piece of content about the game, determined not to get even a single spoiler, and started with a completely clear mind. I finished the game on the “Grounded” difficulty level, and that journey in itself was unforgettable. There were moments where I had to fight off groups of eight enemies with just a single bullet, and I ended up memorizing the names of the NPCs I was up against. The difficulty could be frustrating at times, but it only deepened my connection to the game. I had never experienced such intense enjoyment from any game before. The story boldly chooses a narrative path that doesn’t shy away from emotionally challenging the player. As a longtime fan of the series, I think the second game offers a bolder and more layered story than the first. It doesn’t just show you one side of the coin it asks you to look at the other side as well. I’ve seen some negative comments about the story from other players, but in my opinion, most of these criticisms stem from personal expectations. True, the story doesn’t unfold in a way that pleases everyone. However, that doesn’t take away from the strength of the narrative. The game doesn’t simply tell a story, it asks you to empathize, to question your perspective, and it leaves you with lingering thoughts long after the credits roll. The emotions of the characters were portrayed so powerfully that I could feel what they were going through in my bones. At times, I found myself completely detached from reality, swept away by the emotional flow of the game. From a gameplay perspective, the game is absolutely satisfying. The mechanics have been significantly improved, and the game was so immersive that I never once felt bored, even after playing for long hours.