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My little over two hours with The Last of Us Part 2 were engrossing, challenging, intriguing glimpses at what Naughty Dog is crafting. I'm one of many who, when a sequel was first announced, felt it was unnecessary. But given what I played, it's clear Naughty Dog has evolved its systems in complex, fascinating ways that have already -- and I hope continue to -- allow for uniquely tense scenarios. The world feels larger, both on an exploration and narrative level, and I can't wait to learn more, as this really did feel like a small glimpse. And it was a glimpse that indicated Ellie and Joel's continued story is going to be one enthralling adventure.
Gamespot
Ellie's new abilities in Part 2 are countered by smarter human enemies who coordinate more and work together to flush her out of cover or flank her. The biggest new change to combat in this section was the addition of scent-seeking attack dogs that some of the Wolves employed to find trespassers. As Newman explained, the dogs change up stealth gameplay significantly because they force Ellie to be a lot more mobile and reactive. You can't just hang back to stay out of sight and keep quiet--you now have to deal with enemies who can pick up your scent.
Ellie now leaves a scent trail behind her as she moves around an area, and if dogs cross it, they can start to track her. You can see the trail in the refined Listen mode, which allows you to see enemies behind walls and through obstacles, to give you the sense of the dog's path before it finds you. Getting dogs off your scent requires either distracting them by throwing something or staying on the move until your trail dissipates. Luckily, Ellie's ability to crawl through tall grass makes her a lot tougher for other enemies to spot, so while you're forced to move around a lot more in Part 2, you have more options for avoiding detection, at least at a distance.
Naughty Dog has also increased the brutality of fighting for your life in another, more thematic way: Every human enemy in Part 2 is named, so characters will often call out to each other by name as they discuss tactics or shout orders. Kill someone, and their friends will call out their name in anguish. The same goes for the dogs; it seems you'll hear a lot of pained cries from dog owners as you kill their companions in Part 2. Hearing your enemies react in emotional pain (in addition to physical pain) is a jarring addition that Newman said emphasizes the core thematic thrust of the series--and it's meant to be unsettling.
The Verge
For those who loved the original TLOU, you'll be pleased to know that the sequel feels and plays the same. Naughty Dog has crafted a rich, deeply believable world full of intricate environments and tiny, scrutable details. I marveled at the handwriting on the left-behind notes on desks and in drawers and the intricate motions Ellie makes at the crafting stations when putting together a makeshift silencer for her pistol.
The second half of the demo was also about 90 minutes, but it centered on TLOU Part II's more open combat scenarios. Those now feel more dynamic, with a greater variety of weapons and ways to approach any one obstacle. Environments are larger, with multiple-story buildings that add a sense of verticality to the fights. It's something that didn't exist in the first game.
There's also added depth to stealth play. You can hide in tall grass, picking off enemies with a pistol outfitted with a DIY silencer or Ellie's trusty bow and arrow, the latter of which can be replenished with ammo so long as you lodge the arrow tip through a human skull so it can be easily removed. If you prefer a more destructive approach, you can lure enemies into explosive tripwire traps using the loud gunshot of a pistol or rifle against one unsuspecting foe to ensnare others.
Eurogamer
It's a combat heavy sequence, and a reminder that The Last of Us takes a systems-heavy approach to its combat. The embellishments here are many, and welcome - you can now go prone as well as crouching, strengthening the options when it comes to stealth. Ellie now has a shiv on her at all times, meaning it's often a more appealing option to go softly towards enemies then not-so-softly towards their necks. There's a dedicated dodge button, most useful when in close-quarters combat as you duck and dive in fights that, while not exactly Arkham-style, have an effective choreography of their own.
The options on offer, and the ease with which you can slip between them, reminds me - and there's really no greater praise - of playing as Metal Gear Solid 5's Snake, even if it's not quite as graceful. Perhaps that's by design, as you fumble in moments of panic, but there are some decisions - having reload and shoot mapped to the same button, as is the case with your sprint and dodge - that can feel a little strange. There's weight to your actions, but also unwieldiness - just as there was last time out.
That friction is something that's likely going to be worked through more thoroughly in Ellie's tale of revenge, though it already gives the encounters a defining edge. These are grisly, powerful and emotionally charged things, and a neat reminder that, beyond the hype and expectation placed around so much of The Last of Us Part 2, there's a sturdy little video game that's had some thoughtful tweaks. And it suggests that, even with the weight of expectation on the studio's shoulders, you certainly can teach a Naughty Dog new tricks.
The Last of Us Part 2 is faithful and finessed
Where to start after playing two hours of The Last of Us Part 2? How exactly to talk about a sequel to one of the last …
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GameInformer
Like the first The Last of Us, Naughty Dog's action feels grounded and brutal. Enemies coordinate their attacks and even call to each other by name. Ellie's luck can quickly run out of she is surrounded and outnumbered. One of the best strategies remains to stay hidden for as long as possible and pick off your foes one-by-one. Fortunately, environments are large enough that I found it easy to run and find a hiding spot to catch my breath. Still, enemies won't forget that they saw you and are constantly on your heels, which adds a lot of tension to the action. I felt like I was constantly on the move – taking a few sections to loot a room or craft an item before I had to hide again from a roaming patrol.
Unlike Joel, Ellie now has a jump button, so she can scamper and climb all over the environment. Climbing over things is sometimes a great way to avoid your captures, but it can also make you easier to spot. I found that it was often better to go low. Ellie can both crouch or go prone. Laying down in tall grass makes Ellie harder to spot, but as enemies get closer they will be more likely to see you. In The Last of Us Part II, you're never completely hidden or safe.
The Last of Us Part II's enemies are smarter than ever. Not only will human foes coordinate their attacks, they have a few new tools to use while hunting you. One of those tools is actually man's best friend. Humans now employ hunting dogs, and they will use them to sniff you out. Using Ellie's hunter's vision, you can see your own scent trail and watch these animals slowly follow that trail to your current position. Dogs are a challenge to stealth kill because they can sense you coming, so you need to take them down from a distance with a bow and arrow or some other silent weapon. Unfortunately, you will feel like a monster every time you kill a dog. At one point, a sniped a dog's master, and the pup started to whine and paw at his master's feet. I didn't have the heart to kill the dog, which may have been a mistake, because the animal eventually caught my scent and hounded me until its teeth were in my throat.
Another new enemy is a version of infected called the Shambler. These lumbering brutes aren't too fast, but they are tanks who can't be stealth killed and will force you to burn through a lot of ammo. At one point, I smashed the glass of a vending machine to get at the goodies inside and I inadvertently alerted a Shambler who was next door. The beast charged into my room and startled me. I tried hacking at the monster with a hatchet, but the creature released a toxic plume of gas that sent Ellie coughing her way to an early grave. Shamblers are dangerous creatures, and you should feel no shame in avoiding a fight with these horror shows.
USGamer
"The Infected is still a huge part of our game," lead game designer at Naughty Dog, Emilia Schatz, tells me when I ask how that particular brand of enemy has evolved now that it's five years after the events of the first game. "They provide the overall setting that allows us to explore the characters, and so they are sort of a constant presence, but a lot of times not the main sort of threat because they're more of an environmental threat."
The Infected being an environmental-specific threat is context I hadn't thought of before. For instance, when I explored a basement at one point, I came across two "Shamblers." Shamblers are a new enemy type that exudes a toxic gas, but is blind like the Clickers. They were tough to take down, but since they're slow, it doesn't feel impossible. I set down a proximity bomb, baited them to walk into it with a brick toss, and then took out a shotgun. Easy peasy.
"That's basically had a huge overhaul," Schatz says. "So the A.I. of your buddies is a lot more robust in being able to get out of your way [...] and also be helpful. They're able to sneak through environments in a way that it was just impossible to do on the PS3 because we were very limited in our resources to do anything. We started with development of buddy stealth in Uncharted 4, so your brother Sam was able to sneak through environments to a certain degree. In The Last of Us Part 2, we've really done a huge step beyond that—they stay out of your way. [...] They stay hidden and, yeah, it's a huge improvement on that."
Enemy AI has seen its own overhaul too, according to Schatz. Enemies now tend to work together, more than the usual "report in," call out that's a staple in a lot of stealth-action games. (Of course, they still do that too, but are more likely to investigate when someone goes radio silent from what I saw.) "It's very hard to sneak up on one without alerting the others," says Schatz. "It really requires a lot of more finessing." The AI evolution came in part with the new level design goal within Naughty Dog: to make environments more open. It's less open-world or God of War hub-like than it sounds. It's more like instead of just one small corridor, there are now many side areas you can pop into along the main route.
VG247
"What I love about that encounter is Ellie's bolt-action rifle is strong enough to shoot through multiple enemies at once," Newman says. "So when I opened that door, and I didn't have a mine on me, and I was like, 'Okay, I have this game knowledge, I'm going to try to line up this shot so I can hit two enemies at once.' And it's kind of a rare thing, but what I did is that I was lining up a shot, and I shot through an enemy, and the angle of the shot was such that I shot through one guy, it killed them. The second runner, I hit his leg off, and the runner collapsed to the ground. We have this new system where Infected can start crawling towards you when they lose their legs, and so this one guy goes down, and then the second guy is still crawling towards me, grabbing at my leg, and I stomped him out. It was kind of a cool confluence moment of different systems.
"The one thing that I haven't talked about enough today is the addition of doors and windows in combat," Newman says. "It sounds like such a minor thing, but these real-world things have these very interesting, unexpected effects on combat. For example, if a dog is trying to sniff you out, they'll get to a door, and dogs can't open doors, and they'll be pawing at it, and hopefully a human is there to let them in. But if they're not, dog just doesn't know what to do and can't get through there. I've also seen with windows, first just the idea of like, you need to make an escape and so you melee the window and jump out, that's just a cool moment in and of itself. But like when a Shambler is chasing you out onto the street and does its explosion attack, and all the windows shatter and everything breaks, and the environment reacts, that's an awesome moment.
The Last of Us: Part 2 feels like a smart sequel where everything compliments everything else. All the improvements are in the right place, and every mechanical tweak and addition works to serve both story and action. I didn't think it was possible to be more excited about the first half of 2020, but Naughty Dog's sequel looks set to kick the year off in fire and fury when it releases on February 21.
VentureBeat
Like I said. It was a thrill to play the game. Druckmann kindly said to me that he can't wait for me to play the whole game.
The only possible drawback is that Naughty Dog's comments and this revelation will only elevate the already impossibly high expectations.
But I think Naughty Dog can meet this challenge. They aren't relying on technology. They are taking a long time to get the quality right. And they are attacking this challenge and the expectations with good old-fashioned gameplay improvements and a good story. I am already worried about who I have to protect and who I have to save.
AusGamers
Whichever way you approach it, The Last of Us Part II is the real deal. It looked so good in some of the promotional materials that it actually had people calling fakery. I'm here to tell you that's not the case. This plays as good as it looks and moves. More importantly, I'm very confident that it's going to move many of you emotionally, in ways that even the masterpiece that is the original didn't.
While a lot can happen between now, February 2020 and those end credits, I've played too many games not to know when I'm in the presence of something special. I'd be very surprised if this didn't re-infect me all over again. It's only been one day since playing this and I can already feel that cordyceps itch.
Kotaku
is a sound design tour de force. Clickers screeched, wailed, and of course, clicked with characteristic inhumanity, lacing even sure shot stealth kills with dread right up until the moment I finally did the deed. But it's not like successfully ending the walking embodiments of "What if athlete's foot, but too much" felt much better. Any time I shoved my shiv into Infected, metal scraped against wet flesh and bone while the Infected flailed and wailed, their death gurgles so piercing that it was as though they were screaming in my ear. I was never sure if other Infected had heard, and this kind of tension is baked into every element of the sound design. Breaking the glass on a vending machine to grab a candy bar led to a shattering sound that nearly made me jump out of my seat, even when I was certain there were no surviving Injected to hear the sound and come running.
The section also introduced me to the game's expanded crafting and customization systems. This time around, you can find supplements—pills, basically—and spend them on ability upgrades spread across three trees. Abilities included increased listen mode movement speed, increased throw distance, increased health kit usage speed, and, toward the top of the stealth-focused tree, craftable silencers that could be applied to guns and improved. Part II also contains an expanded crafting system that lets you create various attachments and improvements for guns. Like in the first game, you collect scrap to purchase these upgrades. As someone who prefers to strike from a distance, I saved up until I could snap a scope on my hunting rifle to give me more distance from my Infected targets.
Nerdist
It's yet another example of how complex programming and thoughtful storytelling intersect to create an endless string of unforgettable moments. Some elements of The Last of Us Part II's story are immutable, set in stone, and destined to happen as your progress through it, but the game operates as a perpetual motion device, generating these unforgettable "oh shit" moments. They can be little moments like discovering a note left by a grieving father, the chilling discovery that your actions have unconsidered consequences, or the adrenaline spike of dropping into a room full of skulking Infected. But they feel unique to your experience and they are ultimately what will make your playthrough of this game so special, leaving you champing at the bit to play even just a little bit more.
press-start.AU
Most interesting to me in this part of the demo was glancing over to a fellow Aussie journalist's game running next to me and seeing a vast difference in the way his game was playing out compared to mine. He'd been playing the methodical, calculated killer all the way through, whereas at about the halfway point I decided I was going to try and just leg it. Where his game continued to present plenty of opportunity for small, thoughtful encounters that supported a stealth approach, in my game the WLF were mounting an all-out offensive that led to them pushing me through an almost scripted-feeling path through all the same areas that I would've otherwise been sneaking through. I asked game designer Emilia Schatz about this in our post-demo interview and she confirmed that the AI in the game is indeed designed to adapt to different playstyles and will even script in new enemies and situations to keep players on the right path no matter how they choose to get there.
There is so much to talk about and to digest about even the small slice of The Last of Us Part II that I experienced this week, and yet it's still difficult to truly put any of it into context with how (admirably) quiet Naughty Dog are keeping about almost everything. I could tell you that, so far, this game feels like more of an evolution of the previous game than a revolution, and I'd probably be right, but who really knows? Either way, that's far from a bad thing considering how damned fantastic the original was to begin with, and even the most subtle tweaks here go a long way to making this a worthy follow-up. At the end of the day, this is really about returning to the rich universe that Naughty Dog created, and bringing to life the new stories that they want to tell
Engadget
Naturally, Ellie controls differently than Joel, the protagonist of the first game. She's faster and more agile, which saved me a number of times. Ellie can jump, crawl on the ground and dodge incoming attacks, and the latter completely changes how you approach melee combat. She's not an overpowering force, but dodging and slashing with her signature knife can be surprisingly effective if you're low on ammo.
Gunplay has also been refined, and it's easier to know when enemies are down for the count, thanks to a simple red X that flashes when your shots are fatal. The weapons at my disposal were familiar, but could be modified in some new ways. For example, you can craft a silencer for your pistol, which provides another ranged stealth weapon beyond the traditional bow. You can also craft arrows on the fly, provided you have the right supplies, and there are fresh bombs and traps at your disposal as well. I'm so used to playing the game without these mods that I had to stop and remember I had new tricks up my sleeve to get out of a jam.
Video PreviewsUnsurprisingly, the world Naughty Dog has crafted here looks fantastic. From character animations and facial expressions to the lush, beautiful outdoors and highly detailed interior of destroyed buildings, everything about this world exudes polish. The sparse music accompaniment from Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla adds to both the open-ended exploration and tense combat sequences, though the demo was free of any strong, identifiable new themes. All that atmosphere made me want to jump back in and play the demos again, because there are so many little things to marvel at that make this world come alive.
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