The Last of Us was a game exclusive to the Playstation 3, developed by Naughty Dog and released on June 14th, 2013. The game took place in a post apocalyptic world where an outbreak of infectious spores have turned a majority of the world’s population into zombie-like creatures. The game followed the story of the unlikely pair, Joel and Ellie. Joel, a man who lost his daughter at the beginning of the outbreak, and Ellie, a young girl who was born too late to know what the world was like before everything fell into ruin. Without spoiling too much of the main story, Joel is assigned to take Ellie to the leader of a rebel group known as the Fireflies, however, they are slowly beginning to die out, thusly making Joel’s journey to track someone down who can take Ellie in all the more difficult. The game was met with incredible critical acclaim for its highly cinematic story, intuitive game design, and stunning visuals. On February 14th, 2014 a single player downloadable add-on to the story mode was released titled: The Last of Us: Left Behind.
The Last of Us: Left Behind serves as both a prequel and midquel to the original Last of Us story, as it switches between Ellie’s past and an unexplored point in the story about halfway through the game in which Ellie must fend for herself. The story starts out in Ellie’s past as she encounters an old friend named Riley who wishes to take her to the abandoned mall that they used to visit when they were younger. These segments are mostly dialogue or exploration based with collectibles and interesting side objectives such as a car window breaking contest or a water gun fight with Riley to not let the flow of the game fall behind. Much of these segments mention small characters or details that are not expanded upon within the game because they are further explained in the comic book series: The Last of Us: American Dreams. This is both a tad disappointing yet also understandable, and it doesn’t really take much out of the story without that prior knowledge so this is a minor gripe. The past sequences are incredibly interesting, with a ridiculous amount of humor, character development, and drama all packed into half of what is essentially a 2 & a half to 3 hour expansion. The optional dialogue branches make it especially entertaining for those who pay attention to detail, while also making it feel like the developers aren’t attempting to squeeze as much time out of you as they can through the use of what may be considered by others as less important dialogue, as the option to pursue more dialogue than originally intended means that you don’t necessarily get a half baked experience from just the bare bones of what was intended. Another interesting part of these past segments is that you’re given a lot of choices, when for the most part, the original game was fairly linear, even with the small things when it came to the story in any way. However, in Left Behind, there is a photo booth in which you choose from plenty of different poses, there is branching paths in a select few dialogue branches, and slightly different cutscenes for the outcomes of the games you play with Riley. These choices have no influence on the overarching story, which is a little disappointing, but having too much control over the outcome of this story would affect the story of the original game so it is understandable. Either way, hopefully in Naughty Dog’s next project, they elaborate more on branching outcomes and multiple story paths.
The other half of the story takes place while Ellie is knee deep in the reality of the game’s cruel world; she is no longer innocent to the concepts of loss, consequences, or how to fend for herself. These segments very closely resemble the original game as they include the average puzzle solving, enemy encounters, resourceful crafting, and survival elements that players familiar with the original game had come to love, as if they crafted this expansion with just as much care and ingenuity as the original full title. You still only play as Ellie during these segments; however as the game goes on, you eventually find weapons and materials that can be crafted into supplies to help take care of enemies upon encounter. Almost all of the enemy types from the full game show up in Left Behind, with Clickers (slow sightless infected that cannot be engaged in melee combat), Stalkers (fast moving infected with eyesight, yet lack the ability to see your flashlight), and Hunters (regular humans who have become increasingly hostile due to the awful condition of the world) all return. However, what is fairly new to this expansion is several areas of the game that have human and infected enemies at the same time, something that never happened in the original game. In these instances you can either hide and wait it out for the enemies to clash and see who comes out on top, or you can sabotage the humans by luring the infected to them, or perhaps pick off one while the other is distracted. This fairly simple gameplay element adds a whole new interesting level of strategy in taking care of your enemies and makes for many different possibilities. Much like the original game there are plenty of collectibles to keep an eye out for, including a small optional side story of notes and tape recordings that really help flesh out the universe of the game.
All-in-all, The Last of Us: Left Behind was a wonderful experience that personally lasted me 3 hours. I explored every nook and cranny and took my time with every single dialogue branch that was available so I’d say 3 hours is most likely the absolute most that anyone could get out of it. The voice acting, motion capture, environment design, controls, and the general feel of the game are just as good as the full fledged game. For me, this was definitely worth the $15 I spent on it as The Last of Us is one of my favorite games of all time and I felt that $15 was a reasonable fare to just revisit these wonderful characters and this breathtaking setting one more time. I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed the original game, and implore anyone who has not yet beaten the regular single player campaign to stray away from gameplay or any discussion of the DLC as it does heavily spoil mid and near end portions of the game. Do not consider the DLC unless you know for sure that you enjoyed the regular story mode as the two are vastly similar. The Last of Us: Left Behind is available now on the Playstation Network as a download for $15.
