Review: The Last of Us Part II Remastered drags angry Ellie to PC

If you’ve been around this site for a little more than a while, you know that we’ve talked plenty about The Last of Us. It’s a series that’s special to me, but it’s also one that’s been stretched a bit too thin lately, with the TV show and re-re-releases of its games over a short span of time.

My colleague Felicity has already gone into detail about her thoughts on The Last of Us Part II Remastered, which came out last year and for the most part, I agree with her. Back when I originally played The Last of Us Part II during its first run on PlayStation 4, I thought it was too much. Yeah, it was more The Last of Us, but maybe a step too far. Ellie as a character was shaken up to a point I couldn’t relate as much, and the adventure overall felt bloated. 

It’s still an above average game in all other regards, don’t get me wrong. Technically, especially on PS4, it was nearly impeccable, and gameplay-wise, it certainly delivered the goods, an obvious evolution of what was already great in the original. I had a good time making my way through it, but unlike Part I, once was enough for me. And even now, 2-3 years after the fact, I’m still not ready to dive into it head-on, and honestly, I think it’ll take me much much longer for that to happen.

All criticism aside for some aspects of The Last of Us Part II that didn’t make the landing for me, I was open to the idea of playing its remaster, and I did it last year, but not for the reason you might be thinking. Naughty Dog took the smart route with this and added more to the core game that made the overall package much more attractive to me and others who might have gone through the first version of the game. 

For starters, it has a new entry in the “Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us” documentary, one that was pieced together after it was essentially cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Area 5, the same folks behind the first were given free reigns to shoot the team, and got some surprisingly candid accounts from them. It’s a feature that’s entertaining to TLOU fans and tech heads alike, as a lot of the nitty-gritty of design is opened up and put on offer.

Then, came No Return. When given a description of this mode, it’s nothing I would want out The Last of Us, and as a matter of fact, it’s the type of content I usually scoff at when it’s announced for just about anything: a wave-based, combat-heavy survival featuring the characters and monsters of the base game. But somehow, playing it, it felt like the next best thing, an even stronger experience than the story section itself, boiling everything down to what The Last of Us Part II had going best: the action.

No Return gives you a reason to get good, real good, and there’s content there to be completed for quite a while. Characters have unique perks and loadouts, monsters get continuously more dangerous, and the changes to gameplay brought by the new rules introduced at every round make matches feel different and challenging. This is easily the best excuse to get The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

Now, it arrives on PC thanks to the efforts of Sony PlayStation’s partner studio Nixxes, who have been handling the ports of most of their last big releases on Steam. The end result is a sturdy game that will push your machine and deliver excellent visuals and good performance, if you’ve got decent hardware under your hood. 

While I wouldn’t dare call my home machine a rig per se, it’s been more than enough to handle most of the recent titles, including this, mostly thanks to my recent graphics card upgrade to a GeForce 3060, and knowing people who consider themselves PC players are likely to have something way better installed, I’ve no doubt that they are more than ready for this game. And it certainly pays off. Playing The Last of Us Part II Remastered on computer is smooth, controls very well, and gives quite a visual spectacle.

It remains weird to me to play Sony-centric games sporting Xbox controller icons, but outside of that, these ports have more than convinced me that waiting a little bit and enjoying them on PC is worth it. So much so that they make me not want to buy a new console anytime soon – something I’ll elaborate on in a later article down the line – in favor of beefing up what I currently have and make do with it. Releases like this only cement that feeling, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Sony has been doing a fine job cutting the time between console and PC release of their games, with this coming in less than a year for the two versions. For those who’ve waited, it’s surely the best way to partake in The Last of Us Part II Remastered. On the other side of the coin, if you have already seen what it has to offer on PlayStation 5, outside of the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of playing it at higher resolutions and all the fancy accommodations that the PC offers, there’s nothing in the way of content to double dip for.  

Then again, if I ever decide to replay The Last of Us Part II, I know for sure where I’ll be doing it. When that will be, I have no idea, but it’ll happen eventually, I suppose. Next stop for me: season two of the TV show. I hope that delivers…