The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered Review

The Last of Us Part 2 released less than four years ago, but Sony and Naughty Dog are already revisiting it with a fresh remaster for PlayStation 5, aiming to bring it up to par with the recent The Last of Us Part 1 Remake, and continue to ride the wave of interest from the TV adaptation. We can argue all day about whether this remaster is necessary, but it’s already here regardless, so we had best take a look at it.

So what does the remaster mean in this case, for a game that could already be played with PS5 enhancements for 60fps via backward compatibility? Well, Naughty Dog has gone back in and made subtle tweaks. Texture quality is raised, Level of Detail distances are stretched out further, there’s improved animation sampling rates and more, but they’re all rather understated improvements. The headline options are really about resolution and frame rate. A new Fidelity Mode increased the maximum resolution to full 4K at 30fps, while you can play at 1440p upscaled to 4K with 60fps – the patched PS4 game was 1440p at 60fps on PS5 as well. For my money, the Performance Mode is the way to go here, but in both cases, you can now use Variable Refresh Rate to get a further performance uplift – sadly not something I could test with my TV.

A few years on from release and the game still looks fantastic though, going from almost photo-realistic in cutscenes to extremely good looking everywhere else. Character models are particularly incredible, especially facial expressions – there’s just so much detail, even on the terrified face of a poor WLF soldier that you’re choking to death. Strangely, short grass lets the game down a little bit, as it just looks a little more dated than everything else and, being a post-apocalyptic game, it’s all over the place. It’s not that it’s really that bad, it’s just that the rest of the game looks so good it sticks out a little bit. Other than that, though, The Last of Us Part 2 still looks gorgeous.

With the graphical changes out of the way, we are left with the new content. The roguelike mode is the biggest addition. You first pick a character, each of which has different abilities and weapons to start, Abby begins with the Close Quarters skillbook, a machete, and a pistol for example, whereas Lev has a revolver, bow, and the archery skillbook. Then you choose your path through a sequence of encounters to fight off a few waves of enemies, whether WLF, Seraphite, or Infected, and hopefully fit in a little scavenging before returning to your base. Between stages you can improve your abilities and weaponry, unlock skills and generally prepare yourself for the next challenge.

It’s pretty good, but its obsession with unlocking everything through challenges puts a dampener on things a little, where roguelikes tend to have more variables from the off. For example, there are four types of encounters, but only two of them are available from the start, Assault and Hunted. The others unlock as you play, and while there are some great modifiers, this makes the mode more very repetitive early on. It’s worse if you don’t really like the Hunted mode, where you must survive against continuously spawning enemies for a few minutes. I had this mode as the only option for the first encounter in a run, started with a revolver with four rounds and a machete and was quickly buried under a pile of Runners and Clickers. It’s a little less stressful with human enemies as they can’t just rush at you with instant kill melee attacks like a Clicker can. Thankfully after your first death you can try a custom run and disable any of the things you’re not a fan of whilst still progressing, which is nice.

Enemies in the Assault mode spawn in three, increasingly difficult waves, but the way they spawn limits a lot of the planning that I enjoy in TLOU’s combat. They just spawn in an area of the level, and you have little warning for where they will do so, so they might appear right next to you, or with you directly in their vision. You often can’t really place traps in advance because enemies might come from the wrong direction.

It’s a shame because I love the combat in TLOU, but a huge part of that is because the enemies are in a particular place in the level and I can choose how I approach them. I can’t do that when enemies spawn in a random place and automatically make a beeline towards me even though they’re not actually supposed to know where I am yet. This roguelike mode is pretty good, but it’s just not as good as it could have been.

The rest of the new content can comfortably be described as “niche.” It’s behind the scenes stuff that is very enlightening, but your mileage may vary depending on your interest in game development. The Lost Levels are deleted scenes from the game, presented in the condition they were in when they were cut. For example, Jackson Party is the first one and it has only subtitles as the voice acting was never recorded for it. Visuals are rough and unfinished as well, but it and the other two Lost Levels provide an insight into the development of the game that is very rare thanks to commentaries that explain the developer’s intentions with certain aspects of the level and why it was ultimately cut. It’s pretty interesting if you’re into this kind of thing. If you are, you’ll also love the director commentary featuring, obviously, the game’s director Neil Druckmann and all the main voice actors, which can be enabled to play over the main game’s cutscenes in the making of menu.

Beyond the game there’s then the Grounded II – Making The Last of Us Part 2 documentary and four episodes of The Last of Us official podcast, prompting you to visit YouTube and your go-to podcast app.

Oh, and if you enjoy the guitar mini-game, you’ll be happy to know that the Guitar Free Play mode in the extras menu has way more options than you’d expect, such as different types of instrument, so you can switch to an electric guitar if you want a new sound, or a banjo if you want a really new sound. Then there’s the standard Naughty Dog story completion unlocks, such as filters to change how the game looks, unlockable skins that characters can use in No Return, and gameplay mods to tinker with how the game plays. If you really want to feel like a badass, enable slomo aiming and enjoy never, ever missing a shot again. It even works in No Return and still allows you to progress, provided you don’t mind missing out of the best scores…