…a distillation of everything Naughty Dog has come to do so very right.
Developer: Naughty Dog | Released: February 14, 2014
Available on: PS3 (via download) | Time Played: 3 hours
I’ll be the first to admit to some uncertainty about the prospect of downloadable content for The Last of Us. I am not alone in hoping that this game remains a singular entry, rather than the beginning of a franchise. The Last of Us is Joel and, to an even greater degree, Ellie, and to continue their story from the bittersweet final moments of the main game would reduce its power.
Left Behind at least acknowledges this, and in expanding upon The Last of Us Naughty Dog chose to go for scenes we already knew about but didn’t actually get to see. It jumps between two events: mid-game, just after Joel was shot at the university, when Ellie has to scramble to stabilize him and escape from the men who did it in the first place; and before, when Ellie’s friend Riley – mentioned only vaguely in the game itself – resurfaces after running away to join the Fireflies. Both sections of the game take place in malls, and both focus on Ellie, with Joel only an incidental element. But the similarities between the two end there.
In the “present”, so to speak, Ellie needs to find medical supplies to patch Joel’s wound. This portion of the game is largely more of the same for The Last of Us, with scavenging, light platforming, and half a dozen stealth/combat sections. Ellie is, of course, less equipped than Joel, and less so than she is in the section of the main game that follows Left Behind chronologically, so stealth and strategy are critical when approaching the combat encounters. Critical supplies are scarce in a way that they never were in the game proper.
And while that portion of Left Behind is good and ought to provide some challenge for veteran players, the real point of this DLC is in the Riley segment. This takes place before Ellie ever meets Joel, but after the tie-in comic American Dreams – which is referenced in conversation several times, but not critical to the narrative here. Ellie isn’t entirely thrilled to see Riley again because she feels Riley abandoned her (or left her behind, you might say), but Riley wants to win back Ellie’s friendship. What transpires is a lot of that trademark Naughty Dog walk-and-talk, and it’s very good. Ellie is Ellie, of course, and Riley is well-rendered, as well, and they are very believable friends.
Of course, you’ll always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is not a world in which two estranged friends get to wander around an abandoned mall, make up, and then live happily ever after. But it takes its sweet time to happen, relying on the “present” sections to provide the gameplay. Some, therefore, will find the Riley sections dull. But there’s a lot of heart in them, and a lot of small and precious moments. Fun in a photo booth. Playing video games in an old arcade. The end of the story won’t surprise you at all; a lot of the stuff that happens first will, however, not because they are dramatic plot twists, but because we just don’t see this kind of thing in games much, ever, least of all triple-A console titles.
Even playing on Survivor difficulty and having to retry most encounters multiple times, Left Behind only took about three hours to complete. Assuming you never fail and don’t hunt for collectibles too much, it’s probably about two hours of content. For some that will make the $14.99 price point untenable (especially when other games, like Assassin’s Creed IV and Borderlands 2, offer more content for lower prices). And I can’t say that this is an indispensable chapter in the story of The Last of Us – I didn’t feel going in there was a hole that needed filling, and though Left Behind hardly hurts, I didn’t come away thinking that it fundamentally changed the whole of the narrative. But it is a distillation of everything Naughty Dog has come to do so very right. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Invite the author to throw bricks at things in an abandoned mall at dix@tap-repeatedly.com.
Glad they went this direction with the DLC, still treating the end as the end, though I suspect a full sequel is already in the works and it will bring down any hopes of powerful closure. Learning more about Ellie is always welcome, and the idea of using the first few days after Joel’s injury for her character building is a good idea.
For $14.99 you expect a reasonable block of DLC, a story arc of its own, and a not-inconsiderable time investment for which I don’t think three hours qualifies. Still, I can’t really fault the approach on their part. If this is the first of many DLCs, they’re testing the waters. If it’s the only one, or one of a small few, they should capitalize where they can.
Great review, Dix!
It is a dilemma. I don’t score things based on their price, generally speaking, since that is by nature flexible and subject (especially in the Steam age) to sales and so forth. But it is hard to ignore the value proposition. It’s twoish hours of excellent content, but is that worth your fifteen bucks? I feel like it was worth mine, but I’m not very frugal.
I hear you. There’s no hard and fast rule, it varies by person and by content. I’d happily pay $14.99 for a quality extension to that game, especially since I’ve been told it’s good and worth my investment. With more and more “full” games on the indie scene shipping at that price point, I wonder if the traditional DLC model is going to have to change, just as the boxed “expansion pack” model changed with the arrival of DLC.
I’ve been thinking about doing a piece on game pricing and such. It ruffles so many feathers for not great reasons, and it’s a tricky thing to engage with critically speaking. I watched a YouTube video about how Gone Home was “the worst game of the year” (well, okay, I watched into about five minutes of what looked like a twenty minute rant – I had heard enough by then) and the first point the guy made was that it was expensive. Gone Home is a bad game because it’s…expensive. That logic just sort of bugs me.
Thanks for this Dix! I agree with you about not factoring price into a score, and for the same reasons you gave. Value is subjective. That said, I will be waiting for a sale before picking this up.
As someone who often buys games waaay after they’ve been realised it’s rare that I pay full price for anything these days so naturally a lot of the reviews or impressions pieces I’ve done in the past haven’t really factored in price which I’m happy about because, as you say, it’s such a subjective thing.
Some friends and I were talking about the new Thief on emails and one said after reading the RPS review: “Based on that review I give the game a score of £19.99 Zavvi mega monday out of 10” followed by Mat C’s: “Definitely “free on Plus” for me.”
I played The Last of Us for free because I borrowed it off a friend so given how much I enjoyed it I’ll happily plump down the money for this DLC. I think. We’ll see. Botch, does PSN have many sales to us non-Plus peasants?
I’m not exactly sure Gregg. For one I haven’t logged onto my PSN account in a little while, and even then I only notice the PS+ deals. We need Xtal to chime in here.
I recently picked up a PS4 with The Last of Us Remastered bundled in (digital copy). Left Behind is included and I assume this is true for any copy of the remastered edition.
It has that same, compelling Last of Us gameplay but I agree that some of the sections dragged a little.