It's the super bonus round time! Going through the DLC story Left Behind.
The DLC surprisingly starts off in familiar territory, quickly recapping the sequence where Joel gets impaled on a spike and Ellie helps him out of the hospital. I thought the DLC was just going to be a prequel about how Ellie got infected, but it turns out that it switches back and forth between two stories.
Déjà vu
After the events shown in the game where Joel falls off the horse, the game jumps back to before Ellie got infected. She's woken up by her friend Riley, who's been away for over a month joining up with the fire flies. Riley tells her to get ready and that the'll be sneaking out of the compound where Ellie lives.
BFFs
Then it returns to Ellie frantically trying to patch up Joel. She managed to get him to a nearby mall and makes a giant band-aid out of duck tape and a shirt to at least slow the bleeding. Since that obviously won't be enough, she heads out in search of something to stitch him up with.
No ammo, health packs, bombs, or any inventory to speak of, great...
First stop is a pharmacy, but the door to the back room is locked and the key is in the creepy doll store. It really is a store that just sells creepy dolls...
Play with us~
Getting the key, and avoiding a clicker, the back room of the pharmacy turns out to be empty. Yet, just past it Ellie sees a crashed medical helicopter. How freaking convenient!
This mall has everything!
Jumping back to the past story, Ellie follows Riley around until they make it to an abandoned mall that they used to hang out in (different mall, but likely saved on assets).
I can't see how anything can possibly go wrong this night...
While exploring, they discover a Halloween store and have fun exploring around in it. There's even a magic 8-ball type skull that accurately predicts the future of the game.
Reply hazy
After trying on a few masks, they start to explore the rest of the mall, smashing car windows along the way. Then Riley leads Ellie to the back room and reveals that the mall actually has power, the military just turned off the breakers.
Care Bears meets Angry Birds
They turn the power back on, and just as they are going to show the lit up mall, the game cuts back to Ellie trying to get to the helicopter.
Tried using the force?
Since nothing can be straight forwards in this game, the stairs up is blocked by a electric gate, so the power needs to be on to open it. Following the power lines leads to the generator in a half flooded garage. The generator, for the first time in this game, is actually out of gas. So now Ellie has to siphon gas from the trucks in the garage. And that's when a bunch of Clickers show up.
Fortunately, while searching the area, I picked up a few bullets, and had to use every last one of them to take out the Clickers.
Bloody mess.
Now with the gas, Ellie starts the generator, which attracts more clickers. I think i'm screwed for a moment due to the zero ammo, but the power from the generator electrocutes the water and kills them. Woo! Now all that's left is to find a way across via the air vents so Ellie doesn't get zapped too.
I don't think water glows like that when a current goes through it.
So to recap. To open the door you need power, to get power you need gas, to get gas to need to kill Clickers, and to get back to the door you need to cross vents. Easy! Except for the two Clickers that are waiting at the gate and I still have no ammo. What i Do have though is a distraction bottle and the stuff to make 1 nail bomb...
Wait for it...
With the path finally clear, Ellie makes it to the helicopter and luckily there is a full health kit in it, including needle and thread.
Finally something goes her way!
Then the game pops back to the even happier time in the past, with the mall all lit up. Not only is there power, but this is one of those fancy american malls with a full carousel and everything!
This doesn't count as one last horse ride.
Ellie rides for a bit, with Riley jumping on just as it ends. Next they find a photo booth, with is free for some reason, and get their pictures taken in silly poses. The booth is out of printer paper of course, and the girls accidentally break it, but it's still a cute scene. Next they find an arcade, but all the machines are broken.
Ellie really wants to play the fighting game that she mentioned in the main game, so Riley lets her with her imagination. This is a great sequence, where Riley describes all that's happening in the game, and prompting Ellie to play along with button prompts (which I actually put in). It gets really intense as the invisible fight plays out, with more and more complex button combos. In the end I won the match, but I wonder how it would go if I lost.
Not 3D, not 2D, it's 0D fighter!
The the mood gets more serious when Riley reveals that she arranged this last night of fun with Ellie because she is being sent off to another Firefly base in another city the next day. Ellie is confused and upset about this, but instead of talking about it, Riley heads off to the sound of music. Ellie then follows behind, past a whole bunch of creepy mannequins
Okay, room full of nightmares.
This leads Ellie to a department store, where Riley shows that she risked her life earlier in the night to get Ellie's favourite water guns that were confiscated. So they have a stealth water gun fight in the store.
Achievement get!
After cooling off with the water fight, Ellie and Riley talk it out, with Ellie encouraging her to follow her dreams of being with the Fireflies. Riley has one last surprise though, plugging Ellie's walkman into a stereo system, she plays the mix tap she got for Ellie and they dance.
This is too much for Ellie and she tearfully asks Riley to stay. Riley ditches her Firefly dog tags to show she's not going anywhere without Ellie. They kiss, and the whole scene is too emotional for the game, so it releases a swarm of infected.
Jumping back to 'current' time Ellie, things are going shit for her too. Turns out that the asshole raiders that attacked them in the hospital had followed the horse tracks to the mall, and they attracted swarms of infected in the process.
Upside, we see where Ellie got her bow.
What follows is one tense fight after another, with Ellie completely out numbered and almost totally unarmed. Only through stealth, picking off raiders one by one and building up ammo, was I able to get through (after a lot of deaths).
One thing that really evened the odds in some rooms is where a bunch of raiders come in, and there are infected near by. The raider are all being stealthy, to not be noticed, and it would be a real shame if some on threw a bottle and alerted all he infected to that room.
Whoever wins this fight, there will still be less of them
This all ends with a massive fight against over a dozen raiders and several infected, all while the raiders are trying to break into where Joel is sleeping. After many deaths, and using up every single bit of ammo, inventory, and stealth I had, only Ellie is left standing.
Then the game pops backwards to a completely different fight.
Many of fucks!
Gone is the feeling of empowerment as Ellie takes out an army of enemies, now it's nothing but frantic running for your life as Ellie and Riley try desperately to escape the infected hoard. They almost make it, but Ellie falls from a scaffolding and it attacked by a Runner. Riley goes back and blasts the Runner's head off, but she's immediately attacked by another infected. Ellie stabs that that one to death, but the damage has already been done...
Well... shit.
The game ends with Ellie patching up Jole, while Riley says that they can't just give up and die, that they should keep fighting and live every moment they have left, no mater how few.
We know that Riley didn't last long, but Ellie is still fighting...
Roll credits (again).
So that was The Last of Us Remastered. It was a really great game, with excellent story and characters. Was really surprised that Joel survives to the end, and just how dark it got.
Next game will likely be lighter, though I haven't picked what it will be yet.
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