Yeah, kinda saw that coming.

One thing that forgot to mention last time was that Tess and Joel had this little scene where Tess was all "after this job I think we should take it easy for a bit" and Joel's all "you never take it easy", and Tess is like "Well, maybe I will this time". All this sound like a pile of Retirony, plus, she's not on the box art...

So after easily punching the squishy faces of some Runners, in the very next room I find a crafting bench, where apparently I use "parts" to upgrade my weapons. woo. Up until this point, I have only used my gun to shoot some poor sap who was starting to run zombie, I'm more going with stealth and melee combat. So upgrading the weapons I don't use isn't much of a draw at this point

meh.

After that, we had to navigate through an old museum that was full of Clickers, and Joel is soon separated from Tess and Ellie. At this point the game becomes Silent Hill: Night at the Museum, since the Clickers there are a lot like the Silent Hill nurses.

Please ignore me...

While slinking about I found a vending machine. While they didn't seem to carry Nuka Cola, they did have S.P.E.C.I.A.L Cola, which I presume is an all stats up.

Drat, out of bottle caps!

Along the way I've also been collecting pills, which act as an upgrade system for Joel's abilities, no work bench required. Some how chugging 20 of these pills at once will increase your ability to echolocate through walls better. Yeah, Joel can apparently echolocate. I guess he's part clicker?

Do you see what i'm hearing?!

Eventually Joel catches up with the others, just as Ellie is attacked. This leads to a massive dust up against half a dozen runners in a confusing dark room. After a couple tries, they were all dead and we weren't. This brings up another nifty feature of the game, an optional camera mode. It lets you move about and adjust things like focus, colour, FOV, and add filters/borders. But I mostly use it so i can see what the heck i'm looking at.

Let there be light!

So after that mess, we get back out in the open. Not only is there daylight finally, but our objective is only a short jog away. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm sure this is just a 4 hour game and this is our end goal. Nothing is about to go horribly wrong~

Well, one minor inconvenience is there's a sizeable pond that we have to wade through, which shows off that Joel buys the same fast drying clothes as Nathan Drake (must get a naughty Dog discount).

Wet to dry, but still filthy

But to a great shock to nobody, everyone in the place is dead, and the military are about to storm the place, and Tess was infected in that dark dust-up and want to sacrifice herself, and the prom is tonight! 

So Tess bites it and Joel is stuck with Ellie and about 20 army dudes with guns. Luckilly, their AI is very much based on the progression of my play, so if I don't move, they don't move...

3 army dues just feet away, politely waiting several minutes for us to move to the next room.

That doesn't mean it was easy when I did move, I was still focusing on melee attacks, and so got shot, a lot, and killed many many times. Eventually I broke down and started shooting back, but even then I only made it with a tiny bit of health to spare.

Managed to catch one of many epic beat downs on camera.

Once through, it was off to the flooded metro (or I guess subway, since America), to take in the many exciting attractions, like killing more dudes... 

Studying the local... flora? Fauna? Funga?!

And diving!

This last bit opens up a sort of puzzle solving aspect, since Ellie can't swim. So you have to figure out ways to help her navigate the water. After all that we made it through, and off to a new location!

This game can be damn pretty when it want to be...

After a short jaunt through some woods,  we come to a small town where an eccentric survivalist that Joel knows named Bill lives. In this town I discover a couple things. First, Ellie is kinda odd...

Okay, put the knife down, you can whistle around the clickers...

Also there's an area where the world disappears  into a void if you stand in the right location, perhaps a gate way to the upside down...

Or just the area streaming out when it thinks the camera can't see it.

Also Ellie finds an arcade cabinet that she said a friend of hers often talked about. Considering that the girl on the side looks a little like the girl on the Left Behind DLC, i'm betting i'll be seeing more of this game much later.

Just wait till you play The Turning Hyper Turbo Edition Remastered!

So, tomorrow it's off to navigate all the booby-traps and hazards that Bill left in his wake. But first, I wonder what this does...