Spoiler Alert: Don’t read this review if you have not finished The Last Of Us.
The Last Of Us: Left Behind is not just one story but actually a DLC with two different stories. One story is about before Ellie met Joel and the other story is what happened after Joel collapsed after being impaled. The two stories focus on what you have to do in this world post outbreak which is “Endure And Survive”
Ellie’s, and new character Riley’s story was about enduring the outbreak. Their portion of the DLC is more story based and features little to no action at all. Most of the action you will find in these parts is a water gun fight between Riley and Ellie. The water gun fight is one of many different mini games and moments you will encounter in their part of the story, you also play an “arcade game”, play a smash cars with bricks game and tell jokes. It really does show the “lighter” side of the outbreak.
Little action isn’t a bad thing at all as the time was used to build up Riley as a character and try to make the players care about Riley in a 2 hour period which is a hard task to do with such little time. With that little time they had they did manage to insert Riley well into the world of The Last Of Us but I felt like more time was needed for me to truly care about her like I did with Joel/Ellie in the original Last Of Us game as we played as them for 12 hours+ making it easier to build a true relationship. After a while in the DLC you feel like you are starting to know who Riley is, at the start of the DLC it’s a slow build, all you really know is that Riley left Ellie and that Riley has joined the group called the “Fireflies.” It’s truly amazing what they did in that short time frame.
The other part of the story which I refer to as the “Survive” part of the DLC sees Ellie trying desperately to find anything that can aid Joel in recovering from his injury. This part of the DLC is focused more on action than telling a story. Ellie has to fight through infected and also other survivors who were trying to find both Ellie and Joel at that time of the main story.
Playing as Ellie made you feel weak and defenseless as you’d expect a 14 year old to be in such a setting. One example of the developers adding features to “weaken” Ellie is making Ellie’s melee useless which just ends up with you getting choked by the attacking enemy (Human) In the main story Joel can just go nuts with his melee attacks but with Ellie the option is gone unless you want to use stealth to kill enemies.
The Final Verdict
The Last Of Us: Left Behind was a solid DLC. Story was the main focus in the DLC, and I was happy with what I got story wise. I liked the twist of having two stories instead of one which I originally thought would be the case. I felt that Riley was a character that was built up almost perfectly and had me caring about her, although I would of preferred more time building up this relationship between Riley and Ellie as I felt Joel’s and Ellie’s worked well due to the amount of story that could be told for them. Overall though this is a DLC that The Last Of Us fans can’t miss out on.
+Good story
+Combat features help remind the player they are a 14 year old kid and not a Joel
+Riley was written well into the world of The Last Of Us
-Short and overpriced for the amount of content
Final Score
8.5/10
