@fredchuckdave: @yummylee: It should also be known that I'm bad at games. It had also been a while since I played the main game so I kind of had to re-learn the general strategies and rules of combat.

Featuring an even vaguely gay storyline is "pandering" now? Neat, video games have come so far.

@milkman: The Last of Us controls can be a bit odd if you don't remember them, no shame in relearning for a bit. The final encounter is one of the hardest fights in the game as a whole.

This I agree with. After playing all kinds of PS4 lately, I got killed by the very first clicker because my focus was all on L2/R2. Even beyond that, it took some time to get re-acquainted with the game play after not playing the main game in so long.

It was good. I enjoyed a lot of the character interaction, the jokes and the skull were great. It was a lot more combat heavy than I was expecting, but the combat continues to be superb. It's a nice companion piece to the main game with some wonderful acting and writing.

I did have some weird glitchy stuff happen, like when part of the roof in the mall just disappeared and returned, and I got a ridiculously unfair checkpoint right next to a clicker that killed me like seven times in a row regardless of the direction I pulled on the stick. I also didn't care for the lame monster closet stuff in the generator room. One minute the room is empty the next it's filled with five or six of them.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot. We didn't need to see Riley die, we knew that was what happened. I wonder if they ever shot her death during the filming.

Oh, and the Jak X trophy is very funny.

Thought it was great, I really enjoyed how they gave more story to Ellie's background and her relationship with Riley. I found it great how the flashback stuff with Ellie were the calm story moments that allowed you to do different things besides combat. For those who played the DLC and are kinda confused about a couple of things like lets say who is Winston and Princess I recommend they read the Last of Us: American Dream comic. Some of the stuff discussed between Riley and Ellie are from the comic.

I'm so bummed the game didn't save that photo booth reel into the PS3's picture library! Almost made me wish I had a Facebook account. Almost.

But yeah it was pretty great. Perfect length for me -- I love game sessions that wrap up nicely in a single sitting.

Weren't they in military school, not an orphanage? 'Cause that would at least explain their mad skillz.

I missed the photo booth.

I really liked it but don't think it was great. Most of the humor was a bit of a swing and miss for me, they definitely reminded me of the awkward sense of humor my sister and her friends had when they were 11-15, so kudos for that, but I mostly appreciated it just on those terms. I also felt like the girls were written a little too smartly at times, even for the harsh militarized world of the Last of Us I have to imagine 13 year olds wouldn't be so...eloquent? I don't know.

Between the long, long break and tight corridors/monster closets, I have to say I was not a fan of the combat scenarios either. I thought the main game had some revolutionary stuff and when some old friends were in town over Christmas I jumped back into a couple of the battle puzzles just to show off how intense it can get with just a little trouble. But between the scarcity of items, weapons and space (along with what seemed like some much more aware, not necessarily smarter, enemy AI) - couldn't you knife people from behind a corner before? - the last three scenarios got incredibly old fast. I started the game on Hard, switched to Normal for the second-to-last fight and Easy for the last one. I followed basically the same progression during the main game, though that was partially just because the urgency of the story didn't match how often I was dying and because A.I. on checkpoint respawns appeared horribly broken to me.

Every Naughty Dog game - except Uncharted 3, which I beat on Normal and then went back and beat on Hard with relative ease - has that problem for me, something unique to their games. At some point, the story is so good and the combat scenarios are so hellish I can't help but hop in the bulldozer and plow through.

That said, even though Winter was when most(all?) of the combat took place, I was really happy to see that it was in there. I found the tension of wandering through that mall during the first hour incredible, partly because I was playing with some stellar headphones in and also just because of the surprise they'd decided to fill in some holes between Joel getting hurt and their arrival at the cabin.

Contrary to the pre-release hype this is NOT DLC that is intended purely for fans of the Last of Us' storytelling, there are only four or five combat scenarios but three of them are among the most difficult I've encountered in a game in a long time, not just the Last of Us. But I think it does a good job satisfying both Last of Us camps, those who are here for the narrative and those that are here for the mechanics. Neither are quite up to the quality of the main game for a variety of reasons that mostly come down to scope, I think - they put a lot of big ideas into a very small package, literally and figuratively - and the effort deserves to be attached to a PS3 masterpiece.

I think my favourite thing about the whole DLC was the insane amount of dialogue they recorded for the joke book/skull ("Skeleseer can suck my dick" made me laugh far more than I was expecting). I just wanted to stay pressing triangle forever, and they almost let you do it!

I also disagree with those saying the combat sections and, really, the whole "future" Ellie section were just excuses to get action in the game. I thought there were pretty obvious parallels between the two situations both physically (both take place in a mall for a start) and in terms of character development - the transitions really showed how the world and Ellie has developed/changed over the course of the game.

I've been playing through the rest of the game on Survivor (University/Winter) and the DLC just doesn't compare on a narrative level or any incredibly powerful level; it could with a better ending; it could end with a severe fade to black like Winter does. The game is about the dehumanization of the main characters and the DLC was trying to make one of the characters seem more human; which doesn't really jive. What happens after the trite motivational speech is very important to Ellie's development as a character and could have been done extremely well; instead the most dramatic moment is her kissing Riley; which just straight up doesn't matter at all to the rest of the plot and in some respects makes you think about future scenarios with Joel that are rather amusing considering the horrifying things either one of them has done by that point. Someone being gay does not compare to say: watching a close friend commit suicide (hmm...) or hacking a dude's face off or murdering 100 people that want to save humanity. Sure I'm saying The Last of Us DLC should compete with the best cinematic storyline in gaming history, but that's what you get with the title. A scene where the main characters look at Giraffes is better than everything in the DLC and that's like the 6th or 7th best moment in the game.

The DLC is fine but it doesn't stand up to the masterpiece that is the main game, but I guess the fanboy powers are too strong here to acknowledge this. I mean DLC is bad in general so it could potentially win the best DLC award for 2014, but best DLC for one year (the Dark Souls DLC is still vastly superior) doesn't really compare to game of the generation now does it.

@fredchuckdave: Your ability to state uncommon-if-not-rare opinions as if they were well-accepted fact ("DLC is bad in general"), along with your outright dismissal of contending opinion ("...but I guess the fanboy powers are too strong here to acknowledge this.") borders on the solipsistic.

@towersixteen said:

That's just the fredchuckdave way I'm afraid.

Maybe? I coulda sworn that building you can spot and talk to Ellie about during The Last of Us was an orphanage, but now I'm not so sure. As for Ellie's skills, I always assumed she was taught them by Marlene and the Fireflies when she's eventually taken in (or kidnapped?) by them.

She's clearly training to be in the military/militia during the opening scene of the game. One of Ellie's first responses to Riley revealing she's a Firefly is that she's being taught how to kill Fireflies.

@nodima: Oh yeah, good point.

@towersixteen: What, a lot of people hate DLC and with pretty good reason; I don't "hate" DLC persay but it is definitely worse than situations where the game just felt complete by itself (which The Last of Us does of course, thus highlighting the unimportance of the DLC). You have to realize on forums there is usually, say even 95% of the time, a very strong narrative that follows majority rule more or less; this creates very frightening situations where the few that don't agree are expelled for no particular reason (visit Something Awful sometime); and this is the reason why trolls exist. The chance of an argument being interesting, compelling, or something you can learn something from is miniscule (and to be sure, the same is true in reality), and this is because there is no dissension. Dissension is what makes you think, it's what makes you wonder. No man is beyond reproach; myself included though Ad Hominem doesn't really draw a response from me. I realize most people are too stupid to improve their arguments beyond that but maybe there's hope.

I'm just straightforward and honest which people can't really handle very well; especially if the thought process is compelling. You see strength in numbers doesn't hold up if you're standing on weak ground; I always argue from extremely strong positions and sort of plan out a response ahead of time. But another thing that happens on forums is people just won't stop arguing, in real life they'd be done pat after pretty much a single strong volley, but online they sort of react over time; but the strongest argument or arguer isn't the last one to speak it's the one with the best point.

Ellie being gay doesn't matter because she's still Ellie; people being gay in real life doesn't matter because they're still worthwhile, normal people. There's not much of a reason to make something entirely centric on this point. If you want to fall back on marginalization well a white gay male is a hell of a lot less marginalized than basically every other group, whether it be African Americans, women, Latino Americans, or pretty much any other group that isn't in power; thus having a game story about it isn't something unequivocally important to our society. What's going to be remarkable is when people don't react to people being gay, not when people react as though it's this fantastic courageous revelation (or alternatively react harshly).

@fredchuckdave: No man is beyond reproach; myself included though Ad Hominem doesn't really draw a response from me. I realize most people are too stupid to improve their arguments beyond that but maybe there's hope.

This made my head spin, in the context of your last two posts.

Anyway, I do appreciate it when people clearly enunciate why they like or dislike something, but no one here said "OMG the gayness so special". I'm not sure I really understood what you were trying to say in your meandering last paragraph, but It seemed to me that people thought it was just a sweet moment of awkward, unsure, teenage romance, and because you didn't agree, you strawmanned up that they were lauding it as some big equality-crusade achievement and they only liked it because of that, using that as a basis to dismiss opinions other than yours. Which is patently untrue.

Going on about how strong your reasoning and arguing abilities are is the most pointless pursuit in the whole world. Who are you trying to convince? I assume us, because if not, why bother? But if us, surely you realize that noone can take that sort of self-aggrandizing rhetoric seriously?

@towersixteen: The troll is built into the post see, that's why it's an inherent oxymoron but still a formulation of a true thought (though perhaps one that can't be expressed, both language and debate are extremely flawed). Another nice thing about trolling is the inherently unknown nature of the art. To draw a response is the primary motivation; the action is intended as a feint to draw an amusing response; as you must certainly have provided. Again you limit your viewpoint to the very small span of this thread (or even this forum) and have even trivialized the activity itself with your own rhetoric; just take a look back, try to think about it for a moment. A challenge, I know. Ah, the comforts of faulty reasoning.

In the context of the DLC's other storytelling efforts, the romance felt borne out of convention as much as exception. It's easy to view that relationship through a controversial lens - it's a 13 year old girl making a move on a 15 year old girl while waxing philosophic like a 20 year old in the middle of a zombie apocalypse after all - but with the not-exacty slap shot but certainly less polished presentation overall (having read a synopsis of the comic book I felt similarly about that story as well) I'm more inclined to say the romance probably crept into their story as an emotional device as much as anything else. It's to Naughty Dog's credit that they sold video game convention as a worthy addition to one of the system's best efforts, even if it leaves plenty to be desired for those looking for more.

The best thing this DLC does is show -- don't tell. It doesn't aspire to do anything other than give us a better understanding of Ellie by letting us actually live through something we already know about. The way it wrapped me up in the Ellie/Riley dynamic despite me knowing where it was going was commendable. Ellie's story about Riley at the end of the main campaign is one thing - actually experiencing it is another. Left Behind gave me a level of sympathy for her that her simple explanation didn't -- even the comic didn't really grab me in the way I thought it would. Part of that is the execution; King and Johnson are out of this world, as is the facial animation which knocks that final scene out of the park, and the score. You could argue that the dialog is a bit... philosophical for 15 year olds but it still felt sincere and honest. Plus, it did explain why they didn't just blow their brains out which seems to be the prerogative of lots of people in these settings -- and in turn that offered a great insight into the Joel story.

Looking back at key moments in the campaign, after playing this, they have a lot more weight and context to them.

I wasn't sure if these posts were joking or not.

BTW my post wasn't necessarily meant to be a slight against either Gone Home (my 3rd favorite game last year) or TLOU (my second favorite game last year). It was just an observation about the story being told and the similarity between the two.

Ellen Page the story.

I really dislike the last encounter, probably because there's actually 3 waves of enemies, otherwise I really love the fact that you can make the enemies fight each other.

I'm glad that they put lots of thoughts into the small conversations between Riley and Ellie.

Btw I didn't really pay attention to the background story about the military chopper. What happened ?

I thought it was fantastic and it has really stuck with me. The Mortal Kombat section in particular is so so well done, and the scene with the dancing is so much more than you ever get from 99% of other games.

Also the bow is so awesome. I wish it had been 100% bow.

That last encounter just about killed the whole thing for me. This just felt like the work of a developer that does not trust in their narrative to hold this game and just has to throw in another fight, with more enemies. Because that's just how games are made right? RIGHT?

Fuck that. This is a cancer that has plagued the entire generation, this ridiculous need for always more combat, always more enemies.

That encounter was not fun, it was not dramatic, it didn't somehow heighten the urgency of the situation. The only thing it raised is my frustration. Excessive combat like this is never fun but at the very least as Joel you are equipped to deal with it. Not so with Ellie.

And when you consider the nonexistent story motivations for this it makes things all the more frustrating. What is it with these retarded hunters that they will stop at nothing to make sure that this one girl and one man they don't even know and only caught a glimpse of in the university die even if it means throwing 100 men at them?

One 10 minutes sequence ruined the whole thing for me. I failed on my first try and put down the game for 2 days before giving it another shot. They pulled another Uncharted 3 out of their ass.

Yeah I replayed the DLC for trophies and, man, fuck that ending battle. I can deal with the combat but it was excessive there -- which I also thought was the case during the Ellie sections of the main game, although less so there.

Are there any walk through videos out there? I traded in the game already and just wanted to watch the couple hours of game play.

I really liked the DLC. Having not read the comics, I found the romance somewhat surprising though not at all overbearing or out of character. It fit nicely, and was yet another one of the many parallels explored in both timelines.

Overall I think the best moments were the jokebook, skull and the arcade game - and I liked the new uses for old mechanics like the water gun fight and the brick throwing competition.

In terms of criticisms though, I had forgotten how fun the combat was but the end got a bit much. Three waves? Come on.

@thebarrylad: I agree with just about everything you've posted in here, fellow Barry lad ;P

@pr1mus: Sucks to hear you had such a rough time with that final combat encounter. At the risk of sounding like I'm showing off, I personally didn't have that much trouble with it. And I certainly would not equate it to the combat encounters from Uncharted 3, either. Which truly were an exercise in frustration a lot of the time.

As for why they're continually trying to kill Ellie and Joel, I think it's primarily their intent to nip the issue in the bud, as they've already proved to be such a nuisance that they're pulling all the stops to end them. It's also worth pointing out that this is set before she meets David as well, so this was only their first attack before David then decides to try and 'court' Ellie into their group.

@yummylee: I didn't actually have trouble beating the encounter. I failed the first time with maybe 2 guys left. I succeeded on my second try... 2 days later.

It's the design of the encounter itself that instantly turned me off. I just have zero tolerance anymore for that type of nonsense. Like i said, to me it feels like a developers going by the number and looking at a list of bullet points the modern videogame needs to have. One of those is "tedious combat encounter with a gratuitous amount of enemies". When i say they pulled an Uncharted 3 again of course i get the difference. This DLC did this once while this was basically the entire design doc for U3 but you get the idea where i coming from with this complaint.

As for the hunters' motivations, like you say this is before they meet David. That whole thing starts the very first time the hunters see Joel through a window in the University and the game fast forwarded some amount of time to the reach the University campus. There's nothing to say they encountered those guys before. It just makes no sense, this ridiculous level of aggression towards two random people like this.

I know i'm super stubborn about this stuff but i can't help it. Combat in general has taken a turn for the worst in too many games these past couple years. It's all about quantity now and this frustrates me to no end. I felt like original game largely avoided this by making a ton of the combat optional and was fairly successful at emphasizing stealth and if all else fails, Joel is basically a walking tank by the end of the game when they start throwing large amount of enemies at you.

@pr1mus: Sure, I can certainly agree that it got to be a bit overkill with just how long and how many goons they throw at you. But I think that then speaks to how much I enjoy The Last of Us' combat that it still didn't faze me as much as it did so many other people.

As for why David's clan of Hunters are continuing to dog Joel and Ellie, I imagine that initially they were of course after their supplies. But then Joel and Ellie are able to defend themselves pretty soundly for the most part, killing a lot of them in the process. This would probably place them into a pit of desperation; after losing so many men, that may have left them in the predicament of feeling like they damn well better show something for it, hence why they decide to follow them to finish the job.

Then after Ellie meets David, their intentions obviously take an even more sordid direction, which would explain why they then still continue to attempt to capture Ellie. Well, David wants to capture Ellie at least, but I remember hearing some lesser members chatting about overthrowing him and deciding that after how many men Ellie has already killed, they'd rather kill her right back rather than abide by David's wishes.

The one thing that falls under scrutiny is of course how many damn men this clan supposedly had, which is definitely a common flaw of video games of this type. But the actual motivations as to why they keep hounding the two I think makes enough sense.

@sub_o said:

I think there were three (?) medical officers, one of which had gotten infected. Though it's eventually revealed that the highest ranking member is the partner of the one infected, so she instead amputates the infected guy's infected limb to see if it would hopefully halt the infection. It didn't of course, and after looking after him for so long as his health degenerates, she eventually bails, but then returns because she knew she has to stand by her partner through better or worse. The third guy then uncovers the situation and shoots her because he assumes she's gone insane (which is a possibility), but as he then tries to escapes he gets injured (can't exactly recall how) and eventually bleeds to death in an air vent.

It's a pretty common trope for zombie fiction to be sure. Though it also serves its purpose for mirroring Ellie's dedication to looking after Joel amidst his injuries instead of just giving up and moving on for herself.

I forgot how much of a pussy Joel was. Lara walked that shit off in like the first 10 minutes of her game...

I just finished it and I loved the DLC. There were so many good moments in it and I'm not bothered by the fact that they didn't show how Riley died. There are only a few ways it could have gone and I appreciated that they focused on showing the relationship.

I was one of the few who really liked the gameplay part of Last of Us and being able to make infected and bandits fight each other was a neat addition. The last encounter was maybe a bit much but in the end I didn't die once on hard and barely used any ammunition. I played it just after finishing my second playthrough of the main game so that might have helped.

It took me a little over three hours (I think I found everything) which is absolutely worth the 15 bucks considering the quality of the content. A worthy addition to one of the best games of the last generation.

I thought it was pretty darn good but it didn't wow me like it did for other people. It wasn't some watershed moment, it was just really good DLC.

To be honest, I would have rather had more combat situations, some of it was kind of dull. I love the idea of a game that doesn't rely completely on combat but I thought a lot of the stuff they did was kind of boring here. The boring gameplay was just coupled with some great dialogue and character building so it evened out for me.

This DLC doesn't come close to the actual game in my opinion.

@spraynardtatum: Which parts did you find dull? I ask because it felt like when you're not engaged in combat, Left Behind is otherwise constantly introducing new things to do and interact with during the sections with Riley. It's all really simple and not especially involved, but it had me forever excited to see what else they were going to introduce next. Plus the fantastic dialogue is entwined with everything, so I always had a reason to keep my attention squarely focused on whatever was happening in front of me regardless of how basic the actual activity is.

Almost all of it honestly. I really liked the fighting game scene (definitely the best part for me) and the part where you throw bricks at cars but I think you nailed my main complaint. It's not especially involving. You basically walk up to something, press triangle, listen to the great dialogue, walk to the next thing, press triangle, listen to the great dialogue, and so on until the game is over. I don't want to knock it too hard because I did enjoy it and TLoU character development is above and beyond anything else in the medium but I couldn't help but be disappointed by how basic the player involvement was. Almost everything was a single button prompt. It might as well have been on rails.

@spraynardtatum: Fair enough. The Riley parts are unquestionably very passive overall, but they were just interactive enough (with you still physically able to control the camera and move about at your own pace) that I still enjoyed witnessing the reactions all the same. And the more involved segments like the photo-shoot, fighting game, water gun battles, and the car-window smashing competition provided enough entertainment that playing those sections still felt worthwhile for me.

Just after the water gun part but yea....Gone Home got in my Last of Us. Guess that will be a trope in games now "HOW SHOCKING!!! SHE IS TEH GAYS!!!"

Someone needs to tell developers that this issue isn't a big deal with their audience and couldn't care less.

@bunnymud said:

Well that's not really true, lots of people care. And furthermore I don't think it was done to be shocking, that greatly undersells the talent of the people writing this game.

It's a bit of a bummer that so many people are jumping on that kiss as a "gay" moment. It's a homosexual act, but there's no reason to assume that she's not bisexual, or a young heterosexual girl in an emotionally co-dependent relationship with the only other person her age that she knows. "Gone Home got in your Last of Us"? I don't own a PC machine so I don't know what Gone Home is about other than what I've read, but it sounds like it's explicitly about a lesbian girl. Left Behind was about two girls alone amidst chaos frantically grasping for the concept of childhood before the biohazard outbreak. They happened to kiss, and maybe they were in love. But it wasn't a story about learning to accept gay people, and it certainly didn't feel like a kiss that happened because of Gone Home or a desire for headlines.

One thing that I fear gaming audiences will continue to struggle with for some time is the ability to separate an individual game's narrative from the narrative of the gaming media/forum community at large. Maybe it's because I get all of the gaming coverage I take seriously from Giant Bomb, but I've missed all of these hot button issues the same way Jeff or Drew has. I don't talk about it, or accept as fact what someone else says on the subject. I played the game and I can't see how that scene was anything other than an honest (other dialogue, such as when Ellie is trying to leave the mall and go home, is more earnestly toeing the line) portrayal of friendship within loneliness.

There's no doubt the DLC was more heavy handed than the main game but it was DLC, the polished script from Last of Us couldn't have been totally expected here (just watch the documentary Grounded, there is LOTS of poor dialogue going on in the early mo-cap scenes).

If Riley was a boy, then NOBODY would bat an eyelash at the romantic nature of their relationship. If the existence of homosexuality is shocking to you, that seems like a personal problem.

I think that a lot of people have jumped on the kiss as a gay moment, as you say, simply because they aren't used to games being subtle or nuanced concerning emotional and personal developments to a large extent. I may be wrong on this point, but the most obvious conclusion usually seems to be taken at face value (I am of course speaking about very broad generalities and not individuals).

As to your comments on how you interpreted the scene, I would say that you should just ignore what others have said/thought about it and stick to your own impressions. I am of the opinion that unless something is specifically stated in a story (whatever medium it is told in) that it is completely up to each individual person to interpret it or feel about scenes/characters/etc. on their own.

Not shocking to me, to use it as a sort of a "Gotcha" type thing is tired. I rolled my eyes when they were in the booth and had that moment of "Should I make a move?". As to your "If Riley was a boy, then NOBODY would bat an eyelash at the romantic nature of their relationship." does that mean if it were a boy then the whole DLC would be less of a thing? Why? I really couldn't care less of it were guy with girl, girl with girl, guy with guy but if that is supposed to move me in a special way, I sorry, it just doesn't. Love is love and that's that.

P.S. I liked the DLC a lot but think it was about $5.00 too much.

The main campaign of The Last of Us already tackled relationships between a parent and a child, partners in crime, brothers, friends and uneasy allies. It did so with great nuance and restraint, and a great majority of us have applauded Naughty Dog for accomplishing all that. However, the moment a romantic relationship is developed and displayed, there's a good portion of the fan base that just didn't want to see it with all sorts of rationales to explain away even some of the more obvious signs that there is such a relationship. Thankfully, the community here in Giant Bomb doesn't seem to be that way for the majority.

I think in denying the romance aspect, you take away from what Naughty Dog attempts to achieve in weaving a thread of stories that resonate on multiple levels. To be fair, romance in video games is usually handled poorly, and that leads to people immediately dismissing the notion when it's brought up. However, I think Naughty Dog did a stellar job of making the romance in this DLC believable and compelling to justify its inclusion in the greater narrative of The Last of Us.

Romance doesn't cheapen the impact of the game. It only serves to make it stronger.

I go into more detail in this article I've written here, but the gist of the argument is in this very post.

The silly, teenage girl, Oh no, you didn't, girl!, back and fourth between Ellie and Riley got fucking annoying (so I guess they nailed it?), I couldn't wait for the arcade QTE sequence to be over and the photo booth/facebook integration I definitely could have done without. But that one moment where Ellie kisses Riley, immediately apologizes and Riley softly responds For what?...man...

Oh, and there was more sneaking around, stabbing dudes, throwing bottles, avoiding clickers etc. in a perfectly realized version of a world gone to shit (i.e. more The Last of Us).

4/5.