As you might remember, Ellie isn’t any match for Joel in close quarters combat, and she can’t take much damage from humans or infected before she goes down. If you felt The Last of Us’s combat ruined the experience, then Left Behind might still not be for you, but if you liked the mix of stealth, improvisation and making tools from scavenged goods, it’s as taut, nerve-wracking and intense as it was before. Along the way we get a handful of puzzles, but none go beyond moving objects or finding items to open up a route. Break the gameplay down to its components and it’s still a game where you push through areas of enemies – either human or infected – by eliminating them or, where possible, sneaking past them. Mechanically, it’s much like the rest of The Last of Us, but with a few twists. Left Behind is both moving and surprising, and the contrast between the quiet scenes and the scenes of violence or horror only makes the former more involving, and the latter more brutal. Naughty Dog has taken risks here, daring to push the action and survival horror to one side to give space to the central characters, but it works. There are scenes of fierce combat and tense exploration, but also stretches of silliness, beauty and real human warmth, which work thanks to the exceptionally good motion capture, and strong performances by the two leads, Ashley Johnson and Yaani King. Of course, while the game is looking back into Ellie’s past, it’s also reflecting on her present, and much of the poignancy of the game – and it is genuinely poignant – lies in how her experience with Riley ties into her experience with Joel. The game has a clever flashback structure that it’s best if you discover for yourself, but the core of the game is Ellie’s relationship with Riley, her most important childhood friend, and the pair’s last foray into a deserted mall. The star this time is Ellie, the teenage girl under Joel’s protection for most of the original game. If you haven’t, and you can, then you really should. If you’ve finished Naughty Dog’s masterpiece, it’s damn near essential. It’s the right kind of add-on, not just giving you more of what you’ve already enjoyed, but adding to the experience, taking you closer to characters you know and love and revealing something more about them. Like the bulk of The Last of Us, its single player expansion – Left Behind – is a stunning bit of work, mixing beauty, brutality, life, death, violence, hope and humanity in ways most other games never dare attempt.
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