"The Last of Us: Left Behind" Review

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR "THE LAST OF US" IN THIS REVIEW:
I was greatly disappointed by "Left Behind," the story based DLC to "The Last of Us," the game that I named Game of the Year for 2013. Before I say anything else, I understand that it is, in fact, a DLC, and therefore it is not supposed to be a full game, nor near as big in any regard as its parent. But there is maybe a single area in which "Left Behind" comes even remotely close to living up to the standards set up by its parent game.
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The chemistry between Ellie and Riley is solid (1).

First, a little overview of the DLC. Essentially, it is a two-sided story. In both sides, you play as Ellie, the driving force of the parent game, and in one part you play as her in between the fall and winter chapters of "The Last of Us," and in the other part you play as her before the events of "The Last of Us." In the in between fall and winter chapter section, Ellie is looking for medical supplies to help Joel through the injury he sustains at the ends of the fall chapter. In the prequel section, Ellie embarks on an illegal evening on the town with Riley, the friend who, as we learn at the end of "The Last of Us," was bitten alongside her.
I will focus on the area in which "Left Behind" meets the standards of its parent first, because it not only meets the standard, it goes beyond it. The writing. The writing in "The Last of Us" was fantastic, as we all know, but in "Left Behind," the writing is as great and then some. About 99% of the dialogue in this DLC is banter between Ellie and Riley, and that dialogue is snappy and laid back and just...youthfully endearing, I suppose is the right phrase to use. Exchanges like "Come on, what is it?" "It's a surprise!" "...iiiiis it a dinosaur?" "...mmaaaaaybe" make the chemistry between the two characters truly believable and enjoyable. It is refreshing to see that even though Naughty Dog does very little well in this DLC, they can still form notable character relationships. This is all that is well done about the DLC, however. Now we move on to the negatives.
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Gameplay is just about as stale and typical-DLC style as you can possibly get (2). 

In terms of the negatives, the first thing I'm going to focus on is the gameplay, as that is only a secondary aspect of anything "The Last of Us"-related. This DLC suffers from what I call "DLC gameplay syndrome." Something I've noticed in a lot of DLCs is that, in a desperate attempt to make gameplay different from the parent game, developers will do one of a few things: 1) throw in armored variants of enemies from the parent game, 2) make characters absolutely obsess about a weapon created for the DLC, 3) give you a very specific set of weapons from the parent game (which more often than not is an odd combination) and make you work with that the entire time, or 4) make two types of enemies fight each other, adding a "wait and let them teach each other apart" aspect to gameplay. "Left Behind" does 3 and 4. Ellie, in the combat sections, has a very limited selection of weapons from the parent game, and infected and hunters fight each other. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a good thing that they included infected fighting some of your human enemies. I think that was a long time coming. However, the fact that it is introduced in this DLC just radiates DLC gameplay syndrome, and it is not pleasant. That is what the combat sections are like, but what about the non-combat sections? There is gameplay of a sort in the Ellie/Riley sections as well. In the Ellie/Riley sections, gameplay mostly consists of minigame-esque exploits such as pretending to play a videogame, seeing who can break the most car windows first, and a stealthy game of water gun tag. These sound like the kinds of things I would want in a story based game...on paper, at least. In practice, though, they don't really shine through. I'd have to say the most fun of these was pretending to play the videogame, but even then, you were just staring awkwardly at Ellie's face and following vague prompts. In the car window-bashing section, bricks were readily available, so it wasn't a challenge at all. And the water gun tag, which should have been the kingpin of all of this because of its position in the story was just something reminiscent of multiplayer matches...which I hate. This DLC was never, at any point, any fun to play. But hey, that doesn't really matter in The Last of Us, does it? I mean, the gameplay in the parent game was fantastic, but it is all about the story, so if the story is great, it should overshadow any bad gameplay, right?
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There are one or two touching moments, but that is all (3). 

Right. But, unfortunately, the story in Left Behind isn't good either. Let all the world bear witness, unless you are Kurt Vonnegut, you can NOT tell a good story if a player knows the ending before even beginning their first run through. It simply isn't possible. At the end of the parent game, we learn everything that happens at the end of this DLC: Ellie and Riley were in a mall, they got bitten, decided to just lose their minds together, and Ellie didn't turn, thus setting the parent game events in motion. We didn't need a DLC to tell us that. I simply cannot fathom why Naughty Dog chose these events for their story-based DLC. It just boggles my mind. You know what would have been a good prequel kind of story-based DLC for The Last of Us? Joel in the TWENTY YEARS between his daughter's death and the start of the summer chapter. There is SO much that could be done with that, and even though we know how it turns out, we wouldn't know half of what happened going in. We could see Joel and Tess's rise to being the most feared smugglers in Boston, we could see a heartbroken Joel struggling to leave his dead daughter behind, we could see the falling out between Joel and Tommy and the conflicts that ensue from that. Do you get the picture? There is so much potential there, but nope. Lets tell the story we've already told, how about? When Naughty Dog announced that they would have a story-based DLC, I heard rumors that it might be about Ish and his sewer community, and even that would have been a better choice than Ellie's backstory. We know that Ish and his community were all killed and turned, but we know nothing about the in-between, or what Ish was doing on his boat before coming to the mainland. So, not only did Naughty Dog decide to make a DLC based off of a story that anyone who has played the game knows, but they did it at the expense of making a story-based DLC from the many, many rich pockets of story exploration potential.
Even their decision to use the section in-between fall and winter as their "present-day" section was a failure. I mean, we can assume based off context clues that Ellie takes care of Joel and offers him medical help when he suffers his injury at the end of the fall chapter. There is simply no need to delve further into there, because lo and behold, that is what happens. You know what would have been a better present-day thing? In-between the winter and spring chapters. I mean, come on, Ellie is very nearly raped and brutalized at the end of the winter chapter, and at the beginning of the spring chapter, she seems to have something on her mind. You want to talk about something that 1) is a goldmine for emotional string-pulling and psychological exploration, and 2) could make a person think back on their lives and wonder how things got so bad, there you go. It would give justification for the switching back and forth between present day and prequel. Ellie, while psychologically recovering, could be thinking back on her life and remembering a time when things (even during the apocalypse) were simpler. But as it is, it is Ellie fetching supplies for Joel without reflecting, and then we switch back to the prequel. It just doesn't make any sense. There was so much potential for exploration, and Naughty Dog didn't do it.
What we have is a story that we know the ending to before even starting, a story that is filled with tons of rushed references to small things in the parent game that you'll only catch if you are like me and have played it at least ten times. It is something that tries so hard to be fulfilling as a solo experience and as an accompaniment to the parent game, but fails on both accounts. When you have a story based game that can't do a story the right way, what are you left with?
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Ellie seems to share my feelings about this DLC (4).

Anybody who spends any time around me knows how unbelievably head over heels in love with "The Last of Us" I am. I love it to the ends of the earth, and I went as low as to play multiplayer to try to get all the trophies and outfits for Joel and Ellie because of how much I love it. So maybe I'm a little bit more biased than usual in judging Left Behind. But The Last of Us: Left Behind simply isn't worth the $15 it cost or the 3 hours that it took for it to download. Now that I own it and don't have to pay to play it again, I still am not going to play it. Even without paying money, Left Behind is not worth it. So, with a heavy heart and with a tear in my eye that I give The Last of Us: Left Behind...
5/10

I never thought I'd give an honorary seal of Failure to anything The Last of Us-related. I have never been so unbelievably disappointed in you, Naughty Dog. Go to your room and think about what you've done.

Picture Sources:
Cover: www.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
(1) www.tap-repeatedly.com
(2) www.digitalspy.com
(3) www.ign.com
(4) www.psnation.com