Released on June 19th, The Last of Us: Part 2 received a vitriolic response from fans, who trashed the game on popular review sites. By June 22nd, only 3 days later, the game had received over 38,000 negative user reviews on Metacritic against 22,000 positive reviews and 2,000 mixed. This “Review-Bomb” dogpile tactic is one way that gaming communities express collective frustration with publishers.
Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is a series which takes place in a post-zombie-apocalypse setting which follows the journey of Ellie, a young girl who must constantly struggle for survival in a world where humanity is on the brink of collapse. The original game, released in 2013, and its 2014 DLC expansion, were praised by fans and critics alike for their gripping narrative, nuanced storytelling, and compelling character development.
Following the first game’s success, The Last of Us 2 was one of the most anticipated games of 2020. Developer Naughty Dog was teasing the game as early as 2016, and fans were expecting more of the same: a powerful, interactive narrative full of character-driven and emotionally compelling content. According to fan reviews, however, what Naughty Dog delivered with The Last of Us 2 was a stark departure from the original, devoid of the genuine emotion which made the first game so successful.
What The Last of Us 2 User Reviews Are Saying
In tens of thousands of reviews for The Last of Us: Part 2, fans decry a story riddled with plot holes, characters lacking or betraying their own motivations, and a near-fetishistic obsession with pointless misery. These reviews have driven the game’s user rating down to around 4/10, which is a stark contrast to the 95/100 given by professional critics ratings in aggregate. While some critics cite the review-bombing of the game as the malevolent action of a bigoted minority of gamers aiming to tank the game’s commercial success because the main character is a lesbian, those pointlessly hateful reviews are outliers among a sea of gamers who love the series, love its gay protagonist, and are simply disappointed by The Last of Us 2 itself.
Naughty Dog started teasing the game as early as 2018, and claimed from the very beginning The Last of Us: Part 2 would be emotionally raw and hard to play. Neil Druckmann, the game’s director, has consistently driven that point home with the press. From killing dogs and NPCs to watching beloved characters die, every possible angle was exploited to shock and dismay players.
While the goal of The Last of Us: Part 2's narrative may have been to tell a story of revenge and explore the complexity of living with trauma, it delivered something closer to the last season of Game of Thrones. According to player reviews, Naughty Dog pulled together a collection of heart-wrenching plot points designed to make the player feel bad, and then strung them together with something that loosely resembled a story. Survival against all odds, revenge, and trauma are complex themes for any writer to tackle in any medium, and there is a fine line between delivering complex melancholy and meaningless misery.
Whether The Last of Us 2 is a masterpiece or a misfire is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. For every two negative reviews about the story, there is a positive one praising the game’s graphics and gameplay, so it would be presumptive to call the game a complete failure. One thing about this debate is certain, however: if Naughty Dog’s intent was to make some The Last of Us: Part 2 fans feel bad, they succeeded.