Ellie excuse, really.

I don’t replay games as much as I used to.

I don’t replay games as much as I’dliketo.

Ellie and Dina look away from the camera over the snowy peaks of Jackson, their home.

Replays let you embrace the chaos.

This time, I sank back and enjoyed the ride.

Many of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered’s new features are gated this way, actually.

Cover image for YouTube video

The other Making Of offerings are disappointing, though.

The Making Of section onlytellsyou about an upcoming documentary rather than embedding it right there.

A missed opportunity for sure.

A distant light shines down what appears to be a hospital corridor. Corpses litter the ground.

That said, the Speedrun Recap is a lovely surprise.

The mods are wild, by the way.

Are these mods necessary?

Abby pushes through a small opening in the rock and comes face to face with a frozen hiker. The triangle button is on screen as a button prompt.

Succumb to an enemy, though, and it’s game over.

For good, just as the title intimates.

Players can also modify holds and presses according to preference.

Ellie cowers in the corner of the image as a Clicker, deformed by years of fungi growth, appears to scream over her. Ellie is raising a gun to its head.

Subtitles are resizable, can be coded to character name, and include directional prompts.

And it all feels exactly as you’d expect it to.

Brutally unfair at times, too, as it’s horrifyingly easy to be overwhelmed.

Joel lays in the background and stares fondly towards the foreground, where Ellie is lying, eyes closed in an astronaut helmet.

A copy of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered was provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Ellie and Joel look at graffiti daubed on the wall. Below the Fireflies symbol, it says: LIARS.

The guitar mini-game. Joel is playing a B minor chord.

The Lost Levels: Jackson Party. Ellie is sat on a log in front of a fire. People crowd around the fire as fairy lights blaze in the darkness around them.

Jesse is in the foreground, and Ellie stands beside him, staring off into space.

The Lost Levels: Seattle Sewer. Ellie is standing in front of a gigantic speech bubble, indicating director commentary. Pete Ellis gives commentary, saying: “We slowly introduce the player to consider climbing into smaller pipes and crouching in these tight spaces”.

Concept art revealed in the Extra menu. It’s a scene of Dina and Ellie, where the latter is lying in a barn and the former is tenderly cradling her head.

A screenshot showing gameplay of Ellie in an alternate skin – Pride – and using a game mod that gives infinite crafting materials, as demonstrated in the UI, which shows an infinity symbol below all crafting ingredients.