No Return always seemed like the meatiest chunk in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's stew, so it makes sense to savour it all on its own. While The Lost Levels provide some intrigue, as my full review explores, they're too short and only give us Ellie's side of the story - a spice in the stew that is both too sparing and too hot. These were the two central draws to this remastered edition (the visuals were already great and thus had little improvement to offer), and while I expected The Lost Levels to be the high point of the experience, it was No Return that kept pulling me back in time and time again.
The pitch is simple - you must survive five encounters of increasing but randomised difficulty, before facing off against one of the game's iconic bosses. Initially, you only have access to Ellie and Abby, but as you complete encounters with them, you unlock new characters, and playing as them unlocks more, and so on and so on. This gradual, earned unlocking system is a rewarding way to help you learn the ropes of the challenges, giving you lots of quick wins initially even if you don't make it to the end of the run, and then as you get better, the challenges become more difficult, forcing you to work harder yet still awarding steady progression.
The variety of challenges lends itself to the personalities of each character - Lev's involves explosive arrows, Tommy's requires scoped kills, Mel's is about crafting med kits, and so on. These can occasionally be too reliant on RNG (Ellie needs to unlock every gun in a single run, which took me five flawless, 30-minute long runs to earn), but they add some essential variety into the mix. Unfortunately, variety is not always the name of the game.
There are four level types in the game
- Assault - Kill everyone in waves
- Hunted - Survive for a set amount of time
- Capture - Kill everyone in a single wave in time to open a safe
- Holdout - Kill around 20 enemies before your ally dies
There's also the boss encounters, which is basically Capture with no safe and a single, far more robust boss at the centre of it all. The easiest of these is the Arcade Bloater, who can be fairly easily outran and only needs you to maintain decent distance and ammo to take them down. The toughest is the Rat King, who can obliterate your run in an instant unless you're completely on your toes.
Maps are just the maps you've already played from the base game, but that didn't stop, say, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mass Effect 3's multiplayer 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:from being great. It does a lot to add its own variation too - not only does each character have their own loadout, but some have unique perks. Joel and Tommy are more robust with melee attacks, but can't dodge, while Manny has 150 percent health but can't craft med kits, only find them. Most interesting is Yara though, who always has her brother by her side for assistance.
There are a range of what the game calls 'Mods' too - while Yara always has Lev, other characters can have allies by their sides for one-off encounters, and levels can be made easier with everything from lower enemy health and faster movement, to the ability to set foes on fire by hitting them. Likewise, the tweaks to make things more difficult can be as basic as a photo mode filter or mirror mode, to Molotov cocktails or pustules raining down from the sky, thick fog permeating everywhere, or enemies that explode on death. There are also Gambits for minor rewards, like using three weapons in a wave or getting a headshot.
Perhaps the most interesting variant comes from the skins though - Ellie has 20 and Abby 18, but the rest have just a handful. Our two main heroes can equip these skins in the main game (most of which are bought through currency earned from playing, but a few need to be unlocked) and range from in-game skins to repping other video games to more creative offerings; Ellie can be the museum astronaut or Savage Starlight, while Abby can look like she's fresh out of either Top Gun, The Craft, or Mad Max. It's a shame other characters don't get this treatment (Joel as Doctor Uckmann, anyone?), but being able to add them to the main game gives them some extra purpose and a nice reward if you’re planning to replay the remastered campaign anyway.
It does feel a little unfortunate that it launches 16💙8澳洲幸运5开奖网:so soon after 🅘God of War Ragnarok Valhalla, however. Though I prefer The Last of Us by a considerable margin, Valhalla's links to God of War's overall narrative make it a far more rewarding experience. No Return promises The Last of Us but roguelike, and it delivers, but if you were hoping for any kind of narrative development or even throughline, you won't find it here. Why these characters are fighting and what the end goal is only exists as far as points on a scoreboard, and though there's nothing wrong with that, it does feel a little out of character for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Naughty Dog.
The timing will doubtless see comparisons made to Valhalla, but leaving that aside, my biggest gripe with No Return is the nature of the game itself. With scarce resources and a small map, you're forced into stealthy, melee-focused kills a lot of the time - that means your best guns like flamethrowers or shotguns tend to be saved for make or break moments, and several characters can't even unlock silencers. It's a roguelike interpretation of a very specific way of playing The Last of Us, and the way it disincentivises action can be off-putting when each full run takes upwards of half an hour.
All in all, No Return is substantial enough to warrant its own review, which says a lot about the mode in and of itself. It's not on the level of Hades, the roguelike that famously went toe to toe with The Last of Us Part 2 at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Game Awards 2020, and could allow for more playstyles or narrative weight. However, it brings The Last of Us' wider cast into the spotlight, works hard to offer variables where it can, and always invites you back for more. That's often the toughest challenge for a roguelike to overcome, and The Last of Us No Return smashes its jaw off with scissors tied to a two by four.
