Can acts of extreme violence ever be justified as revenge? Regardless of where the lengthy main campaign's story may land, The Last Of Us Part 2 Remastered's No Return roguelike answers the question with a firm "heck yeah". Ultimately, the gory loop may end up a bit off message in this mode, but it was always a difficult challenge to balance in the first place. But this mode has proved a real highlight of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's PC release.
Simply put, The Last of Us Part 2 has some of the best third-person action I've ever played, deftly combining incredibly slick and tactile stealth with bursts of high-intensity violence – from grabbing enemies who separate from the pack to drag them behind cover for a good stabbing, to getting spotted and desperately fleeing through gaps in fallen shelving before diving prone into long grass to hide and re-enter cover. It's great in the main campaign, even if it condemns the cycle of violence while encouraging it in the same breath, but embracing the cycle in No Return works wonderfully. Ah well, nevertheless.
Cycle of violence
The Last of Us Part 2 first released for PS4 in 2020, with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered coming to PS5 in 2024 and bringing numerous enhancements – including the roguelike No Return mode. I enjoyed it quite a lot on the platform, but this PC port doesn't just add a slew of PC features that further enhance the game (I'm able to reach some extremely high framerates while maintaining super high fidelity on my own rig), but brings with it lots of fresh content for No Return specifically.
What did we think of the game? In our The Last of Part 2 review, we called it "an astonishing, absurdly ambitious epic" where it earned the coveted 5 stars
This mode has you select a character to make it through a series of discrete stages that branch out from a startpoint, ending in a boss. Along the way you collect pills and other upgrade materials to enhance your build, all while trying to stay ahead of the curve on things like ammo and health kits. Each stage can have different possible rules and modifiers, from beginning in stealth for each wave of enemies, to each offed foe dropping an explosive when killed (yeah, a spanner in the works if you're trying to be sneaky in that one).
While I liked The Last of Us Part 2's story well enough (it doesn't hold a candle to the much tighter, focused original though), No Return manages to condense what I really loved about the game into a repeatable loop, championing the excellent combat. The action here feels so realistic and tactile that I can't help but wince with headphones on every time Ellie pulls the trigger on a rifle and the sound echoes out across a room, or gasp as she takes a bullet and is literally knocked to the ground. Slow creeping as you crawl prone through long grass or under trucks can, at a moment's notice, switch into high-gear as you quick-throw bricks or tag enemy legs with bullets to open them up to incredibly violent melee kills. My mum was present for a few brutal executions – we were meeting for coffee – and I had to apologize for the sensory assault of unpleasantness. Secretly, though, I wasn't sorry at all. My swearing and cackling is all part of the fun, even if it ends with a failed run. Sorry, mum.
Four new maps and two new characters have been added to The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered: No Return – Nest, WLF Streets, School, and Overlook. For a roguelike, adding more options to a pool can make a big difference in the runs you encounter, and all of the above adds much more variety for me compared to my first impressions of the mode last year. The latter two maps I really like, both adapting areas from some of my favorite parts of the campaign – Overlook, atop a towering ruined skyscraper with lots of verticality, feels like little else in No Return.
Bill and Marlene, meanwhile, fill out an already impressive roster of playable characters you unlock by completing runs. It's great to see No Return go beyond simply including characters from the first game (Ellie and Abbie are joined by a slew of their companions from throughout the game – though the latter's pals scrape the barrel a bit). Each character already managed to feel surprisingly unique, fitting their own personality into the template of guerilla-like violence; Bill and Marlene manage to take this even further.
Old dog, new tricks
Needless to say, Bill specializes in traps that can help fortify enemies hunting you down, or make use of bottlenecks in assault modes – and as a smuggler he's able to get more out of the dead drop challenges that see you having to scoop up items as you deal with waves of enemies, able to access his own unique items. Marlene, meanwhile, is a "risk taker", meaning using each stage's gambits can pack more reward, and, as a Firefly, she can even reroute the path of levels you've picked.
I love how these two don't just have their own spin on the third-person action, but feel like they're also interacting more closely with the very rulesets of No Return itself. The PS5 launch was a great start, but I didn't expect the roguelike mode to get so much TLC – no complaints from me, though. At first, I found the prospect of redoing my progress from PS5 a bit annoying, but completing the challenges to unlock new tools and options for each subsequent run hooked me back in, especially when it came to working towards unlocking Bill and Marlene.
No Return still isn't perfect. Having played so many hours of The Last of Us over the years, you do get used to some key strategies that can sometimes dominate a lot of your runs. Even if this new update does do a lot to counter that by adding more variety, once you're in the flow of a run it doesn't change all that much until the next one.
I'm hoping that beyond this update helping to add a bit of fresh paint to freshen up The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered for PC, this is the start of even more to come. The two new characters can't help but make me wonder if even more new maps could embrace key areas from the first game. Though at that point, No Return threatens to become so feature rich it could almost become a full game in and of itself. The Last of Us Part 2 Factions, the standalone live service multiplayer, was cancelled. Perhaps this mode could better fill a gap for something smaller scale? Ah, maybe I'm just being greedy.
It's worth mentioning as well that The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered does still have its lengthy and intense campaign mode – which looks extra gorgeous on my PC. Beyond No Regrets, other additional modes include a surprisingly in-depth guitar simulator that's already eaten up way too much of my time, and a really interesting selection of cut content and dev commentary, allowing you to even play through some of the unfinished sections.
I thought I was done with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, but this PC release has dragged me back in. It's safe to say that No Return managed to get its hooks into me once again, this time even deeper thanks to the well-judged updates. No Return? No regrets.
Disclaimer
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered was played on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.
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