What I liked about the first game's stealth is that in an instant, everything can change about an encounter for the worse. This new Ellie is deadly and silent, and crucially, can actually stay that way. She eventually gets a sneaky, silent bow, and also doesn't have to worry about crafting shivs thanks to her handy knife, with endless stealth kills possible. She can craft a plastic bottle silencer for her primary pistol, too. Ellie can lay prone and crawl under a rusted vehicle now.

It no longer feels janky to drive a melee weapon into a foe-instead, it feels panicked. It remains messy in action, but it's more that way by design than a pesky accident. In The Last of Us Part 2, the sloppy stealth is lessened. Breaking stealth to go loud in combat is never an accident. You can do your best to sneak through an area, but a Runner's ludicrous cone field of vision always breaks your cover, which sends a legion of Infected at Joel and Ellie.

The original Last of Us is what I like to call a sloppy stealth game. See more articles like this in our Starting Screen archive. Starting Screen is our weekly column featuring news, commentary, and music to help you get over your case of the Mondays.

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