The Last of Us: Left Behind

The Last of Us: Left Behind
The Last of Us: Left Behind
Developer(s)	Naughty Dog
Publisher(s)	Sony Computer Entertainment
Director(s)	Bruce Straley; Neil Druckmann;
Designer(s)	Jacob Minkoff
Programmer(s)	Travis McIntosh; Jason Gregory;
Artist(s)	Erick Pangilinan
Writer(s)	Neil Druckmann
Composer(s)	Gustavo Santaolalla
Series	The Last of Us
Platform(s)	PlayStation 3; PlayStation 4;
Release	PlayStation 3 WW: February 14, 2014; PlayStation 4 NA: July 29, 2014; PAL: July 30, 2014; UK: August 1, 2014;
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

The Last of Us: Left Behind is a 2014 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is a downloadable expansion pack to the 2013 game The Last of Us. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the game switches between two stories: the first, set three weeks before the events of The Last of Us, follows Ellie as she spends time with her best friend Riley in an abandoned mall in Boston; the second takes place between the Fall and Winter chapters of The Last of Us and focuses on Ellie's attempts to scour an abandoned mall in Colorado for medical supplies to heal Joel while dealing with enemies.

The game is played from a third-person perspective; players use firearms, improvised weapons, and stealth to defend against hostile humans and zombie-like creatures infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus. Players can use "Listen Mode" to locate enemies through a heightened sense of hearing and spatial awareness. The game also features a crafting system, allowing players to customize weapons through the upgrades. Left Behind was released worldwide on February 14, 2014 for the PlayStation 3; it was later bundled with The Last of Us Remastered, an updated version of the game released for the PlayStation 4 on July 29, 2014,^[a] and then released as a stand-alone expansion pack for both consoles on May 12, 2015. It was included in The Last of Us Part I, a remake of the game released on PlayStation 5 in September 2022 and Windows in March 2023.

The Last of Us: Left Behind was highly anticipated due to the critical acclaim received by The Last of Us. It received generally favorable reviews by critics, with particular praise for its story, characterization, and depiction of female and LGBT characters (including a kiss between Ellie and Riley deemed by critics as a "breakthrough moment" for video games), while some criticism was aimed at a battle sequence late in the game that was considered by some to be "unnatural" and "forced". Like its parent game, it received several awards and nominations. The story of Left Behind was adapted in the seventh episode of the television series The Last of Us in February 2023.
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