The Last of Us is easily one of the best games of PlayStation 3’s generation – if not the best game, period – so any excuse to jump back into its expertly realized world is most welcome. With Left Behind, developer Naughty Dog’s only single-player DLC for The Last of Us, we get to do just that. Squeezing out just a few more precious hours of exploration in its post-pandemic, post-apocalyptic United States includes both enlightening story reveals and an interesting new take on combat.

The real beauty of Left Behind is that it isn’t derivative of The Last of Us’ campaign, nor is it an afterthought or a cash-in (though, at $14.99, it’s a tad bit expensive). It’s a thoughtful and meaningful prologue to the events of the original game, fleshing-out Ellie’s origins through the lens of her friendship with a girl named Riley (who’s first introduced in the companion comics, American Dreams). We get a true taste for Ellie’s connection with Riley, and how that helps form who she’s become by the time she meets Joel. And there are a ton of other surprises, to boot.A majority of Left Behind takes place in a mall, which I loved simply because two girls going to the mall is something that happens with regularity in the real, pre-apocalyptic world. There’s an important touchstone to the past here, even if neither Ellie nor Riley necessarily knows that. After all, everything they know about the pre-Infected world comes by way of stories from older folks and their own observations of the decaying world around them. Still, trekking through the mall as Ellie – with Riley in tow – is a nice change of pace from the more danger-filled haunts that she later finds herself in with Joel. The adventure is strengthened even more by expert performances from voice and mo-cap actresses Ashley Johnson and Yaani King.Playing as Ellie isn’t necessarily novel in and of itself, as anyone who played The Last of Us can attest to. What’s novel about playing as Ellie in Left Behind, however, is that she hasn’t yet been informed by and hardened by her experiences with Joel. The Boston-based quarantine zone she’s holed-up in has its share of danger, sure, but the remnants of the federal government keeps her clothed, fed, and taken care of. She can handle herself, but she’s no Joel. She wields her trusty switchblade with exceptional skill, and she knows how to shoot, too, but playing as Ellie is night-and-day when compared to her future partner.These stark differences play out as soon as you find yourself in combat. Whereas Joel could take human survivors and the Infected with fists and melee weapons, Ellie needs to keep her distance. She can rapidly stab her foes, and she – like Joel – can stalk and kill unsuspecting targets without a peep being made. But she can also become quickly overwhelmed. She can craft items and wield firearms and bows, but she doesn’t have that raw combat experience that Joel earned through two decades of merely staying alive, and we can see and feel that right away. It makes Left Behind feel tangibly different than The Last of Us itself.Further differentiating this experience, Naughty Dog has taken an extra step to change things up by bringing a whole new dynamic to combat scenario design in Left Behind. In The Last of Us, you’ll regularly fight human survivors and the Infected, but you’ll never fight them simultaneously. In Left Behind, you’ll often find yourself in a battle with both sides at the same time, and you realize that you can push the two sides to focus on each other rather than you by throwing a bottle or shooting a stray bullet. It’s too bad we didn’t get even a taste of this in The Last of Us itself, because it’s a lot of fun to play around with.The thing is, while combat in Left Behind is totally enjoyable, I couldn’t help but wonder if it needed to be there at all. The Last of Us is largely predicated not only on fighting, but on exploring. Left Behind’s explorative qualities and sense of discovery are fully carried over from the core game, and I wanted to see more of that. Riley and Ellie head to the mall, explore, make discoveries, chatter endlessly, and learn a great deal about each other and themselves. In this context, battles seem forced at times, especially at the very end of the two-to-three hour experience.Still, the very act of playing The Last of Us for just a little while longer overwhelms that sense of wondering if combat was shoehorned in. Left Behind is so chock-full of amazing, story-bending, essential moments – moments I won’t spoil here – that it’s easy to overlook Naughty Dog’s decision to take a conventional approach when it came to padding out the experience with combat.