Combat in The Last of Us Part 2 creates a pretty specific feeling. It's often slow and heavy, providing a weight to every interaction that demonstrates just how tough it is to kill someone and how quickly things can go wrong. At the same time, it relies heavily on improvisation as you vault over objects, smash people with bricks, and bury machetes in guts--or just silently open someone's jugular with your knife as you clamp a hand over their mouth.

Despite having a certain clunkiness, there's an intensity to combat in The Last of Us Part 2 that many games never really achieve. And with the release of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, developer Naughty Dog pares back on story elements to focus on that combat in No Return, a roguelike mode that puts you into a series of random combat encounters.

No Return can generally be pretty fun. It flings you into encounters of a few different types against the different human factions of the game and its fungally infected monsters. Sometimes you'll be hiding and sneaking around as enemies search for you, while other encounters focus on the scramble by shipping in enemies ready for a fight. Each "run" of No Return has you moving through six different encounters with a few opportunities to pick one set or another, with the series culminating in a boss fight. You'll choose upgrades from random unlocked skill trees along the way, but if you die, the run restarts, and you lose everything you've earned.