The Last of Us is not short of any awards or mentions for Game of the Year.  With Last of Us: Remastered releasing for PlayStation 4, many people are wondering if it’s worth playing another time. As game backlogs grow for gamers everywhere, it’s not as common to play games more than once anymore. The Last of Us offers a lot to those who choose to revisit it.

On my first playthrough, I played on normal difficulty, like I do with most games. I struggled, I died, and I died some more. Eventually, I beat it and I loved it. When it was all said and done, it had my vote for Game of the Year. What appealed to me was not the gameplay or the addictive nature of games. What got me was that when it was over, I kept thinking about it. Instead of selling it off after I beat it, like many of us do these days, I kept it. I knew it was special, but my attention moved on to other games for a while.

Then came Left Behind. I enjoyed this DLC and the expanded look into Ellie’s character. But outside of enticing the humans and infected to fight each other (a feature I wish could have made it into the original game) I wasn’t enjoying the combat much at all.  I felt it was slow, tedious, and downright too challenging for a story-based DLC. After it was over I watched the documentary, Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us . I immediately found myself hooked again. I had to play the original game a second time.

This time around, I decided to play it on hard difficulty and can honestly say this is how it is meant to be played. What was once overly difficult and frustrating combat became a wonderful complement to the story. The game’s combat system turned out to be exactly what the game needed. You begin to appreciate how challenging the post-clicker world is and how outnumbered you always feel. At no point did Joel or Ellie feel comfortable, and neither did I.

Killing is a violent and gut-wrenching experience that you want to avoid, but it is a necessity to survive at times. Even the crafting system and scarcity of supplies were terrific. During and in between encounters, I was constantly searching for supplies. The moment I saw an enemy, I had to check my supplies and calculate the most efficient way of getting by—either by sneaking past unnoticed or by killing them. Could I squeeze by past undetected? Could I come up behind for the kill? Do I have enough shivs to kill a clicker? Should I take out a group with a Molotov? What if I need those materials for a health pack? These are just some of the things I had to consider in combat. By the end, I realized how much better I had gotten at resource management.  Some stages were even easier for me on hard difficulty than they were on normal difficulty.

On the second play-through, you begin to truly understand the characters as they are.  During the first run, I considered Joel to be a good guy put in some bad situations. The second time through, I began to see him as a more questionable character. When you see the ending the first time, it may come as a shock that Joel could be so selfish, but even Tess tells Joel they are “shitty people.”  Joel counters by saying they’re “survivors.”  The line between good and evil in this world is not well defined. In this world, the humans are to be feared as much as the infected. This is further reinforced with the encounters you have with the infected that can sometimes be avoided, while the humans almost always have to be killed in order to survive.  In this world, Joel can actually be perceived as a good person at times, or at the very least, one of the better ones.

At the heart of the story is the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and during the second play-through the interactions between them really come to life. While exploring the quarantine zone at the college, Ellie asks Joel about his ex-wife and daughter. He talks for a little bit and then cuts her off when he gets uncomfortable. Later at the quarantine zone by the interstate from Hell, which contains every type of infected imaginable, Joel opens up and talks to Ellie about Sarah.  As skeptical as they were of each other in the beginning, they fight to save each other before it’s all over.

The story doesn’t lose any effect either. The second time I saw Henry shoot Sam and then himself, I just stared at the screen in disbelief. I still find it heartwarming when Ellie’s spirits lift at the sight of giraffes.  The pain Joel feels at the very mention of Sarah is still there, along with the broken watch she gave him which he wears throughout the entire game. The hotel basement is still scary, David is still creepy, Bill is still awesome, and Tess is still a badass.

Games don’t get a second play-through very often anymore. If you get the chance, do it. The Last of Us has an important quality found in great games, it gets better the more you play it. I’ve sunk hours into games that I couldn’t put down, and then once I beat them, I never touched them again. This was not one of those games. I can even see another play-through on hard + in the future.

Ryan Latuso is an Associate Writer for MONG and the owner of many unplayed video games. Follow him on IGN and Twitter.