by This text was written based on our review of the current version of computers. And that’s because this particular title is often a point of reference for the masterpieces that Naughty Dog offers on PlayStation. After racking up miles of development on the PlayStation 3, the original The Last of Us was released in the console’s twilight years to starkly prove what can happen when a studio has gained the ultimate experience of the platform expertise without resting on its laurels. .
The Last of Us came as another game in a post-apocalyptic world, as a counterprop to zombie pop culture and as it had already taken shape by that time, coming as a surprise to the corporate audience who was already waiting for his next adventure worries Nathan Drake.
And what a proposition it was! Since the step given to us, we’ve repeated over and over how much that Naughty Dog feeling means to all of us. Joel and Ellie’s journey through an unfair, difficult and challenging world was a pleasant surprise both in the initial release of the title, which allowed us to enjoy it slightly reworked on PlayStation 4, but also in its current form. , having undergone a serious facelift to accommodate the new generation of hardware.
Even if muscle memory now outweighs our minds and logic, even if we know what’s hidden behind a quiet corner of Bill’s neighborhood or on the floors of the abandoned hotel that will present itself to us, this is not a negative criterion or a brake on our desire to enjoy this trip in its even better and improved version. Because as positive as the image we got from the version of the title on PlayStation 5, as Giorgos Kallifas had written in his review, we expected the image we would get on computers to be as positive , where the most upgraded hardware could lift (literally and figuratively) our experience.
At the time of writing, the first major patch is already live, along with a number of patches that focus on specific game issues. This lets us say with a related announcement that the game is now playable. , without the major problems it faced in one of the most disastrous launches ever on computers and the problematic first launch that Naughty Dog faced but also Sony, in its attempt to earn a big slice of the pie in the Informatic field.
Despite the successful launch of the recent collection Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, the PC version of The Last of Us was not going to go smoothly. The postponement of the title’s release date, which could only positively benefit from the momentum created by HBO’s recent television success, seems to have only serious reasons behind it – reasons that could not be corrected in time. , resulting in a launch that’s only compared to the unprecedented launch failure of Cyberpunk 2077 for consoles.
The machine we used to test the title is equipped with a twelfth generation i7 processor, with the graphics handled by an RTX 3080. This is a machine that, overall, far exceeds the hardware requirements. Naughty Dog’s maximum resolutions, given that the maximum resolution of the machine supports Full HD, which should make playing the title fairly easy. Since the title’s release date, however, we’ve had to play around a lot with the title’s main menu settings to ensure we have a smooth gaming experience.
Despite the comfort of the hardware, our machine was often pushed to the limit, the game greedily consuming resources that were not needed. The result of all of this is a frightening drop in screen refresh rate, with 60 frames often being a pipe dream – and all of this while we weren’t facing long enough load times (regardless of whether the game was installed on an SSD) and crashes on the desktop.
A simple search can reveal even more issues reported by computer users around the world that we don’t mention here to save space. This forced Naughty Dog to act almost immediately and offer corrective solutions where possible, with efforts to fix the issues continuing for the foreseeable future. We are happy to now be able to play the game without the tragic issues of the early days, allowing us to adjust our rating for this release.
But the thing is, there are still a lot of issues to work out, as we are forced to enable Nvidia’s DLSS technology, which tries to deliver better image quality at lower settings, but it doesn’t work. perfectly every time. And Naughty Dog’s need to improve the PC player’s experience in the near future has also put the gaming experience that Steam Deck owners have come to expect.
Neil Druckmann previously promised that the game would be fully compatible with the Steam Deck from day one, which would make gamers who choose portability over power happy. Predictably, however, Steam Deck very quickly reneged on the series creator’s promises, forcing Valve to label the title as incompatible with its engine and put it on hold for improvements to deliver the experience ( originally promised) they deserve.
So for now we’re dealing with a Joel and an Ellie who are more worried about crashes and stuttering and a bunch of shitty bugs that have more value as internet memes than threats that hide in a world brought to its knees by the Cordyceps fungus. This automatically brings us to a big dilemma. How easily can we assess a game that has proven its worth and importance over the years, but yet fails to deliver the same experience to a completely different segment of gamers?
The Last of Us Part I, even amid the technical issues plaguing it, still offers some positive moments, mostly as a promise of what it can do in the future, where the issues of the hard launch will be a distant past. . For the moment however, we are dealing with a mediocre port, which completely tarnishes the feeling that we have for this first game in the series.
Thus, we suggest players wait a little longer and not rush into paying full price for a game that wasn’t ready for release, or that fell victim to a porting studio that didn’t seem worthy. of the name Naughty Dog and the importance of the series to the industry. Until PC terra incognita is mapped out and the game ships in the form it was meant to be, PC gamers can get a better look at the series so they can learn even more about the world and appreciate even more what he can deliver the game, in its right form and at the right time.
