Yes, The Last of Us Part I for the PC has somewhat improved a little under two months in. Graphical stutters, framedrops, and other visual artifacts currently exist. If you're able to look past those graphical shortcomings, The Last of Us Part I is a truly exceptional game. Consider waiting just a bit more before jumping into one of the best series from Sony and Naughty Dog to date.
We received The Last of Us Part I (PC) the morning of its release day, March 28th. We attempted to review the title on Day 1, but were unable to due to crashes and instability preventing us from getting past the introduction. We’ve continuously attempted to play and review the title with each new update. As of v.1.0.5.1, we were able to conduct a thorough review and are now able to share our thoughts on this title.
In case you missed it, 2023 has been a momentous year for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (TLOU) franchise. At the start of the year, HBO Max’s television series brought us to tears by portraying the darkest, and brightest, aspects of love in a post-apocalyptic world. By the end of the first quarter, The Last of Us Part I (TLOUPI) released on PC…in a less than stellar fashion.
I’m going to assume that you’re aware of TLOUPI‘s rocky launch and subsequent player response. I’d spare you the details of my specific journey, but I spent many hours installing, reinstalling, and fiddling with my RTX 2070 Super’s settings to try to get the game to even run, let alone get past the introduction. I even purchased a new SSD in one attempt thinking that my old drive was not up to snuff; I learned afterward that it didn’t really matter, but I’ll take the new SSD for my rig. Since March, there’ve been ten updates to TLOUPI, with the most recent being on May 25, 2023.
Our Digital Chumps review of TLOUPI (PC) was conducted on a PC with an RTX 2070 Super GPU and on the game’s v1.0.5.1 patch. We understand that there may be additional updates underway for TLOUPI between this review’s publication and when you, dear reader, take the time to read this review. We also understand that your PC’s setup may be vastly superior than my rig, or perhaps not. The purpose of this review at this time is to evaluate TLOUPI (PC) in its current state. Your mileage will vary from mine, so please avoid assuming that your journey with TLOUPI (PC) will mirror mine.
With that said, let’s get to it…
I was late to The Last of Us party. Keen-eyed readers of my reviews may have picked up at I missed a good chunk of the PS4 generations best titles. Yes, The Last of Us was originally for the PS3, but I did not play or know much about Naughty Dog’s fantastic survival game until long into my PS4 ownership…when The Last of Us Remastered was made available on PlayStation Plus in October 2019. As fate would have it, I played The Last of Us Remastered for the very first time…in March of 2020 at the start of the Pandemic. My journey falling in love with The Last of Us is indeed ironic, albeit late. Its tardiness is exacerbated by my playing The Last of Us Part II in November of 2022.
Despite my lateness to the party, I stand firm in my belief that The Last of Us, as a series, excels in its storytelling, memorable gameplay, and power in evoking the rawest of human emotions from players. In the HBO Max show, I was physically brought to tears, and I’m confident that others were, too. Those who play TLOU for the first time, be it the first or second entry, tell me that despite feeling a constant and near-perpetual sense of dread for Joel and Ellie (and others, too). That constant feeling of sinking into a bottomless pit of despair keeps one glued to the screen to know what comes next, and in turn, how things end.
Before 2023, TLOU‘s gameplay experience was exclusive to folks who owned a PlayStation console. Nearly a decade since its original release on the PS3, TLOU‘s first (remastered) entry is available for PC players to play for the very first time. I’m ecstatic for PC players to play one of the best video game narratives out there, but…
In its current state, TLOUPI (PC) is a less-than-stellar PC experience. Yes, dear reader, v1.0.5.1 is a much more stable release than TLOUPI at launch. I was relieved when the updates would come rolling in, but the game was still very difficult to enjoy and run until very recently. First-time installations involve a process of compiling shaders that can take as little as 10 minutes or as long as an hour. Should you have a GPU driver update, the shaders have to be compiled again.
During my playthrough, I was subjected to frequent texture streaming issues in the form of environmental textures remaining blurry despite the rest of the world rendering just fine. Despite completing the shader compilation process with my most recent update, there were still several instances where the game would present me with a loading screen after a brief cutscene. On first boot, I encountered mild screen tearing, frame skips, and consistent drops in frames per second. I spent about 30 minutes fiddling with the settings in the menus to figure out the culprit, with minor improvements. Even though I was using NVIDIA GeForce Experience’s recommended graphics settings for my 2070 Super, running the game on medium was still suboptimal. Further optimizations need to be implemented in order to get it up to the graphical quality of TLOUPI‘s PS5 counterpart.
I do appreciate the ability to fine-tune the graphics settings on PC, however. I know that PC configurations vary wildly, so having the option of granularity can help for those with the patience to tweak their systems to get the most out of Naughty Dog’s beautifully dangerous apocalypse. In near-perfect conditions, TLOUPI can be a visual masterpiece chock full of small details that make the game close to the real world. Reflections in puddles are accurate, foliage is dense, and objects can be destroyed. For those familiar with TLOUPI‘s visual performance on the PS5, you have much to look forward to on the PC port if you can get the game up and running.
Other than my graphical and technical hurdles, TLOUPI is the perfect entrypoint into the series for PC players. PC players deserve greatness just as much as console players, and The Last of Us is a truly incredible series of games. Part I is the first of currently two entries into a universe plagued by a deadly fungal infection that has eliminated most humankind.
The Last of Us‘ storytelling is virtually unmatched despite Part I‘s story being known for almost a decade. Naughty Dog’s work in humanizing characters involves incremental yet meaningful moments of growth and periods of darkness–perfectly fit for embodying a humanity that’s given up morals, ethics, and general goodwill all in the name of survival. Cutscenes effortlessly intermingle with stealth combat, constantly reminding you that Joel, and Ellie too, are moving on and moving together in their pseudo parent-child relationship.
In an earlier statement, series creator Neil Druckmann stated that The Last of Us story is about the dangers of unrequited love. Too many stories use love as a vehicle to bring folks together or break them apart without considering the negative effects of emotions on characters’ decisionmaking. The trope of Character A saving Character B from Character C so that Characters A and B can live happily ever after misses out on the possibility that love has its drawbacks and happy endings might not truly exist. In that vein, The Last of Us is indeed a love story, but it stakes a claim in a territory where the decisions made out of love are presented to players in a dichotomous fashion: Yes, choices are made out of love, but at what cost? Without spoiling any of the stories told in The Last of Us, what is the most extreme thing someone should do for love? At what point is love a danger to humanity similar to an unstoppable plague?
Outside of the overarching narrative, its easy to come across smaller stories over the four seasons Joel and Ellie trek across the United States. While controlling Joel, Ellie will comment on her surroundings, asking questions about life pre-pandemic. Irony aside, these little moments offer reprieve because of how Ellie’s innocence is portrayed against a stark backdrop of smaller tales of unnamed and unseen characters who existed in that liminal space. For those familiar with the Fallout series, expect to come across small collectibles, handwritten notes of someone’s last moments, and Easter Eggs foreshadowing what, or who, could be waiting in the next room.
TLOUPI (PC) is not meant to be a “fun” game in the traditional sense. It’s meant to glue you to your seat, refusing to let you experience anything other than an ocean of sadness with occasional glimpses of hope as you follow along with Joel and Ellie’s journey across the United States. It’s meant to test your resolve in surviving hordes of Infected alongside survivors who’ve been lucky enough to make do in what’s left of the world.
Seeing as this is a survival game, stealth and resource management are critical in ensuring Joel and Ellie’s survival. You’re taught right at the start of the importance of saving bullets as well as the futility of bum rushing Infected. Sure, you could probably fight off a “Runner” (early-stage Infected) or unarmed survivor by running up and pummeling them to death with melee strikes, but the melee approach is instant death against a “Clicker” (later-stage Infected) or an enemy armed with a shotgun.
Clearing a room of enemies lets you breathe for a moment. These fleeting moments of peace let you reorient yourself while giving yourself opportunities to scour what’s left of the world for scraps of food, ammunition, and other odds and ends that can be used for upgrading weapons or creating other supplies. That small bottle of rubbing alcohol could be used for a health kit if you’re low on health. Or, it could be used for a Molotov cocktail that can easily defeat the Infected.
Tracking enemy movements is critical for gauging how to best clear a room. For those who’ve played and/or completed TLOU Part II, you’ll find that enemy behaviors and their patterns to be less predictable and more erratic, further driving home the notion of Joel dealing with unstable enemies who lack control over their finer motor skills. Sometimes, these enemies will work together in flushing Joel and Ellie out into the open. Othertimes, they’ll act independently of each other. This lack of consistentcy creates a constant need for players to be on their toes and thinking through how to best overcome literal hordes.
Should you finish the story, which I hope you do, Naughty Dog has included several visual filters (like an 8bit filter!!) and gameplay modifiers that can vary up a new run. Speedrun and Permadeath modes are available upon campaign completion, too. I appreciate these modes making their way to the PC port, but I wish that series veterans like myself could’ve had a way of unlocking them from the start without needing to invest 20 hours to relive the story all over again. If TLOU was not one of my most favorite games ever made, I would probably be more frustrated with this, but for Naughty Dog, I’ll give it a pass this time.
For those with a DualSense controller like me, TLOUPI on the PC offers a comparable controller experience to that of the PS5 counterpart. Turning on the haptics for dialogue adds delightful emphasis when characters speak. The adaptive triggers make shooting firearms and bows much more impactful and immersive. I loved seeing the DualSense features added to the Director’s Cut of DEATH STRANDING for the PC, and I’m just as thrilled to see them fully functioning as Naughty Dog intended. It’s a PS5-experience without owning a PS5.
I want to hope that folks are interested in additional Sony exclusives make their way to the PC. We know that Ratchet and Clank will be coming soon (next month!!), but I don’t want TLOU‘s launch on the PC to give PC players the idea that Sony’s best and brighters will be less than stellar despite some owners having rigs that very well outperform the PS5’s hardware. PC players deserve the opportunity to experience some of the best games ever made from Sony, and I want folks to enjoy them just as much as I have. I am not intending on starting a platform debate here. Instead, I want to emphasize how much I enjoy seeing my PC friends gush over games like the Horizon Zero Dawn, RETURNAL, and now The Last of Us. I was once that excited to play these games, too, and seeing that happiness and excitement manifest is the closest I can get to reexperiencing these amazing games for the very first time.
I’m cautious to recommend TLOUPI for PC players as of early June of 2023. However, I do see two types of players finding enjoyment in TLOUPI at this time. First, the patient gamers who have the ability to patiently tweak graphical settings and fiddle with things until they’re just right may find success in getting TLOUPI running beautifully on your rigs. Second, those with patience to look past graphical stutters and occasional suboptimal visuals will thoroughly enjoy the gameplay and the story. Should you not fall into either of these player architypes, waiting for additional support to come from Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy is your best bet.
Yes, The Last of Us Part I for the PC has somewhat improved a little under two months in. Graphical stutters, framedrops, and other visual artifacts currently exist. If you’re able to look past those graphical shortcomings, The Last of Us Part I is a truly exceptional game. Consider waiting just a bit more before jumping into one of the best series from Sony and Naughty Dog to date.
A copy of The Last of Us Part I (PC) was provided by the publisher for the sole purpose of this DigitalChumps review.
