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Despite having owned every PlayStation console ever released, I’ve never actually played The Last of Us.
Or any of the sequels.
I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.
Then came theTV show.
It’s one of the best TV shows I’ve seen in recent years.
And then it arrived.
I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.
And all the hype turned into immense disappointment.
But let’s face it, the show did the marketing for the game.
I’m pretty positive I’m not the only person who decided to play after watching and loving it.
Joel’s looking at a fire. Pretty apt, really.
So everything should have been great.
And then the launch actually happened.
The first seeds were sown when the press didn’t receive advance review copies.
The game feels really poorly optimized for PC.
On PC especially, reviews are a crucial early indicator of just how well a game performs.
There are more variables to consider than on a console.
The launch of The Last of Us Part 1 on PC should have been a momentous occasion.
Joel and Ellie deserved better.
Instead, it’s a straight-up disaster.
And right now I wish I hadn’t bothered and just fired up the PlayStation.
But the issues are far from limited to the Steam Deck.
And the experience is bad across the board.
Throwing hardware at it doesn’t seem to help, so it just looks like a bad port.
It’s not all bad, I will admit.
On max configs, it’s a good-looking game.
And the story, as expected, is very good, and so is the voice acting.
Not just the game, but the Steam Deck itself.
It went to a black screen and was totally unresponsive.
So I’m not even going to try it again right now.
On PC, so far I haven’t seen any crashes.
But it’s hardly a good time.
It just feels poor.
Certainly on this hardware.
There are a lot of tweaks that can be tinkered with, but that doesn’t really rescue things.
What’s particularly bad is the constant stuttering.
It constantly feels jittery, even in areas where there isn’t much going on.
It’s just frustrating.
It didn’t have to be this way
Sony has some good PC ports.
But The Last of Us needs so much work to get up to this standard.
Fingers can be pointed in a number of directions.
The studio that handled the PC port on behalf of Naughty Dog has been in the crosshairs before.
Iron Galaxy handled Batman: Arkham Knight on PC, and we all remember that.
The Last of Us Part 1 hasn’t improved that reputation.
Naughty Dog is doing its due diligence and investigating the issues, which is expected.
And this is not a good first look at that future.
For me, and I’m sure many others, all that remains now is to wait.
Hope that it gets fixed and that we can all begin to enjoy this game as intended.
