I don’t think there is anything quite as sad and disappointing as when you look forward to something you know you’re going to love, let’s say you order your favourite food from a restaurant, and when it comes, it’s a sad imitation of what you expected. And even though it’s definitely still Macaroni and Cheese, it’s not the Macaroni and Cheese you wanted or expected to receive.
That’s the best and nicest way I can refer to The Last of Us Part 1 on PC. Now don’t get me wrong, deep down, at its core, it is still very much The Last of Us, and when you have a game that is so inherently good, you have to do to the extreme to mess that up for players. Yet, somehow, that is precisely what Naughty Dog was able to do.
Now I won’t waste any time discussing The Last of Us Part 1 from a narrative level. If you want to read the love letter I wrote to the game when it was first released on PlayStation 5, you can read it here. You can also read my thoughts on the wildly successful HBO adaptation here. Instead, I will be talking specifically about the PC version of the popular game and if I feel it’s worth your hard-earned gold coins or if you’re better off just playing The Sims and pretending it’s The Last of Us Part 1 instead.
So without making you wait, much like Naughty Dog made you wait over ten years for The Last of Us to head to PC, I’ll just cut to the chaise. If you want to replay the game on your trusty PC or experience the world for the first time, don’t. At least not yet.
It pains me to tell anyone not to play the game, as I remain convinced it’s one of the best experiences gamers can have. However, fundamental and inexcusable issues with The Last of Us Part 1 on PC can’t be ignored. The first issue comes down to how needy the game is, and the second issue is its performance.
Do you know how bad a port needs to be for one of the world’s most universally beloved games to release to overwhelmingly negative reviews on Steam? Pretty damn bad. But not one to ever allow myself to be swayed by the opinions of the masses, I went into The Last of Us on PC with all the hopeful optimism of someone ordering their favourite food at a new restaurant only to be disappointed and left wanting.
The first troubling sign of the experience I was in for was when the game took over two full hours to install the shaders, almost double as long as the entire game to download and install. But you know what? I waited, persevered, and one long pee break later, I was ready to play. However, instead of the shader issue being the tip of the frustration iceberg, it was merely the start of it.
The next significant issue I encountered was how needy the game truly was. Now I’m not going to pretend that I have the world’s best PC here; in fact, my burden can barely be called a PC. However, it was a problem when the 12GB of VRAM of my mate’s RTX 3080 Ti refused to allow him to play the game without consistently terrible stuttering and other issues.
And suppose you have any card with less than 12GB of VRAM. In that case, you can forget about playing the game on anything higher than Medium settings, as the game blocks you from doing so. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t even be crying about being forced to play the game on medium settings if it looked better. But comparing the footage from my PlayStation 5 to my PC made me feel physically ill and like it was time to put my PC out of its misery once and for all. Or exit the game.
As of writing this, there have already been two rather significant patches for The Last of Us on PC, which brought a host of optimisations and performance improvements. However, when a review on Steam titled The Crash of Us is one of the most popular, it becomes apparent how much work Naughty Dog still has to do to bring the game to a playable state.
