The Last Of Us Part I PC review

The Last of Us Part I PC review: The Last of Us, which made an effective entry into the game world by coming out exclusively on the PlayStation 3 console in 2013, then came to the PlayStation 4 console with its remastered version and followed the new generation. During this ten-year period, he released his second game called Part II (The Last of Us Part II review) and caused great controversy and even divisions among the players. Last summer, the series broke its silence again, announcing that it would be producing both a television adaptation and a remake of the first game.

The Last of Us Part I PC review

The Last of Us, which remained young compared to Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy VII, again divided the masses, this time considering it was too early for the remake. The PC crew, on the other hand, began to wait for the day when the remake would come out with more satisfaction than the joy of being able to enter the series, but the joy of some would be a little off with the release of the game.

Who will be left of us in this dystopian world?

Of course, there are those who know the story because it is a remake, but if you are not able to play it in time and experience it for the first time on PC, I can say that a post-apocalyptic drama story awaits you. Civilization begins to be destroyed by a fungal epidemic, and the survivors somehow cling to life. Not only are they infected and transformed, there are people all around who have become ruthless in the midst of the chaos. It manages to draw you in with its intriguing story that provides the motivation for you to play until the last moment.

After finishing the game, you can witness the scenes hidden in the scenario with the story add-on called Left Behind, and you can get a taste similar to the main game.

“I don’t know this game at all”

The Last of Us is an action-adventure game with a third-person perspective. It is also a game where we try to prevail against transformed people or armed groups by using stealth, sniper or melee skills. In this process, you can develop your weapons on the bench, produce materials with the resources you collect, and increase your skills.

I can say that it has pleasant close combat dynamics and a satisfying variety in combat moments. After every fight, you may feel that it is repetitive when you say, put a ladder there, push a cupboard here, but I think you will be satisfied with the gameplay in general.

New Features of the Remake

It is possible to say that The Last of Us Part I is a production that has not changed the plot and the course of gameplay. I mean, if you’ve experienced the original on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles before, you shouldn’t expect it to offer a different progression.

*This video belongs to the PS5 version released last year. Added to show the difference between Remaster and Remake versions.

It has been faithful to the original, but has managed to reinforce the original experience with modernized game mechanics and improved controls. Improvements in facial animations gave it a more realistic look. In addition, other in-game animations have been elaborated and even new animations have been added. For example, the variety of animations on the workbench was one of the innovations that I really liked. It was pretty cool to see different actions specific to each evolution of each weapon.

Of course, environmental designs were not forgotten either. Buildings, walls, surrounding objects and many other things have been redesigned. It may not be understood while playing, but looking back at the original, it seems that they added a lot of detail. Intensifying the vegetation especially indoors, changing the color palette and atmosphere of some parts, making the physics more realistic are a few of them.

Speaking of physics, we can now smash car windows, for example. Although these are small details, real-time reflections and better quality shading are noticeable. In addition, the permadeath mode, which is not included in the original, and the speedrun mode for those who like to race against time are also included.

Turkish Voice Over

Special Turkish voiceovers were made for Part I, so there was only Turkish subtitle option in the original. As someone who doesn’t like to watch movies dubbed, I recommend you to play with Turkish voice-overs. If your native language is Turkish, it’s even attempted just to hear NPCs call us cursing in Turkish.

The enhanced photo mode is also one of the innovations in the game. I can say that I spent quite a bit of my time here. Capturing background screenshots by placing the logo where I wanted and the environment images taken without the character was a very fun task for me. The difficulty level has been increased and a detailed customization has been presented in the accessibility options. For example, you can reduce the perception or accuracy of the enemy, you can turn off the attacks of the enemies from behind. There are options that provide such convenience.

New costumes, weapon skins, in-game image filters and cheats that you can unlock using your points after you finish the game are among the added ones. The pop-poster filter in the second game was my favourite, but we do not recommend it to those who do not want to see too vivid colors and take no responsibility. If you want to read the features of this production in more detail, you can also check our The Last of Us Part I review content for PlayStation 5.

Let’s get back to our topic: What’s on PC?

The game supports NVIDIA’s DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 3.1) and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 2.2); In addition, it was announced that there are many graphic settings such as texture quality, motion blur, shadows, reflections created for the PC. The 21:9 ultra-wide and 32:9 super ultra-wide aspect ratio, 4K support and 3D audio were also among the highlights.

From the very first day it came to Steam, it received almost 70% negative votes and the comments were filled with optimization problems. On the same day, Naughty Dog announced that they are working on performance issues quickly and that they will bring a patch. Since I started reviewing, four patches have been released, one of which is large. So did he get it? Here we come to that point.

Run Processor Flamed

When you first open the game, shaders start to be created in the menu. However, GPU and CPU are almost 100%, VRAM has exceeded 5000, memory has reached 10. At that moment, you say, it will either crash or the hardware will burn. I waited until the end. I also tried to enter the game while this process was going on, but naturally I could not play the game due to stuttering and FPS drops. After nearly two hours, the creation process was completed. After the process was over, GPU and CPU usage started to drop to 90% from time to time, so there was no big change. I thought the performance would improve once it was completed for myself.

My game started at low quality even though I met the recommended system requirements. I tried to increase the graphics settings according to my 8GB video card (RX 5500 XT). When I tried to pull it to ultra, it was way over VRAM. I finished the game with high graphics settings and opening FSR in quality. In this way, I got stable 30FPS. When I turned on FSR with low graphics settings, I could only see 60FPS. Although it exceeded VRAM for the review, when I turned it on with ultra graphics settings and FSR turned off, I had a more desired image, but this time unstable FPS values ​​​​ranging between 10 and 30 were visible.

My advice to you is that if your system is not a very high system, you should open the FSR in balanced or performance mode against the optimization problem, then keep the shadow and reflection settings low and pull the overlays to medium or high according to VRAM. When increasing the graphics settings, be careful not to exceed the VRAM, or it may crash at any moment. My game crashed twice. It is also useful to check the temperature level of the equipment at regular intervals.

FSR on or off?

As for FSR and DLSS, I was only able to experience FSR as I am an AMD user. With FSR turned on, I had a pixelation problem, especially around the hair and reflections in the lake. Also, the sharpness effect was one of the things that bothered me. Lowering the sharpness from the settings did not change the image much either. On the other hand, the flickering problem does exist, although it is not very common.

As someone who uses FSR technology in many games, I do not recommend you to play this game unless you have serious performance problems. Looking at the comparisons, I can say that DLSS offers a relatively more successful image.

We Are Mushrooms From Waiting

Let’s talk about the standby screen. While the game opened in about fifteen seconds on PlayStation 5, it did not open in less than five minutes on my PC. It is also shared that this waiting time is close to one minute in high systems. As someone with the recommended system, I do not find this time reasonable. I’m a system requirements liar.

Let’s get to the patch part. They shared in the patch notes that they focused on the crash issue and other minor issues in the first patch. In the second patch, the memory usage was reduced. Of course, these were small patches. When I re-entered the game after the second patch, I saw that it loads the shaders again. From the beginning! My two full hours were wasted. I think that’s what pissed me off the most. Although it is said that this process drops to a minimum of 40 minutes on higher graphics cards, this is still a very long time. In this process, exploiting the equipment to the end is also different.

The fourth and first major 14GB patch was released on April 7. The priority of this patch, which also carried improvements for the Steam Deck, was the crash and locking issue. After this patch my game got worse rather than better. While I normally don’t get a waiting screen in gameplay or before cutscenes, after this patch I got the “please wait” text even while walking on a straight road. In summary, this game needs more patches.

As a team, we experienced the game with DualShock 4 and DualSense controllers. At this point, we can say that it offers the same experience as on the console. It did not happen to us, but let us remind you that there are also complaints of analogues not responding due to optimization problems. Despite all this, Keyboard/Mouse support wasn’t bad either.

CONCLUSION

The Last of Us Part I is an excellent production in terms of gameplay, story and all other aspects. Although we recommend that every player experience it, especially if you want to have less fear and tension, let me bend down and shoot down enemies in secrecy, and make me cry and laugh with the script, this is for you.

Everything was going well in the top paragraph. If you do not have a very high graphics card and system, I do not recommend you to play The Last of Us Part I on PC for now. You can both undermine the arbitrary crashes and performance drops that you need to get from the game, and you can waste this game with great graphics by lowering the graphics settings while trying to increase the performance. So, in summary, I do not recommend you to play until the game is fixed on PC. Although when it will be fixed depends on the work of the teams, I do not think that they will succeed in a short time. It’s been two weeks since the game came out and there’s still very little that has improved.

The game is on sale on Steam with a price tag of $ 60. As someone who criticized the PlayStation price, which came out with the $ 70 tag, I consider it acceptable because it came to PC for the first time and is a new generation remake. Of course, if this is the remake, which term should we use for Resident Evil 4, which has been released recently and has serious changes in the gameplay and scenario, it is a topic of discussion for another day.