The Last of Us Part I PC Review

The Last of Us Part I is experiencing a resurgence as of late. With the massive success of the HBO show featuring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay, many first-timers are wanting to try out the game, so this PC release is something that should give it the boost it needs.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned, as The Last of Us Part I launched to a low standard that was unfamiliar to Naughty Dog. Issues abound, and many didn’t get to review it until the day of launch, which revealed a ton of bugs and unwanted hitches.

How does The Last of Us Part I PC port stack up to the stable of decent PC launches from PlayStation? Let’s find out!

*Disclaimer – We are playing the game on a patched version. We did not get to play this unpatched during the height of the issues being reported by the players.

Related – Read our PS5 review of The Last of Us Part I

Not for the Faint of Heart

First off, let’s check out the system requirements for the PC version of The Last of Us Part I:

If you think that the system requirements of The Last of Us Part I are a bit too heavy, that’s because they are. Looking at the recommended requirements alone, you’ll be needing a 2070 Super/3060 to run the game at 1080p 60 FPS on high settings. The PS5 version of the game looks spectacular, so this PC counterpart will demand just as much.

Moving to the Ultra settings, which lets you run the game at 4K 60FPS, you’ll need a GTX 4080, which is one of the latest cards in the market right now. That’s on top of the 32 GB of RAM and 100GB SSD storage space, which all adds up to a hefty sum should you choose to play the game at its best. It could be said that if you want an affordable but optimized experience, a PS5 might be the best way to go.

Like Returnal before it and even the Spider-Man ports, there are a ton of graphical sliders here in The Last of Us Part I. From depth of field to shadow and lighting, as well as reflections, players with a capable rig can push their systems to the limit, making the game look as fantastic as ever. Fantastic could be a relative word, and we’ll talk more about it later.

You’ll also notice how The Last of Us Part I is such a VRAM hog, and this is very surprising. Turning down or off multiple options will lower usage bit by bit, with one of the biggest offenders being the environment textures. The game is very heavy on resources, so you’re machine will be sweating bullets especially in this Summer heat.

Naughty Dog has been a strong advocate of accessibility, starting with their impressive suite of options from The Last of Us Part II, and it extends to the remake of the first game, including this PC port. There are options to lessen motion sickness, navigation and traversal assistance, and even combat options that will cover a wide range of use cases to make the game more playable to all types of players.

You can check out the various accessibility options below:

Lastly, The Last of Us Part I cranks it up further with substantial control customizability options. The game supports a wide number of devices, but it’s quite nice to see that the Steam Deck and the Xbox Adaptive Controller are explicitly supported, as can be seen in the menus.

As is the standard with PS Studios games being ported to PC, the DualSense Controller is also supported. While you can only unlock its full potential during wired gameplay, having the option to turn on adaptive triggers and haptic feedback almost always puts this above and beyond mouse and keyboard functionality.

Endure and Survive Shader Building

We tested the game with a fairly decent setup. We imagine that many players might be looking at a similar range, especially considering the prices of parts these days:

• Ryzen 5 5600x, 16 GB DDR4 3600 RAM, NVIDIA 3050, 1TB NVMe SSD, 27″ 1440p Monitor

One of the biggest issues we encountered, surprisingly, was even before we got to step into the game. During the initial startup, The Last of Us Part I will notify you that it is “Building Shaders,” which is a normal occurrence for some games. The problem lies in the length at which the game does it.

In our experience, the whole building shaders process took around 3 hours. It could have been shorter, but progress got stuck at around 19% and 22%, and we had to restart the game for it to proceed again, which we didn’t notice right away. You’ll only need to do this once if it’s any consolation, but a 2-3 hour process is almost inexcusable. Take the numbers above as my own experience and it could differ across other players.

When we got into the game, contrary to initial reports, our experience was relatively smooth. Playthrough mostly maintained a steady 60 fps across various portions of the game, including combat-heavy sequences. In particular, sequences with lots of particle effects like the spores can slightly trigger frame fluctuations.

One thing I did notice though is that upon approaching a new scene, the frame rates would drip drastically but then stabilize after a few minutes. It’s not as bad as it sounds because it’s still playable, but Steam’s frame counter goes into the 40-50 range and then shoots back up to 60+ after some time.

While we did notice some flickering in some situations and a couple of crashes throughout the playthrough, the game was mostly stable as compared to the initial reports. That’s not to say that the game is fine as is, but what’s undeniable is that this isn’t the level of quality that we are used to from Naughty Dog considering that their previous PS releases, along with Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection, were pretty much safe and nearly issue-free.

The Last of Us Part I is competent even with a mouse and keyboard setup, but this is certainly a game that benefits from the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers of the DualSense. While the implementation isn’t nearly as impressive as Returnal or Horizon Forbidden West, it still adds to the overall experience.

Additionally, same as the PS5 version, The Last of Us Part I includes all post-launch content, including the Left Behind DLC, making it the most complete version for a one-stop experience.

What we liked:

• The classic game is brought to heights afforded by more powerful hardware.
• Gripping and tense story paired with crisp action sequences.
• All post-launch content is included.

What we didn’t like:

• Quality is not up to Naughty Dog’s usual standards.
• Building shaders for a couple of hours is not a good look.
• Will take a few more patches and improvements for the build to fully stabilize.
• Some design elements feel dated despite the remake.

Verdict: Wait for it…

The Last of Us Part I is a classic game, whatever the form it might take, but this installment lacks the polish and quality standard that Naughty Dog is known for. With the launch build being buggy to a fault, the developers have committed to fixing issues, meaning that this port will only get better as time goes by.

Until then, it’s an easy recommendation to say that it is not worth the day-one buy until a majority of the issues are fixed. There’s also the issue of building shaders, which could take a couple of hours, something unacceptable in this day and age.

In its fixed state, The Last of Us Part I is a game that every gamer must experience and have in their library. With the recent success of the HBO series, it’s unfortunate that many first-timers will go through a less-than-ideal playthrough filled with issues. Hopefully, Naughty Dog sorts it out the soonest.

*The Last of Us Part I was reviewed on a PC with a review code provided by the publisher.