The Last of Us - Part I (PC)

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 2 months, you'll know that The Last of Us - Part I PC port was disappointing. Plagued with poor performance and glitches, it got review bombed on Steam, and Sony recently admitted that sales were low.

Personally, I've been waiting 10 years to play this, because I never wanted a PlayStation. So here we are, is it really that bad?
I'm not far into this yet, due to technical issues described later.

Graphics...
This is beautiful on high settings. Bonus points to Naughty Dog for Photo Mode. A unique feature is that images captured using Photo Mode are saved in a RAW format. I had to open these files (.exr) in Photoshop, and it was possible to adjust image parameters, like with DSLR photos. HDR was on when I captured this, so it might look dark depending on your display. I've never seen any PC game that captures photos like this, normally it's awful low quality JPEGs.

HDR image exposure has been increased

Gameplay...
It's primarily a mix of stealth, tactical and combat. You can choose your desired approach to the many encounters, but you'll probably learn the hard way that guns blazing is not a good idea. Also, ELLIE GET OUT OF MY WAY!

The not-so-good...
I was not expecting much from my AMD FX-8370 and AMD RX Vega 64. This is the first game I've played that can max both the CPU and GPU at the same time. It's incredibly demending, even the PSU fan increases speed. Whilst it's nice to see both the CPU and GPU being fully utilized, it seems to be inefficient. I still get 20-45 FPS (35-45 FPS average) regardless of high or low settings. Given the current reviews and media attention, I was expecting performance to be significantly worse. This is definitely playable.

And the ugly...
AMD GPU driver randomly crashes the game (driver timeout). Thankfully this only happens occasionally, hopefully AMD and Naughty Dog can improve stability in the coming months. I also experienced stuttering every few seconds, but this was fixed by disabling the built-in performance HUD overlay. Looks like this is currently broken and ironically reduces performance!

Did you get The Last of Us - Part I on PC? If you did, hope you're enjoying the adventure. Can you share your experience?

 

[Ian]

Funnily enough, I've been considering playing this after watching the TV series - so it's good to read your review. Does Part 1 tie in with how far season 1 gets in the TV series?

I've been looking for something that I can play in the evening with my wife and this game sounds like it might be fun, as we can pass the controls between us.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Funnily enough, I've been considering playing this after watching the TV series - so it's good to read your review. Does Part 1 tie in with how far season 1 gets in the TV series?

Hi Ian,

I have not yet played The Last of Us whatsoever, I am trying to avoid spoilers. So I'm watching episodes of the TV series only after playing the relevant part of the game. I have watched the first episode, as I figured that I was far enough into the game. Straightaway, I didn't like that the TV series has changed quite a lot of key plot details, but the general story seems to be the same so far.

Still not that far into the game, because I'm stuck on the first encounter with a new type of enemy. But so far, from what I've seen, the TV series is mostly accurate to the game's story. Major plot differences were made clear in the TV series, but you may not notice them if you watched the TV series before playing the game.

For controls, you must have a controller. This is essential, keyboard and mouse controls suck so badly in this game, to the point that it's unplayable. The game was never designed for them, so it's not suprising. Use an Xbox or PlayStation controller, there's native support for both types.

I've been looking for something that I can play in the evening with my wife and this game sounds like it might be fun, as we can pass the controls between us.

If you want to transfer control between players, pause the game while you do this. The game loves to suprise you with QTEs, and this can even happen during cutscenes. You must be aware of your surroundings, but always have a safe direction to run, you'll literally need to think on your feet.

When you screw up badly enough, you'll see some of the most graphic death cutscenes I've ever seen in a video game. There is an option for "reduced violence" in the game's settings, but it doesn't seem to do anything. In terms of how graphic this is, there's only a handful of games I've played that can beat this, and I never completed them because they were too violent.

There have been several patches by Naughty Dog and several AMD graphics driver releases recently. Every time a new patch or graphics driver is installed, you have to compile shaders before gameplay. This takes around 1.5 hours to complete, but will likely be faster on newer hardware. I don't know why this is necessary, I haven't seen see any other PC game that needs to precompile shaders. Normally shader compiling is only necessary for emulators.

The game's performance is quite consistent. I know I'll never hit 60 FPS, but as long it's more than 40 FPS on average, that's good enough for me. My days of being a framerate snob ended when I stopped playing first-person shooters. Hope you've got plenty of VRAM, it uses a huge amount, 8GB should be considered as the absolute minimum for 1080p.

And the ugly...
AMD GPU driver randomly crashes the game (driver timeout).

I'm still having problems with AMD's driver stability, but I have noticed concerning GPU temperatures. The hottest reaches 109C (hotspot) during gameplay. I'm not familiar with the "hotspot" temperature sensor, but I need to look further into this. It may not be possible to safely replace the thermal paste and thermal pads on this GPU.

 

[Abarbarian]

Hi Captn' Jack

Despite Proton Gold designation it would seem that the game runs just fine on a linux rig.

Runs fine overall​

2 months ago

Tinker Steps:Custom Proton: GE, Set launch options

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="amd_ags_x64.dll=b" mangohud gamemoderun %command%


Graphics:Minor Artifacts

Given the vast amount of megative reports I was expecting a much worse experience. Runs fine enough here, upwards of 60 FPS with the occasional stutter. Everything maxed out at 3440x1440 with FSR 2 Quality.

mind you that is on

Custom Proton: GE-Proton7-54

Distro:Arch Linux
Kernel:6.2.0-zen1-1-zen
RAM:32 GB
GPU Driver:4.6 Mesa 23.0.0
GPU:AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (navi21, LLVM 15.0.7, DRM 3.49, 6.2.0-zen1-1-zen)
CPU:AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core

 

[floppybootstomp]

Interesting to read this as I'd seriously been considering changing my 12th Gen Intel i5 CPU to an i7 to play this game as both min and max specs for the game specify an i7 and my GPU is, according to the recommended specs, only just sufficient (RTX 3080 10Gb). I think after reading this I won't bother, which is a little disappointing.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Patch 1.1.0.0 - significant performance improvement!
This patch has massively improved performance compared to version 1.0.5.0. I am now able to reach the 60 FPS VSync limit in some areas, which was previously impossible. But this game has still forced a minor upgrade. I always said that when/if The Last of Us is released on PC, if I have to upgrade components, I definitely will.

Farewell to my trusty AMD RX Vega 64...
I'm a little sad to retire this GPU, because it has served me well, and still works perfectly. Although the game will run with 8 GB VRAM, it really needs more than this. Eventually it will choke, so it starts swapping between VRAM and system RAM, which results in low quality textures and severe loss of performance. At 1080p, it needs around 9 GB VRAM for optimal performance.

But I'm not done with the Vega architecture yet. I purchased an AMD Radeon VII from CeX/WeBuy, as it was cheaper than eBay, and includes a "24 month warranty". Remember that the Vega series was released around the cryptocurrency peak, so I expect used GPUs will have been mined heavily. The warranty gives peace of mind if it suddenly fails due to its likely abusive history.

Unsuprisingly, in true CeX fashion, the GPU arrived in disgraceful condition. Despite being rough around the edges, it does seem to function without any issues. The Radeon VII has 16 GB VRAM, so I know it will run the game comfortably. And also hopefully any current/future games that require more than 8GB VRAM. Yes, I know I'm still limited by my CPU, but whatever!

Everything maxed out at 3440x1440 with FSR 2 Quality.

Not sure how you're doing this, the game only seems to support NVIDIA DLSS upscaling.

Interesting to read this as I'd seriously been considering changing my 12th Gen Intel i5 CPU to an i7 to play this game as both min and max specs for the game specify an i7 and my GPU is, according to the recommended specs, only just sufficient (RTX 3080 10Gb). I think after reading this I won't bother, which is a little disappointing.

All recent games I've bought have been at sale prices. I'm up to level 18 of 23 in Uncharted Legacy Of Thieves which I've been enjoying a lot. Gameplay's good, story's good and so are the graphics and there's also another game in the package when I've finished this one.

If I can run this on high settings with a 2012 AMD FX CPU that is way below the "minimum" requirements, you'll have no problem with an Intel i5 12th Gen. The RTX 3080 is more than sufficient too, the minimum GPU requirements are a GTX 970 or RX 470. UNCHARTED - Legacy of Thieves Collection is using the same game engine, and was ported by the same developers, so I would expect performance to be similar.

My experience is solely based on 1080p native resolution with a mix of high and ultra settings. I don’t have any 4K displays, and frankly, I’m not interested in them.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Thank you AMD for breaking the lighting and shadows with the recent driver update (23.7.1). I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not
This wasn't an issue with the previous driver version. It's really immersion breaking, I have a video below.

This video contains spoilers for approximately the first 10 minutes of the game.
There is also some minor violence, so it might be considered as "NSFW". I've put it in the spoiler tag.
If you still somehow haven't played through at least the first 10 minutes, or watched the TV series, proceed at your own peril!

Spoiler

Make sure you're watching in 720p or higher, and look closely at the faces of the characters.

If anyone knows how to fix this, it would be much appreciated. I will be reporting this to both AMD and Naughty Dog. I feel that Naughty Dog might refuse support due to how old my CPU is, but this obviously isn't related to the CPU. I'll try my best to convince them.