the last of us part 1 pc

The Last of Us Part I PC Review – A Bitter Disappointment

Enduring and surviving’s a bit harder in the series’ debut on PC

The Last of Us is my favourite game of all time. The Last of Us Part 1 on PC is, at the time of this review, the worst way to play it. Plagued by issues across the board – whether it’s stuttering, framerate instability, crashes, pop-in or visual glitching – Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy have a monumental task on their hands to fix what is easily the most disappointing PlayStation release to hit PC so far.

VIDEO PRESENTED BY PLAYSTATION VR2. CLICK TO LEARN MORE.

Let me be clear, my PC is no slouch. I’ve got an Intel i7 8700K, an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. Crucially, my graphics card has 12GB of VRAM, which seems to somehow be the requirement for a somewhat decent experience with The Last of Us Part 1 on PC. No matter whether you want to play at 1080p, 1440p or 4K, GPUs with less than 12GB of VRAM will struggle to run the game at medium or higher settings. It’s crazy. I know I’m in the minority when it comes to expensive gaming PCs, so I can’t imagine the trouble users must be having with less powerful rigs.

the last of us part 1 pc

In the end, I’ve managed to get the game running at 4K and around 60fps with mostly high settings and DLSS set to quality (which renders at 1440p). Even then, I’ve suffered through a lot of stuttering and general framerate instability. Sometimes I’ve been lucky and had a fairly decent spell of 60fps gameplay (and in these moments the game feels and looks incredible), only to be then brought back down to Earth with some bizarre drops to 30fps or lower.

There’s been no rhyme or reason to the slowdowns either, as I’ve had drops happen in smaller, confined areas inside and some outside. Sometimes when I stand still and swivel the camera everything runs nicely, only to turn to garbage when I move my character. I’m just not quite sure what’s going on.

the last of us part 1 pc

Further to this, I’ve had my fair share of crashes throughout my time playing. I’ve had the game hang on me as well as a couple of hard crashes requiring a full reboot, which has been very frustrating. My most recent crash made my PC reboot itself. 

Add to this the litany of visual glitches I’ve encountered, with a particularly odd one being white dots sporadically appearing on areas that have light shining on them, and it all comes together to form an experience that is not indicative of the game itself. And the game, of course, is phenomenal – the story is wonderful and we really liked the remake on PlayStation 5 (read our original review here), so it’s a real shame that the experience is awful on PC at the moment.

the last of us part 1 pc

One positive is the game’s graphical options, however. There’s so much to tinker with it’s almost overwhelming. It also supports NVIDIA DLSS, as mentioned above, and AMD FSR 2.2, which become crucial for decent performance.

Right now I can’t recommend this port at all – it’s one of the worst PC ports I’ve played in some time. With so much momentum behind the series currently, I just can’t fathom why this wasn’t kept in the oven for a bit longer. It’s as simple as that.

There’s optimism to be had though, with Naughty Dog addressing the issues players have been having with the port and promising fixes as early as this week. While this review covers the game in the state that it’s currently in, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the state of things going forward and will add further updates if the situation improves drastically.


In our original review of The Last of Us Part I on PS5, we said, “The Last of Us Part I is, for all intents and purposes, the same The Last of Us that you know. It doesn’t take liberties to completely reshape the experience and nor should it. It does, however, smartly enhance the original’s combat through A.I. advancements, and drags the original’s production values over the line to create a product that can stand unified with its more polished sequel. The Last Of Us: Part I is without doubt the most definitive version of The Last of Us on the market.”

the last of us part 1 pc
Conclusion
The Last of Us Part 1 on PC is, in its current state, an awful port of one of the best games of all time. It’s plagued with problems across all facets of gameplay and needs a lot of love to iron out the very clear issues. It’s hard to recommend to anyone right now.
Positives
Still the same brilliant remake of The Last of Us…
Negatives
…Just in a much, much worse state
Plagued with bugs and issues across the board
Poorly optimised
5