After ten years of waiting, PC players who refuse to buy a PlayStation console were finally able to get their hands on “The Last of Us Part I” to play today – and the results have been a problematic (at best) launch.
Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog’s PC port of the 2022 PS5 full remake of the original 2013 game hit Steam and the Epic Games Store this morning. In the space of a few hours, it has already clocked up over 3,000 reviews which are “Mostly Negative” on Steam with only 33% listed as positive.
Almost all of the complaints in Steam’s user reviews have nothing to do with the game’s quality. Rather they stem from technical problems with the game’s optimisation and performance.
The title has been plagued by issues such as numerous crashes – one player clocking up 12 crashes in a span of four-and-a-half hours of play. Numerous players report issues with shaders specifically, with the game taking a long time to build them at launch and crashing during the process.
In addition, the poor optimisation means the game is putting way too much strain on the CPU as opposed to the GPU. Naughty Dog has already responded to complaints on Twitter and says the team is working on fixing the issues with updates and patches:
“The Last of Us Part I PC players: we’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you’ve reported. We will continue to update you, but our team is prioritizing updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.”
The PC port for the game was handled by Iron Galaxy, who also worked on Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection” PC port late last year as well as more recently assisting on the acclaimed “Metroid Prime Remastered” port.
That “Uncharted” PC port also reportedly suffered similar crashing and stuttering issues at launch. Whilst some of those were ironed out fairly quickly, others remain several months on. No critical reviews of “The Last of Us Part I” PC port are up on Metacritic in time for launch day but the game achieved over 36,000 concurrent players at its launch day peak.
Sony’s PC fortunes have been a mixed bag. After some stumbles out of the gate with “Horizon: Zero Dawn” having issues at launch a few years ago that took a while to fix, subsequent ports saw major improvements, with “Days Gone” faring better, and then last year’s PC versions of “God of War” and both “Spider-Man” games snagging raves for their ports, as did “Returnal” last month.
But both of Sony’s flagship franchises from Naughty Dog have stumbled out of the gate on the platform, and it suggests the eventual PC ports of titles like “The Last of Us Part II,” “Ghost of Tsushima,” “Horizon: Forbidden West,” “God of War: Ragnarok” and (hopefully one day) “Bloodborne” will be approached with caution.
