In the last years I've always been saying that God of War, The Last of Us, and Uncharted were the big three that would convince me Sony is serious about PC ports of their games.
We're now almost at a constant release schedule of PlayStation games on PC that makes owning a PS5 more of a tax to experience them earlier and good from the start instead of the only way to play them.
At this rate I'd be almost convinced Bloodborne is about to come to PC, but, alas, it's still a dream more than a reality.
Sad to see that for two of their three biggest IPs, they choose to go with Iron Galaxy as a partner to execute the PC port in both cases ending with disastrous launches - one of which we're talking about here - when Nixxes has already shown its talent and has been purchased by Sony.
Because I had played the TLOU Remastered not too long ago on my PS5, when the Remake of TLOU1 launched I decided to wait it out and play it on PC this time, especially to have more control on the god-awful weapon sway that hindered my experience at the time.
To be honest, the first time I played it, Part 1 didn't do it for me. Might be because I had friends overhyping it, because of the fact I played it almost a decade after and the technologies were not that impressive anymore, or because it's a story I already knew in parts because you'd have to live inside a good internet echo-chamber not to have a good part of TLOU P1 spoiled by pop culture, memes, and what not.
I still liked the game, but compared to other works of Naughty Dog, see Uncharted 1 to 3 that were prior to TLOU Part 1, it was not that remarkable to me.
The same I could not say of Part 2, as it was one of the most memorable game experiences I've had in my life, and I hope PC gamers can soon get their hands on it. A great videogame that ended up changing my opinion of the prequel, now that I had this much more emotional attachment both to the characters and the story, reason why I was interested in this remake.
That was last year, and since then, in the meantime, I rebuilt my computer and was ready to get a game that I hoped would be a good benchmark for the new rig, while giving me the opportunity of replaying the game, this time going for 100% as it has an easier platinum than the original, which included multiplayer trophies at the time.
The Last of Us Part 1 is not a different game from the original or the Remastered, but it has all the benefits from the extra power and technologies we have now that were not there then, especially coming from that awful PS3 Cell microprocessor, which was a developer nightmare. From graphical fidelity to difficulty settings, accessibility options, and better AI for enemies and companions: this is the remake.
Just like in many recent Playstation releases, the level of customization for the experience, especially for difficulty and accessibility is one if not the best on the market.
The things the game is known for are still there, in a better package. The story is still the well-written story of the past, and with the added knowledge of all the collectibles I got from my run, the world took a more defined shape. Exploration is the same, the stealth is still kind of limited compared to other games even from that time, and the gun-play, while benefitting from mouse and keyboard, retains that very frustrating sway when aiming, which makes it so that the first character upgrades I would suggest are to improve the weapon sway, especially at high difficulties with ammo scarcity.
If I was living in my own bubble I would have thought this game, besides a lengthy shader compilation, was a really good PC port. I could run it all at Ultra with roughly 70% usage of my hardware, with a solid 66 FPS lock and a frame time completely flat. Hell, I was waiting on the classic PS5 comparison video with optimized settings from Digital Foundry so I could get a better bang for my watt, as Ultra settings are often a waste with little payoff. I'm happy to be part of an "upper echelon-esque group" that was able to enjoy the game unpatched and with no problems, which was why I did not chime in during the review-bombing. I could smell something was wrong. I've since read of people even with a 4090 having problems running this game. Looking at my own experience and videos that discuss this in detail, see Digital Foundry, I am confused as to how an even better build than mine could perform so poorly, but the game clearly has problems.
The problems seem to be summarized between three main culprits:
- The game on PC seems to be using the same PS5 compression system Oodle-Kraken instead of something like Z-Lib, which is less CPU friendly than the latter. When entering a new area, there's a lot of background streaming going on, which impacts performance. Still better than the Ureal Engine 4 stutters many games suffered from in the last generation, but definitely not ideal.
- The game has incredibly long loading times, going from 13 seconds on PS5 to minutes on PC, and this I did experience too. Very similar to TLOU P2 on PS4, except that's on 10y old hardware on a mechanical disk. I was running it on brand-new hardware and an M.2 that never had any such problems.
- The settings block off a flat ~15% of the GPU VRAM for the Operating System, but it does not seem to scan for how much it's actually using before doing so, placing people with 8GB VRAM in the condition of only being able to use Medium textures, which look very blurry. Almost like textures were compressed to make them lighter with no regard for the final image. Especially the map clutter looks like a PS2 game and is nowhere near what an 8GB VRAM card should be limited to. The worst offender of this is how although you might have that VRAM free, going past the in-game limit, will cause crashes, even if that VRAM is free.
This said, Naughty Dog is directly involved in the troubleshooting of the PC version, and in 10 days since launch have already released 4 updates, so I'm positive they will improve the situation and make amends for the poor conditions of the port.
In the end, the game was exactly what I expected. I enjoyed my time on it and it was worth the purchase for the new insight from all the collectibles and the refresh of my mind before starting the TV show. It was a complete improvement from the original and although I can see some people are having problems with the PC port, this is my review based on my experience.
8/10
We're now almost at a constant release schedule of PlayStation games on PC that makes owning a PS5 more of a tax to experience them earlier and good from the start instead of the only way to play them.
At this rate I'd be almost convinced Bloodborne is about to come to PC, but, alas, it's still a dream more than a reality.
Sad to see that for two of their three biggest IPs, they choose to go with Iron Galaxy as a partner to execute the PC port in both cases ending with disastrous launches - one of which we're talking about here - when Nixxes has already shown its talent and has been purchased by Sony.
Because I had played the TLOU Remastered not too long ago on my PS5, when the Remake of TLOU1 launched I decided to wait it out and play it on PC this time, especially to have more control on the god-awful weapon sway that hindered my experience at the time.
To be honest, the first time I played it, Part 1 didn't do it for me. Might be because I had friends overhyping it, because of the fact I played it almost a decade after and the technologies were not that impressive anymore, or because it's a story I already knew in parts because you'd have to live inside a good internet echo-chamber not to have a good part of TLOU P1 spoiled by pop culture, memes, and what not.
I still liked the game, but compared to other works of Naughty Dog, see Uncharted 1 to 3 that were prior to TLOU Part 1, it was not that remarkable to me.
The same I could not say of Part 2, as it was one of the most memorable game experiences I've had in my life, and I hope PC gamers can soon get their hands on it. A great videogame that ended up changing my opinion of the prequel, now that I had this much more emotional attachment both to the characters and the story, reason why I was interested in this remake.
That was last year, and since then, in the meantime, I rebuilt my computer and was ready to get a game that I hoped would be a good benchmark for the new rig, while giving me the opportunity of replaying the game, this time going for 100% as it has an easier platinum than the original, which included multiplayer trophies at the time.
The Last of Us Part 1 is not a different game from the original or the Remastered, but it has all the benefits from the extra power and technologies we have now that were not there then, especially coming from that awful PS3 Cell microprocessor, which was a developer nightmare. From graphical fidelity to difficulty settings, accessibility options, and better AI for enemies and companions: this is the remake.
Just like in many recent Playstation releases, the level of customization for the experience, especially for difficulty and accessibility is one if not the best on the market.
The things the game is known for are still there, in a better package. The story is still the well-written story of the past, and with the added knowledge of all the collectibles I got from my run, the world took a more defined shape. Exploration is the same, the stealth is still kind of limited compared to other games even from that time, and the gun-play, while benefitting from mouse and keyboard, retains that very frustrating sway when aiming, which makes it so that the first character upgrades I would suggest are to improve the weapon sway, especially at high difficulties with ammo scarcity.
If I was living in my own bubble I would have thought this game, besides a lengthy shader compilation, was a really good PC port. I could run it all at Ultra with roughly 70% usage of my hardware, with a solid 66 FPS lock and a frame time completely flat. Hell, I was waiting on the classic PS5 comparison video with optimized settings from Digital Foundry so I could get a better bang for my watt, as Ultra settings are often a waste with little payoff. I'm happy to be part of an "upper echelon-esque group" that was able to enjoy the game unpatched and with no problems, which was why I did not chime in during the review-bombing. I could smell something was wrong. I've since read of people even with a 4090 having problems running this game. Looking at my own experience and videos that discuss this in detail, see Digital Foundry, I am confused as to how an even better build than mine could perform so poorly, but the game clearly has problems.
The problems seem to be summarized between three main culprits:
- The game on PC seems to be using the same PS5 compression system Oodle-Kraken instead of something like Z-Lib, which is less CPU friendly than the latter. When entering a new area, there's a lot of background streaming going on, which impacts performance. Still better than the Ureal Engine 4 stutters many games suffered from in the last generation, but definitely not ideal.
- The game has incredibly long loading times, going from 13 seconds on PS5 to minutes on PC, and this I did experience too. Very similar to TLOU P2 on PS4, except that's on 10y old hardware on a mechanical disk. I was running it on brand-new hardware and an M.2 that never had any such problems.
- The settings block off a flat ~15% of the GPU VRAM for the Operating System, but it does not seem to scan for how much it's actually using before doing so, placing people with 8GB VRAM in the condition of only being able to use Medium textures, which look very blurry. Almost like textures were compressed to make them lighter with no regard for the final image. Especially the map clutter looks like a PS2 game and is nowhere near what an 8GB VRAM card should be limited to. The worst offender of this is how although you might have that VRAM free, going past the in-game limit, will cause crashes, even if that VRAM is free.
This said, Naughty Dog is directly involved in the troubleshooting of the PC version, and in 10 days since launch have already released 4 updates, so I'm positive they will improve the situation and make amends for the poor conditions of the port.
In the end, the game was exactly what I expected. I enjoyed my time on it and it was worth the purchase for the new insight from all the collectibles and the refresh of my mind before starting the TV show. It was a complete improvement from the original and although I can see some people are having problems with the PC port, this is my review based on my experience.
8/10
Amazing game, shame its that short.