[Console Games] The Last Of Us Part I PS5 And PC Review - Desolation Row

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The Last of Us Part I manages to tell a harrowing story of loss and redemption that still holds up despite some of its dated level design. However, its PC port is a big letdown.The Last of Us Part I's PS5 version was reviewed by Jake Dekker, while its PC port was reviewed by Alessandro Barbosa.

 

Joel looks different in The Last of Us Part I. It took me a while to notice, but once I did, it was hard to unsee. There's a pain in his eyes. His clothes and features are the same, but there's a quiet, unmistakable torment imprinted on his face. I've played The Last of Us nearly a dozen times across PS3 and PS4, and I had never seen it worn so plainly. I know Joel has a troubled past because The Last of Us Part I goes out of its way to show you a traumatic death in the opening scene, but that pain was never etched into his facial features this clearly.It helps that companion AI is much better, too. In the original, Ellie, Tess, and Bill would frequently end up in places they shouldn't have been. They couldn't alert enemies, but it was always jarring to see Ellie run in front of an infected while looking for cover. Occasionally in Part I, a companion did get in my way in some tighter areas, but I haven't seen anyone carelessly wander into the fray in this new version. It's a small fix but, once again, it makes this world feel more authentic.

 

Where The Last of Us Part I shows its age is in its level design. Just like the original nine years ago, the game often relies on pallets, dumpsters, and ladders for its traversal puzzles. The Last of Us Part I takes place over the course of a year, and Joel never takes the time to teach Ellie to swim. This means that every time you encounter deep water you need to find a conveniently placed pallet to ferry her across a small body of water. It was hard to overlook back then, but it's even harder to overlook now. Naughty Dog has gone through great pains to immerse the player in the world, and these simple puzzles don't fit the tone of the game. They are rote video game moments in an experience that doesn’t need them.The Last of Us Part I is an unrelenting tour de force that strategically leverages the power of the PlayStation 5 to push its story and themes a little further. Slight though many of them may be, all its enhancements serve the story, and the story is just as good as it was nine years ago

 

The combat arenas also feel a bit too enclosed and straightforward. There are some standouts, like the docks at the beginning of the game or the bookstore in Philadelphia, but most of the encounters take place in linear corridors with waist-high objects used as cover. This lack of freedom limits your options in combat and makes it difficult to improvise when your back is up against a wall. It's a shame because Joel's arsenal is varied, and his craftable items can be fun to use.

 

It's even harder to overlook given how impressive Part II's level design was. The reason why combat felt so dynamic in Part II was because there was always room to improvise and multiple avenues of approach to support this. This is unmistakably one of those moments where the limited scope of this "remake" undermines the idea of creating harmony between the first and second parts of The Last of Us' overall story. While the narrative and characterization certainly feel more cohesive now, the same can't be said for how it feels to play the two games.

 

The biggest example of this is Joel's inability to go prone. It may have seemed like a minor mechanic in The Last of Us Part II, but it fundamentally changed the way I approached combat. Obviously, Part I was not designed with a crawling Joel in mind. There is no grass to hide in, and cover is almost always waist-high, but the inability to go prone does create more of a dissonance between Part I and Part II.

 

However, fixating on gameplay discrepancies between both games diminishes The Last of Us Part I's achievements. The brilliantly-paced narrative is supported by some of the finest environmental storytelling in the business. So much of the world and its inhabitants can be extracted from the smallest details. A throwaway line between two hostile enemy NPCs can shed light on other parts of the world, while a simple message scrawled across a wall hints at how the outbreak was handled two decades ago. The environments are rich with details that add flavor to Joel and Ellie's journey.

 

The most welcome addition to The Last of Us Part I is its impressive suite of accessibility features. Like The Last of Us Part II, there are a wide range of visual, auditory, and difficulty settings that significantly lower the bar to entry and make the experience more accommodating. You can customize subtitles, tweak screenshake, enable different vision modes, and retool the controls at any time to fit your needs. Even if you don't think you need any of these features, you might find something in there to make your experience a little smoother. I frequently played with high-contrast mode enabled to help me track down smaller collectibles that I wouldn't normally be able to see, but for others, these newly added options might make what was previously an unplayable game into a playable one.

 

Additionally, The Last of Us Part I adds a ton of new unlockables in the Extras menu. Like in previous Naughty Dog games, as you play through the story you accrue points that can be used to unlock all sorts of things. There's concept art from both the original and remake, new and returning character skins, gameplay modifiers like infinite ammo and explosive arrows, and a handful of behind-the-scenes videos and podcasts. While none of this fundamentally changes the experience, I spent hours digging through this menu to admire all the intricately designed character models and test out the new gameplay modifiers. These bells and whistles do a good job of rounding out the package.

 

The most painful omission from this remake is Factions, the stellar PvP mode from the original game. The multiplayer mode had players choose a faction and build out a camp of survivors by running Supply Raids, which were matches that pitted you against the rival faction. Success would earn you resources to keep your compound afloat. Naughty Dog is working on an expanded standalone multiplayer component set in the world of The Last of Us and its sequel, but it's a shame the original Factions mode didn't make the cut.push past its other issues.

 

It's a shame that playing The Last of Us Part I right now on anything but a GPU with at least (and preferably more than) 12GB of VRAM is a severely limited experience--especially when compared to its stellar performance on Sony's own hardware--because this remake routinely establishes itself as one of the most visually captivating ports of a Sony title yet on PC. It's difficult to reconcile that this was once a game on two-generations-old console hardware, but if you have the graphical horsepower to show it off at its best, it's a marvel of gorgeous lighting, highly-detailed environments, and stunnings character modeling that is accentuated with additional PC settings that show the game off in a new, stunning light.

 

The settings menu itself is extensive, with helpful previews that show how your changes are affecting the image and useful descriptions informing you of what parts of your PC you're helping by turning things down. The VRAM usage meter is helpful in reigning in settings that would otherwise cause irritating stutter, but it's also the facet of this menu that's most confusing. It features a section that suggests a portion of your VRAM is being locked up by other applications and your operating system, but the figure it reports doesn't correlate to actual usage. Even more confusing is that this figure scales according to how much VRAM you have in total, with 2.4GB being used on my 12GB RTX 3080 Ti and 1.5GB on my RTX 3050. There is no real way to bring it down, either, which may (or may not) be affecting overall VRAM usage by the game itself.

 

This is something that should hopefully be addressed by future patches, along with a host of other performance improvements and optimizations to bring this port to a level of quality we've come to expect from Naughty Dog. It's disappointing after the relatively good work done on the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection that The Last of Us Part I seems a long way away from being a smooth experience for most players. So if you've been waiting all these years to finally experience Joel and Ellie's story for the first time, it's probably best if you wait at least a little longer.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-last-of-us-part-i-ps5-and-pc-review-desolation-row/1900-6417949/