The Last of Us Part I for PC Receives Negative Reviews Due to Technical Issues
The much-awaited release of The Last of Us Part I on PC has left players disappointed due to various technical issues. According to the Steam store, out of more than 9,000 reviews, 67 percent are negative.
PC players have reported issues ranging from random crashes and stuttering to long shader compilation times and characters randomly becoming wet in cut scenes. The game is also poorly optimized, consuming large amounts of VRAM on systems and dropping frames. Even a top-end gaming PC equipped with an RTX 4090 has experienced crashes and random frame rate drops.
The situation is dire enough that PlayStation studio Naughty Dog has had to issue a statement. They tweeted, "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."
Moreover, The Last of Us Part I is not yet verified for the Steam Deck, and the shaders take about an hour to compile on the handheld machine. Attempting to run the game before the compilation is complete leads to poor performance. However, waiting for shaders to compile takes half of the two-hour Steam refund window, which is far from ideal.
Even once the shaders have compiled on the Steam Deck, the game's performance is still not satisfactory. The Last of Us franchise has sold over 37 million copies worldwide, and this year has already been significant due to the TV adaptation. The release of The Last of Us Part I on PC was expected to be another major moment for PlayStation games on PC.
June also marks the 10-year anniversary of the game's original release, making the PC port's technical issues a temporary dampener on The Last of Us' big year. Porting console games to PC has never been an easy ride for any developer, and Iron Galaxy and Naughty Dog will now need to move quickly to fix the game's technical issues.
