Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: PlayStation PC LLC
Platforms: PS4, PS5, PC
Tested on: PC
The Last of Us Part 1 (PC) – Review
The original The Last of Us is already about 10 years old. 10 Years! And while it’s a great title, it has been milked dry since then. You got the Remastered version at some point, then there was the much-discussed Part II. Then we suddenly got Part 1 again but for PlayStation 5. The marketing around HBO’s show with the same name made sure that we got Part 1 for PC now as well, which fits in Sony’s porting party from the last few years. The release of this absolute classic on PC has not gone without struggle though, but we wanted to see if this game was still worth the hassle.
Story
If you somehow managed to miss the story of The Last of Us Part 1 after the release of all the different versions out there, here’s a quick synopsis: Joel is a father who loses his child at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. He later gets tasked with escorting the mysterious Ellie to a certain extraction point, as this girl is very valuable for some reason. The two go on a great adventure together, where classic father-daughter struggles, as well as a whole bunch of zombies and other dangers, arise. Slowly the two people learn more about each other and the escort job isn’t as simple anymore.
While this summary is very simple, the game itself is actually praised for the way it tells you the story. With a detailed environment, great acting, perfect cutscenes, and more, the game feels like watching multiple seasons of a show while not losing any interactivity. Losing your child the way Joel did at the beginning of the game already hit us quite hard, and the intensity and emotions in the entirety of the game make it better than any movie could ever be. The Last of Us Part 1 is just more than “another zombie story”. It’s a tale about human connection and the connection between the player and the characters make it so great. If you’ve somehow managed to live without spoilers since the original release, the story is definitely half the reason why you should try this game on PC.
Graphics
Aside from a rough start due to graphical bugs on the release of this game for PC, we actually still quite enjoyed how everything looked. While we didn’t manage to put everything on high or ultra (mostly all textures were set to low) with our GTX 1080 card, the size and details of the game still made quite the impression. There’s simply always something to see, and the world feels vast and wide. If anything, PC users will probably be able to run this game in all its glory once everything gets patched up. That is if your card allows you to run it at all. For the end score of the game, we did not take into account how some users are struggling to get the game to run. After all, our game ran nicely. The animations are top-tier, like in most Naughty Dog games. The Last of Us Part 1 is moody and realistic, and overall it survived the test of time perfectly when it comes to the graphics. That being said, we did experience some FPS lag and small glitches but not enough to break the game.
Sound
While we played through the entirety of The Last of Us Part 1 some years ago, we felt that sound-wise, there are still new things to discover, even when you’ve played through the game multiple times. There are a whole lot of ambient sounds that will increase in volume when the player looks at the direction it’s coming from. This makes standing still and looking around also interesting when there isn’t much to look at. On top of that, there’s of course stellar voice acting, where Troy Baker shines in the role of Joel, and Ashley Johnson does an amazing job as Ellie. They make their way through zombies and other dangers, which all have their own great sound effects. As an advocate for how great the sound design is, dying by getting eaten always gets worse by the horrendous sound of flesh ripping and your character screaming. Music is barely present in The Last of Us, but when it moves to the foreground, it’s used to enhance scenes properly. The main music in the entire series often involves an acoustic guitar and is as haunting as it is lovely.
Gameplay
The Last of Us Part 1 is a story-driven survival adventure game with action elements. It has everything that Sony tries to excel at with its games and remains a strong title that does an incredible job to this day. There might be sections in the game where you walk around to enjoy a part of the story without much action, but mostly you will need to crouch around to sneak past enemies, find stuff to boost your survival rate, and sometimes use brute force to stay alive. Which difficulty you choose at the start also hugely influences your gameplay, as you really don’t want to have to use brute force at the highest difficulty where resources are scarce and sneaking is your best bet.
Apart from the story, the variety you get with action, sneaking, some puzzling, and more, is probably why the game is still feeling great to play. The level design is also nicely done, where despite some linearity in the game getting from point A to B, you still have some choices in picking the best route that leads to the safest options as well as side rooms with good loot. Gathering resources will make your life easier as you upgrade weapons with them. There are new weapons and upgrades available throughout the game, and there are hardly any dull moments.
Conclusion
To summarize, The Last of Us Part 1 is crafted with care and you can sense it throughout the entire game. For those who played the game a whole while back as well as new players, it’s a great chance to experience the game on PC. That being said, we do recommend checking if there are known compatibility issues with your graphics card. If not, enjoy the majestic visuals, the great sound design, the stellar story, and the moody survival adventure that makes The Last of Us so enjoyable.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] people are talking about what the best game of all time is, The Last of Us is bound to come up. After winning tons of awards when it came out in 2013, the journey of Joel and […]