Disclaimer
The copy of the game used for this review was provided by the publisher at no cost to the reviewer.
Introduction
I’ve played every version of The Last Of Us released to modern systems, specifically The Last Of Us part I on both PS5 and PC, as well as The Last Of Us Part II on PS4 and PS5, the latter in its remastered iteration.
Now, just over a year on from the launch of the remastered sequel on the latest Sony hardware, it’s time to see what the PC port not only runs like, but also what it offers in terms of additional content compared to the first time around.
First Boot
Booting up the game, I was presented with a driver update screen. Wanting to see if the game ran well before doing that, I pressed OK but was greeted by an inaccessible launcher, much as we’ve seen with other Sony titles in the past. This is frustrating, especially considering the accessibility in the game I was trying to run in the first place, which for those who don’t know won numerous awards.
In endeavouring to launch the game, I unintentionally quit it, or so I thought. However, when trying to re-launch the application, I was greeted by a message stating it was “already running”, which was perplexing and not a good sign, as God Of War Ragnarok has had similar issues previously and that game’s accessibility on PC was far more broken that it realistically should have been, for no apparent reason.
After killing the game’s process from task manager and having the above sequence of events repeat for a second time, I turned on my AV receiver to have the PC think I was using a full 1080p resolution (or greater) monitor.
Though that didn’t help specifically, pressing enter when I first got into the launcher seemed to run the game, though this was, as I previously stated, a frustrating process to have to figure out.
If the launcher used standard windows controls, this would not be an issue as I’d be able to navigate it and find what I needed without what can feel like complicated workarounds or luck.
Enabling Accessibility
Once I managed to get the game to run in any form, I had no idea other than through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that I was even in the setup screen.
The game, sadly, does not speak the screen reader option you land on that would let you enable this setting, much as with previous iterations of the game. What this means in practice is that once you’ve turned it on by moving to the right once, you have to then press down on the DPad to actually get it to start reading.
Activating this setting allowed me to browse all the menus and go through setup as needed, including new keyboard control prompts as well, likely taken from the PC work for Part I, all without the need for assistance. The difficulties were over… or so I thought.
Moving through these options and enabling the vision accessibility preset, inwardly reminding myself that I’d need to turn off high-contrast if I wanted to stream the game and record footage of it later if I wanted it to look the same way someone with full sight would likely experience the title, I was presented with the now common PlayStation account linking prompt.
hitting this and pressing tab a few times allowed my screen reader to focus on the window that this brought up, meaning that I could choose my account and hit sign in to finish the linking process, as I’d already done with other games previously.
Strangely enough, the resulting success prompt did not read, instead just saying “OK”, thus leaving any players who might not have access to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) confused as to whether things had gone smoothly.
Having hit OK and been told that I’d unlocked the Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Jacket for Ellie and 50 points to unlock extras and bonus features, after waiting a little for the title screen to load in, I was presented with the now very familiar main menu.
Funnily enough, I could not in fact unlock modifiers here, even though I’d completed the game numerous times on this account on my PlayStation 5 system, though given cross-save functionality hasn’t been supported before in other PC ports it was hardly surprising.
I scrolled through the options, finding a system tab and, under that, the option to disable the launcher that had caused me so much relative pain.
With what preparation I could undertake seemingly completed, the only story-specific option being “new game”, I had no choice but to settle in for a full, albeit very light playthrough of the entire main story.
By way of an additional challenge, I enabled per chapter permadeath on my very first run of the PC port, not something I would ever recommend for any new player to work with on their first run but something I wanted to see if I had the skills to take on once again.
The Game Itself
The first thing I noticed was how long the cutscenes took to load in, though once they had, skipping them took relatively little time at all.
I did not, however, watch all the cinematics, having seen them countless times before and being aware of their quality both generally and in terms of audio description.
The first issue I noticed came in the form of navigation, where I appeared to get stuck on geometry. in the very opening section of the game. This was nothing that a little patience and persistence couldn’t resolve, but I do not remember being stuck on that piece of environment during any other run of the game, highlighting something else experienced with other recent Sony ports to PC, specifically issues with navigation assist features being stuck on your surrounding more regualrly than usual.
After that slight hiccup, I found navigation, as well as listen mode for finding items, to be extremely responsive and play even better than the PS5 counterpart. Winning the first “combat” sequence of the game, which is something I’ve not always managed to achieve depending on difficulty, I continued progressing but noticed something unsettling and frustrating.
Sticky Animations
The animations of The Last Of Us Part II have been hailed as some of the most immersive gaming has to offer. However, from an audio and gameplay perspective with this PC port, I experienced severe issues during my first hours with the title, of course keeping in mind this was a review build.
Specifically, when I got to the end of animations such as some squeeze throughs or during some dodge sequences where I’d pressed the button at the exact time I should have, the game seemed to slow down, in the first case making the game loop part of the movement audio repeatedly before initiating the next cutscene or in the second instance getting me hit multiple times.
These, coupled with the aforementioned environmental hold-ups, were not actually fully resolved by updating my drivers. In fact, things got worse, as I now had to seemingly launch the game twice just to get it to run for some unknown reason
That being said, my playthrough continued (NVidia driver issues being experienced by inumerable people all over the internet notwithstanding) and I noticed something else: trophy inconsistencies.
Trophy Earned: Or Not?
In TLOU2 R, you can earn trophies even for just picking up your first collectables. However, as I progressed through the game’s various areas and narrative beats where I knew there would be trophies, I realised that they weren’t showing up, even as Steam Achievements. I then checked to see if I was signed into the PlayStation overlay in-game and I had, unknown to me, been signed out of it, meaning I had to re-authenticate once again. This flies in the face of what the game tells you, specifically that you should have to only provide your credentials once on the system if you’ve signed in before, which I had for games including God Of War Ragnarok.
Unfortunately, I had to wait to see if even this was successful, as the next point where I would be able to obtain a trophy was a fair distance away.
As long as I remembered to attempt to log in twice whenever I launched the game, the PlayStation Overlay option seemed to appear as expected, though realistically someone shouldn’t be expected to have to go through this every time they launch the game.
Seemingly, the issues didn’t stop there with my review copy, as the game did not honour my disabling the aforementioned launcher either. This meant, in practice, that I’d have to hit enter on the launcher to actually play the game every time as well, making for an even more frustrating experience.
Puzzles And Falls
One thing that frustrated me in the original version of the game is that, in certain situations, you’d die to a fall that looked perfectly safe by the game’s reckoning. Sadly, the game does not allow you to determine whether the specific fall I had issues with (during the first main section of the game) is safe to jump from, instead killing you out right. What the game actually wants you to do is just walk forward and drop down, but even as a returning player, seeing this inconsistency struck me as something that could’ve been patched.
Similarly, annoyances ensued when dealing with an early puzzle involving swinging, a mechanic that is not very well tutorialised in my personal opinion. I tried this section multiple times and could not easily figure out how to get past it, with the tutorial only agrevating me further with the repetition of the same instructions.
This is not a nock on this port necessarily, but it is something to consider for other games that want to try swinging puzzles – make them consistent, straightforward and clear to any player attempting them as to how to proceed.
I did actually figure out the swinging mechanic in a latter section and I’ll detail how you’re supposed to complete these here for anyone who might get stuck. When the game says “back and forth in time with the sound”, it means that with each repetition of the audio cue, you have to alternate the movement you’re performing.
To be clear, this would mean that whilst holding R1 by default, on the first cue you’d hold forward and on the next repeat of the cue, even though it seems to come a long time after, you hold back, then repeat as needed until you automatically jump to the next area (if you have autotraversal enabled of course).
As stated above, this wasn’t as clear as it could be, but I’m glad that I’ve figured it out (as I don’t recall having any issues with it previously for some reason), though I may have skipped the puzzle in prior runs without remembering.
An interesting positive in this playthrough is that I managed something I don’t recall doing before, leaving an encounter uncleared by simply moving stealthily through it to safety, which I’m glad I could do given the permadeath constraint I’d put myself under.
No Return
No Return is a mode that I like the concept of, though the difficulty-specific Grounded daily run trophy is one I still have yet to obtain, due to the massive pressure and what I would personally describe as the accessibility disadvantage incurred by such a stipulation.
However, with this being a brand new port with new content as of the time of writing, I knew I had to give it another go, even if it was just to see how well the game performed under the intense pressure of a lot happening on screen and in the background at once.
I won’t go into every single detail here, but other than the game freezing for several seconds at a time after a while of play in this mode as well (an issue I also discovered during my story run), which was not fixed by a patch that appeared several days into my reviewing process, I had a blast with these runs even on very light (my customary difficulty of choice).
I even cleared the first boss on my first attempt at fighting it, though that’s not as surprising as you might think given I knew what was coming from the start.
Patches And Performance
As referenced above, though the game performed well, there were still outstanding issues, some of which materialised during the reviewing process later on after not being present initially. For example, when I first started playing the screen reader read everything consistently and without issue, whereas later on, I picked up items and resources and I wouldn’t get any prompts telling me how much of a resource I’d picked up, something that’s useful to keep track of as you journey through the various locations and encounters.
I realised later that this was due to a setting that I thought was enabled somehow having disabled itself (specifically pick up notifications under the HUD menu). Re-activating this setting solved the issue, though it was strange to have it happen at all, much like the launcher and overlay sign-in bugs.
That being said, the game continued to be playable, albeit in short bursts of play rather than the extended play sessions I’d got used to with the console equivalent.
Spoiling The Fun With An Iconic Encounter
Please note that, though I’ve tried to keep the below as spoiler-free as possible, I still have to make reference to some elements of the game to provide accurate context. Read at your own risk if you’re a newcomer to this title.
The Last Of Us Part II contains a very iconic boss fight (which I won’t spoil), a fair way into the game’s narrative.
However, with the navigation assist being what was described by another gamer without sight as “primitive” in comparison to other later innovations, the fact remains that the way this fight works, it is almost certainly the hardest challenge of the entire game for many.
The chapter containing said encounter starts out slowly with lots of what I can only describe as “cinematic walking”, whereby characters are artificially restricted from sprinting. It then transitions to a series of item retrievals punctuated, of course, by resource scavenging and occasional enemy interactions. This, however, is very reptitive when you have to do it over and over again because the boss at (which you see after those are all done with) has the potential to kill you in a single hit if you’re unlucky, in either of the first two phases of the batle, which includes an escape sequence.
The first time I went into this main component of the chapter, I aced the escape portion and even got a fair way to defeating the boss. However, due to an unlucky turn of events, I died and had to repeat everything I’d just done in the last 15 minutes or so of progression when the chapter restarting, as befits the Very Light, Per Chapter Permadeath settings I was playing on.
Being relatively skilled at the game itself, as much as I enjoyed testing how I was going to get through everything with as few issues as possible, after multiple attempts where I got stuck in awkward corners or obliterated by the boss’s on-hit kill melee attack (which I couldn’t detect an audio cue for during several runs), I resolved to utilise a strategy that, though I’m not proud of, might help others who are stuck at this roadblock.
Save Files
Being a PC port, like many others, The last Of Us Part II Remastered does allow you to access the save files of the game, including those correlating to Permadeath runs. I wondered if backing up my Permadeath run just before the boss fight could allow me to save time and reduce stress by allowing me to start at that point if the subsequent attempt failed.
After all, I’d completed the fight on Permadeath on console anyway previously (in 8 attempts, which is a whole other anecdote, involving Jennisary’s own non-Permadeath first run of the game which she undertook blindfolded), so it’s not as if I had to prove myself a second time, or at least that was my train of thought.
Backing up the save files (found in the documents\Last Of Us Part II folder, under a subdirectory comprising a series of numbers) at the point where the fight begins, I then died (not deliberately I miight add). After closing the game completely and replacing the game’s restarted chapter save with my backup made earlier, I realised the plan had worked and I was at the boss’s trigger point.
This saved me a massive amount of time and frustration and, though I won’t recommend it other than as a last resort, I’m glad this option is available, especially as it can have other uses too (such as allowing you to practice fights with actual in-game loadouts, rather than those offered by the encounters menu.
Summary
Pros
- Loading times seem much improved over the PS5 console version
- All accessibility from the console version is present
- Game performs even more fluidly than anticipated
Cons
- Settings, including hiding the inaccessible launcher, do not appear to save or be honoured
- PlayStation Overlay credentials do not save, in spite of the game stating you’d only have to sign in once on this system to get that to occur
- Game freezes for several seconds at a time after a while of play, with no clear cause, forcing a restart of the entire system to guarantee full performance on the next launch
Conclusions
The Last Of Us Part II Remastered on PC is a prime example of a port that could be a great way to experience a game, but performance issues and the frustrations with even launching the title can prevent it from being the pick up and play experience found on consoles.
That being said, it is once again as accessible as the console versions, much like the first game’s remake, alongside those seemingly much quicker loading times. Those speed improvements can be the difference between a game being played regularly or only once in a blue moon, so I’m glad to see that at least those are present, even if there are still a few issues that need to be resolved.
Here’s hoping that patches can iron out the kinks and turn this into a stellar port for those who don’t have a PS5. If you can deal with the workarounds and issues though and haven’t played this game before, I’d highly recommend you do so after playing the original game of course, in order to attain the first-hand context needed to fully appreciate the narrative.