A dark game that takes you on a scary journey for survival
The Last of Us is a popular Windows game set in a post-apocalyptic scenario. While at first glance it feels similar to The Forest, Stranded Deep, ARK: Survival Evolved, and other games, you soon realize that it has a much darker approach. The game focuses on a version of the near-futuristic world, where you encounter evil at every corner.
The high-stakes action game has been developed by Naughty Dog and comes with a depressing undertone. It uses varied and interesting game mechanics to keep you engaged through the storyline. The characters are fun and feature a strong developmental arc, allowing you to control various dynamics in this PC game.
A cross-country journey with struggles and horrors
The Last of Us focuses on two main characters, i.e, Joel and Ellie. The former is a middle-aged survivor, who has been battling homicidal monsters affected by a fungal plague. He lives in a military-quarantine facility on the east coast. Eventually, Joel meets Ellie, a teenage girl heading to the west. The storyline evolves to bring them together to go on a risky cross-country adventure.
What’s the objective?
As the story proceeds, the relationship between the main characters grows into a mentor-mentee equation. They keep traveling from one dangerous location to another in search of safety and solace. Throughout the journey, Joel remains the cynical one, while Ellie is optimistic and enthusiastic.
The will and determination of both characters make the gameplay fun and the storyline solid. The Windows game also features well-developed supporting characters, ranging from evil villains to struggling survivors.
While journeying across hordes of blood-thirsty monsters, Joel and Ellie have to take some extreme measures to stay alive. They need to smash monsters’ heads with bricks, look for weapons that could help them survive, and save other survivors from the wrath of zombie-like infected creatures. With all the horrors in the game, The Last of Us is definitely not meant for kids below a certain age.
How are the graphics?
The PC game comes with excellent graphics, which is evident from the high-production value. In this action game, all the environments have been meticulously designed. Most of the game’s scenes take place in the lush forests and countryside, which feel like a nice change from creepy labs, dark corridors, and dirty sewage lines.
Even the characters are highly animated and detailed. During character interactions, the background score complements the setting, creating an unusual vibe suiting the game’s graphics, objective, and gameplay. Overall, The Last of Us doesn’t feel like a usual horror or action game and gives you good reason to stay engaged with the storyline.
What about the gameplay?
The gameplay focuses on a well-defined yet unique combat system. In order to survive, you’ll have to be handy with objects lying around, including stones, bricks, etc. There are plenty of hand-to-hand combat situations where Joel needs to protect himself and Ellie. You also need to indulge in a lot of gunplay. However, limited ammo choices and tricky aiming controls make it difficult to kill the monsters with a single shot.
The game comes with an aggressive AI model. Thus, if you disturb a bystanding creature on the road or try to meddle with a group of infected individuals, you’re instantly attacked. Soldiers and bandits try to flush you out of hiding places and never leave a chance to make your life difficult. Smoke bombs and other weapons can be used to keep yourself safe. Considering everything, The Last of Us feels like a power-packed adventure, perfect for action gaming enthusiasts.
Addressing Performance Issues with Patches
The Last of Us experienced a rough launch on the PC platform, with players reporting crashes, performance issues, and various visual glitches. In response, Naughty Dog, the game’s developer, has begun rolling out bug fixes to address some of these issues and investigate others that are affecting PC players. A recent patch released on Steam and the Epic Games Store aims to resolve several performance and hitch-related issues experienced by some users.
Naughty Dog Actively Working on Fixes
The development team at Naughty Dog has enabled additional crash diagnostic information to help them investigate shader-building crashes and other reported stability issues. They are closely monitoring player reports and actively working on a patch with more bug fixes, which they plan to release soon. Another hotfix was released to improve memory usage, and performance, and add more diagnostics to assist the developers in their efforts.
Mixed Steam Reviews Amidst Ongoing Issues
Despite these efforts, Steam reviews for The Last of Us Part I remain overwhelmingly negative, with over 60% of players leaving a negative review. The issues reported by PC players include random crashes and stuttering, long shader compilation times, and a variety of visual glitches. Naughty Dog had previously delayed the game’s PC release by a few weeks to ensure a polished debut, but the ongoing issues have left fans questioning whether the port was rushed to capitalize on the success of HBO’s The Last of Us TV show.
Latest Hotfix Update: Improvements and Fixes
On March 30th, Naughty Dog released another hotfix for The Last of Us Part I, addressing memory and performance improvements, among other fixes. The update includes a decrease in PSO cache size to reduce memory requirements and minimize crashes, additional diagnostics for developer tracking purposes, increased animation streaming memory for better performance during gameplay and cinematics, and a fix for crashes on the first boot.
A good survival game that keeps you on the edge
Considering the range of zombie-based survival games available online, it wouldn’t have been wrong to expect Naughty Dog to just imitate a popular series. However, the developers of this PC game have taken inspiration from some of the best writing in this genre. As such, The Last of Us proves to be a power-packed action game.
The Last of Us is visually appealing, features solid game mechanics, and comes with numerous heart-wrenching and scary moments. All you need to do is grab the ammunition, shoot some zombies, and try to stay alive. Additionally, The Last of Us is a lightweight game that doesn’t affect system resources. As such, most programs on your PC will be able to run in the background without any issues.
