The Last of Us Part I finally arrives on PC today. Following on from the Uncharted, Horizon ZD, and Spiderman ports, TLOU-Part I continues the big push by Sony into the PC market, taking some of their highly prized PlayStation exclusives and getting them onto the many more screens of PC gamers.
Excellent Noclip documentary about how Naughty Dog went about rebuilding the game for modern consoles (and PC too).
Uh oh. Looks Iron Galaxy gone goofed again. A lot of the problems seem related to shaders not being given time to compile correctly on first launching the game.
But to say to your average gamer, “here’s the shiny new game you’ve been eagerly looking forward to for ages, that you paid a lot of money for, that took you a day to download. Only, please don’t start playing it yet. Sit and wait for things we call “shaders” to load in properly or else you’ll have issues.”
I’ve seen posts saying shaders took anywhere from 15 minutes to the better part of an hour to compile.
On the plus side, the last PC port Iron Galaxy did for Sony was Uncharted. That too had optimisation issues initially but is now polling much more positively.
The benefits of not being able to afford the game at full price launch will hopefully work in favour of the patient frugal gamer here again. Half price sale in a years’ time when the issues are sorted is okay by me.
The game and experience remain one of my most memorable experiences to date, truly a piece of art.
I don’t understand why Sony does not use Nixxes for these ports and instead goes for Iron Galaxy. I had imagined they bought Nixxes specifically to port their games to PC.
The Last of Us was originally done by Naughty Dog. The last game from Naughty Dog, that was ported was Uncharted, and Iron Galaxy did the port. 
Seems logical on some level.
It looks like Nixxes focuses on ports from Crystal Dynamics, IO Interactive, Eidos and Insomniac Games.
If you follow the history of work, and check the original dev’s, it tracks just fine. Any current unoptimised games, seems more to be a sign of the publisher putting pressure on devs to finish the work with an immovable deadline, rather than telling them, if you need the time to make quality, then take it.
Oh and while I’m here, looks like barely 30fps experience on the Steam Deck. Perhaps it’s too heavy for that hardware.
Yes but the thing is Sony recently acquired Nixxes. They did the ports from other publishers before they were owned by Sony as far as I know. So they bought a studio that has a track record of pretty decent PC ports but decided to use a studio with a track record of poor PC ports instead. I just find that a little odd, especially on a game as big as TLOU.
If they used them to bring over something like Knack I would understand.
I don’t think people in decision making positions, sitting on a board of directors, look that hard, at quality and actual outcome, rather than just who dealt with recent relationships and connections with companies and orgs. Fuck, I sound like my boss. I just wanted to paint another perspective, on why on earth, they (Sony) would fuck up like this, regardless of the quality of the product.
Anyhoo, I don’t care. I don’t have a horse in this race. No PlayStation in this house. And don’t particularly want to give Sony my cash either, good or bad game withstanding.
Nixxes did both the Spiderman and the Horizon Zero Dawn ports right? They came out in 2021 and 2022. The only reasons I can think that they didn’t do the TLOU port are (a) the Naughty Dog connection from the Uncharted port; and (b) Nixxes are too busy porting something else, and Sony wanted to capitalise on the current hype around the franchise?
What other games could Nixxes be working on? There’s the perennial “Ghost of Tsushima is being ported”* rumours. But I think the most likely game is the unofficial but likely Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart port. Production of that got klapped by covid I guess and Sony didn’t want to lump another big port on an already busy studio, so they went with Iron Galaxy.
* I’m pretty certain Ghost of Tsushima will get a PC port, but with it currently being developed into a movie, I think a port release will be made to coincide with that.
I like this perspective. They are working on Bloodborne port. Yes. Sony wants to ensure the PC version is as perfect as possible. Right? Right?!!!
More hotfixes tomorrow, patch by end of the week.
Everyone saw the tv show. No point in playing the game
I haven’t seen it.
Hard disagree. Yes the story is mostly similar but the game is most definitely worth playing regardless of whether or not you’ve seen the show. The gameplay is really good. Especially in this version (Part 1 one on PS5 and PC) which uses TLOU 2 engine and gameplay improvements.
I would agree but I’m always a proponent of playing games, because they can do interesting things that no other medium can. TLoU does feel a bit dated, and I don’t know how much the remaster could improve that.
TLoU2 also felt a bit dated, but they tried to revamp it and it did help. That game goes even further in getting the player actively involved in the story.