It’s not the game being criticized, but its PC conversion. We can rightly condemn it because it doesn’t meet expectations.
First, let’s talk about AMD’s video, as the company has partnered with Sony on the game. In the footage below, the game’s remake (for PlayStation 5 and now PC), initially released in 2013 for PlayStation 3, is running at 4K resolution with ultra graphics settings. A Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card was used, and FSR 2.2 was used both off and on. Those using Nvidia cards will instead have DLSS 2 support. With FSR, the frame rate can go above 120 FPS, which seems unstable, and down to around 70 FPS…
It alone suggests that the game’s performance is terrible. On Steam, it’s no coincidence that only 33% of the 6162 reviews currently available are positive, putting The Last of Us Part I in the “mostly negative” category. Naughty Dog is not to blame for it (Sony is even more to blame because it hasn’t tested the port properly despite nearly a month’s delay…), but the studio responsible for the port is. Here’s the review by Steam user JackStillAlive:
“Another shoddy port from Iron Galaxy, who gained fame for porting Batman: Arkham Knight and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection. Awful hardware utilization. It’s much more CPU bound than most real-time strategy (RTS) titles. It has stuttery mouse camera movement (the same problem in Uncharted), and there is no Screen Dirt Effect toggle. There is a general lack of optimization.”
That’s pretty WTF considering Metroid Prime Remastered on the Nintendo Switch is also tied to them. But besides the two ports mentioned above on PC, they recently had two forgettable games, Rumbleverse, and Extinction. Let’s add what we read on 4chan: Sony withdrew promised bonuses from Iron Galaxy after a completed project, so they had to surrender all files. Then, the company also pulled the studio out of the project, and another in-house studio took over development, while Iron Galaxy couldn’t pay its employees. Many people’s jobs are in danger because of Sony’s greed, and workers fear they will not be able to buy, for example, medical THC, which they need to stop wallowing in pain. It’s a ten-year-old Sony game, by the way. Never mind that it is a remake.
The 4chan post is unofficial, but the fact that The Last of Us Part I came out in a lousy state on PC can’t be denied! If even Naughty Dog had to step in to inform us on Twitter to tell us they are aware of the issues, the situation describes itself.
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