The Last of Us Part II Remastered finally hit computers, bringing the conclusion of the journey of Ellie and Joel. And fortunately, going away from the first part port problems. But there is one important thing to be scored here: although I have not experienced any technical problem in testing before release, it does not mean that other players will have the same experience as me. But it is worth mentioning that it all depends on the player’s PC. Unlike PS5, which in practice is a personalized computer with unique pieces and on which developers are based to create their unique games and get the best possible result, on the traditional PC there are a multitude of parts combinations. And the most common is to have conflicting combinations that do not work well together, such as a slow CPU and a powerful video card.
As a computer parts are not cheap, it is really frustrating for you to invest in a PC, buy that game you want to play so much and not be able to run well. And The Last of Us Part II Remastered has heavy game face, right? The good news is that the Naughty Dog game has come well optimized, with many graphics options for you to test in your configuration.
As with the remastered version of The Last of Us Part II last year, in this article I will only focus on the technical aspects of the PC version (available on Steam and Epic Games Store) and the settings I chose to get the best result.
Am I giving luck with the ports?
Both PC ports of The Last of Us Remastered were made by Iron Galaxy Studios, except that in this second part there was involvement of Nixxes Software. They were the ones who took care of Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. While in these games they did a good job, with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 the story was quite different, resulting in another problematic release for PlayStation.
What makes me curious is that, in my tests, I saw no bugs propagated over the internet. Did I luck out with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Or was it my PC, mounted after an exhaustive component research that made a difference? I may be mistaken, but it seems to roll a service on the internet to sabotage the games that are leaving the exclusivity of PS5 aside to reach a larger audience.
For comparison purposes, let’s go to my setup: CPU AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, with asus tuf gaming motherboard B550m-Plus, memories Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200 MHz, SSD M2 XPG Blade 70 1TB and GPU Dual Geforce RTX 4070 Super. All without overclocking. Realized it’s nothing from another planet, right? With this setup I ran the game at 2k and aiming at the best look possible without being below 60 fps.
Sit that shaders are carrying
The long loading screens of the past come out and the shaders load screens enter. It sounds like a joke but it is the new normal of games, present in all PC ports of the PS5 games. With The Last of Us Part II Remastered is no different. After loading, we are introduced to the story and shortly thereafter we can mess with the viewing settings and graphs.
In charts, I left all the options on the maximum quality, turning off only the “movie granulate intensity” effect, which I don’t particularly like. A fake appearance of sharpness that bothers me is created. In views, I turned off the V-Sync (my monitor has native), I left the update rate of my monitor at most (165 Hz), no frame limit, nvidia reflex on and initially with the generation of tables and upscaling off. With this configuration FPS oscillates depending on the scenario, but is usually between 80 and 100 fps. Calling the for the generation of extra frames, passes easier of the 100 fps.
I could quietly play The Last of Us Part II Remastered whole, with this configuration. But I decided to turn on DLSS UPSCaling in Quality Mode. At the time you realize that the game gets clearer, but with very visible serial, especially in details like hair. In exchange for this downgrade in the details, FPS has gone from 150. In combat against various enemies or when there are many visual effects on the screen, it was between 110 and 120 fps. And testing on Steam Deck, the game offers an exclusive Valve portable pre-physicalization and can run between 30-35 FPS.
As I was over the Last of Us Part II on PS5, I just played about 3 hours of the PC version. Enough to say, with total peace of mind, that the port is very well optimized. I even recommend playing with DualSense control. It also has support for Ultrawide and HDR screens. It’s a fabulous, exciting, somewhat long game (I closed over 30 hours) but it will make many PC gamers happy. May Sony continue to order more Ports, perhaps the full franchise of Uncharted. Astro Bot will surely roll soon.
