The Final of Us Half 1 is not resistant to the shader plague (opens in new tab) that causes many PC video games to stutter and crash.
Sony’s newest PC port chugs on all kinds of {hardware}, whatever the sport’s modest system necessities. Gamers report stuttering, body charge inconsistency, and frequent crashes.
The basis of the issues appear to be from the sport’s shader compiling, which has change into a typical difficulty with PC video games over the previous couple of years. Your graphics card has to do some preliminary processing earlier than the world is rendered appropriately, and it needs to be achieved in preparation for each scene within the sport a minimum of as soon as. In some instances, builders can pre-compile shaders so you do not have to while you begin the sport, but it surely’s not a typical observe.
The Final of Us Half 1 enables you to leap proper into the sport and have the shaders compile within the background, but it surely warns you about efficiency points. I selected to play the sport instantly and the shader progress solely hit 40% within the 10 minutes I performed earlier than it crashed. After I relaunched it, the progress had jumped to 80%. It is price noting that my PC has an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, an Intel Core i9 12900K, and 32GB of RAM—greater than sufficient to run a sport like this on modest settings with DLSS on.
An early cutscene in the course of the sport’s intro sequence requested me to attend, presumably to load the shaders for the following sequence. In any other case, it ran high quality till Joel and Tess took their first steps out into the overgrown metropolis. Gamers with all kinds of {hardware} setups—from Nvidia 4090s to 2070s—on the sport’s subreddit (opens in new tab) and Steam forums (opens in new tab) report that the stuttering and crashing proceed till the shaders end compiling.
On Steam, the sport has over 1,400 reviews (opens in new tab) which are “principally adverse.” A lot of them criticize how lengthy it takes to compile the shaders, the variety of crashes, and what number of system sources it eats up even when it is completed. Steam person Bänjah (opens in new tab)‘s adverse assessment merely reads: “The Crash of Us™ Half I.”
The PC model was co-developed by Naughty Canine and Iron Galaxy, the identical studio that just lately introduced the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (opens in new tab) PC. It is unclear how a lot work Naughty Canine did on the PC model itself, but it surely stated, “Sharing our tales and experiences on PS5 in addition to PC is one thing that Naughty Canine has embraced and can proceed to help transferring ahead,” in a blog post (opens in new tab) at this time, suggesting will probably be part of future PC ports.
Uncharted, Iron Galaxy’s final PC port, has a restricted set of graphics choices, however, other than some stuttering at launch, appears to run nicely for most individuals. The final Sony PC port, Returnal (opens in new tab), was developed by Climax Studios, and 2021’s God of War (opens in new tab) PC model was achieved by Jetpack Interactive.
Sony hasn’t commented on the port’s efficiency or if it plans on releasing a patch quickly.
The large success of The Last of Us adaptation (opens in new tab) on HBO has nearly definitely satisfied lots of people to lastly give the sport a strive, however till it runs correctly, you is perhaps higher off beginning a rewatch as an alternative.
