The Last of Us, Part 1 Remaster Remaster [PS5, PC]

Game is much more RAM friendly now on my end after the patch, I never saw it exceed 14GB, and it frequently dropped to 8 and 9GB in less busy levels.

I also can now easily max the game on my 2080Ti at 4K DLSS Quality, without needing more than 10GB of VRAM at this resolution (1440p upscaled to 4K).

That sounds very promising.
 
One thing that is undeniable is that the loading times have improved. I was at ~1 min pre-patch, and post patch I'm about 40 seconds loading the exact same save.

Also, the animations that were bugged, such as Ellie running up and down stairs, and falling from ledges, have been fixed.

While I don't expect the performance profile of the game to change drastically, I do think they're doing some good backend work to ensure things load quicker, manage memory better, and ease the burden of certain processes on the CPU resulting in a smoother overall experience. Hopefully I'm wrong and they have some real performance improvements coming down the pipe after they get some of the fundamental systems under control.. because they still have Steam Deck optimizations to come.. but we'll see.

Don't get me wrong, this port is bad, but on high end machines with lots of RAM/VRAM, it can run pretty great as it is already. It's just far more demanding than it has any right of being. I've only had a couple of crashes in 20+ hours of my time with the game so far.. but lots of people couldn't even get into the game, let alone play it for any real length of time.. so no excuses.

I hope they continue to chip away at it. Keep tightening things up, improve the loading and streaming of assets, try to get the loading times as quick as possible.. reduce memory footprints as much as possible, and fix bugs. It's imperative that for their future games, presumably Factions 2 and TLOU P2.. they need to have this stuff sorted out. I don't care if Factions 2 doesn't release at the same time as the PS5 version... delay the game on PC until it's ready and optimized.. same with TLOU P2.
 
Yeah load time's have been improved. Otherwise I'm not noticing any differences, in GPU or CPU limited scenarios.
 
I also can now easily max the game on my 2080Ti at 4K DLSS Quality, without needing more than 10GB of VRAM at this resolution (1440p upscaled to 4K).
Let's see if the VRAM usage gets more optimised. We have had many games in the past that required an unusually large amount of VRAM at the start. I remember Horizon Zero Dawn and Dead Space. After a few patches that got better or went away.

I'd say ND games, in terms of production value have always been extremelly well balanced everything being impressivelly near the ceiling of visual quality for the time they release on. But never perfect in every aspect. They allways have flaws. But they are always ahead of the competition when you consider the total sum of "quallity" points across everything: geometry detail, texture res, materials, lighting, animation, physics, particles, special effects, audio, environment composition, art direction, variety, loading times, polish, performance stability, IQ, post processing...
When I compare Ryse (2013) with The Last of Us (2013) there are worlds apart visually. Crysis 3 also came out several months before TLoU and had a more advanced feature set and less pop in etc. well. You needed a GTX 680 to achieve 30 fps on very high settings. Killzone Shadowfall was also technically much more ambitious and advanced. The smoke particles looked particularly fluid at the time.

Beyond Two Souls also had PBS on PlayStation 3. It looked good in small environments but not in larger areas like the desert landscape.

The truly great thing about TLOU's visual is that everything is perfect. You have games that have outstanding texture work and geometric detail on environments, but the characters and particles look far worse than that. You also have games that are the exact opposite of that.

TLOU has fantastic character animation, far better particle quality than any game I've played, wonderfully constructed environments with a shitton of geometry, super high fidelity textures etc. That makes it truly next gen in my eyes.
Next gen needs new feature sets otherwise it's just a polished last gen game. In the transition from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 there was immediately a significant jump with more advanced features such as TAA, SSR, SSAO, GPU particles, much better material shaders, volumetric effects, performance capture, POM, quality DoF, much better object motion blur, dynamic GI etc. Later on, more games with softshadows, tessellation, clear coat on materials etc. appeared. I would also like to see great progress in hair rendering. Hair is usually the most unsightly thing on characters.
 
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This is a tough one to measure though as some of the biggest complaints about CPU performance have been at those times when the game is also streaming in background data. So really they should be trying to find an area like that (like RIchard did on the Digital Foundry 3 way video) and seeing if the streaming performance in particular has been improved by the patch.
 
Just finished the main game. That's every version now. PS3 game in 2013, PS4 in 2014, and now Part 1 in 2023. God the ending still gets me. Such a great game!

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Now on to Left Behind!
 
Anyone else getting higher frame rates in CPU bound situations?

Seems like they've released some CPU performance as I'm so close to 120fps on my 12400f now.
 
My wife picked it up last night. Crashes in the menu almost as soon as it's launched lol. I'm in the process of installing the latest NV drivers and freeing up some space on my SSD as I was down to under 1GB. I'm assuming that between those two actions things will be better.
 
I get irritated when people say this is a "movie game" and shit like that. Essentially, aren't most major games nowadays like movies anyway? I thought people liked the games for their unique storytelling. And the gameplay is fine.

The bosses in the RE4 remake are always ranting in your direction.
 
Well, most of the time those "complaints" dont come from people interested in a game but from platform wars. For example Uncharted got a "reputation" for being a "walking simulator" but by definition, most linear games are also "walking simulators" and Uncharted was not a parthenogenesis. It just excelled in blending cinematic pieces with gameplay and great pacing.

Personally, I believe linear cinematic games is the result of less time available for gamers,, more games available than ever, increasing costs of production, and people's desire to be immersed without having to think too much since our brains are already over bombarded with work and information.

There is still a place for games with heavy puzzles, strategic thinking, limited lives/saves, and unforgiving gameplay, but they have their unique audience, they are less of a norm. Elements that were considered acceptable a few decades ago are considered bad game design today. For example when I tried replaying the original FF7 a few years back, it was obvious that the gameplay that was originally considered a 9 or a 10, is a 5 now. The game design aged worse than the graphics. Limitations back then allowed that game design. But it is totally broken game design by today's standards, and it is extremely tiring to play.
 
Found this really good settings comparison video on YouTube.

Goes through each setting one by one and shows performance hit from each option and quality.

Optimised settings increased FPS by 70%+ with very little drop in visual quality.

 

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Personally, I believe linear cinematic games is the result of less time available for gamers,, more games available than ever, increasing costs of production, and people's desire to be immersed without having to think too much since our brains are already over bombarded with work and information.
Huh? Linear games have been the norm for most of gaming history. In fact, we get non-linear games more than ever nowadays, with a lot of people being downright unhappy with that fact, tired of all the open world designs.

I get irritated when people say this is a "movie game" and shit like that. Essentially, aren't most major games nowadays like movies anyway? I thought people liked the games for their unique storytelling. And the gameplay is fine.
I dont think most games are like 'movies', no. Naughty Dog's games are undeniably more 'cinematic' than most others, but I'd also agree that it can lead people into thinking that's all they are. I'd argue Uncharted is probably a more shallow and cinematic experience than most games, though The Last of Us is very much not deserving of being labeled the same. TLOU, especially played on any kind of harder difficulty, actually has a quite fun gameplay loop and rewarding sense of progression. Especially if you like RE4-style survival horror, where you have to scrounge for ammo and items and upgrades and whatnot and have to be smart with how you use your limited resources, and use all your tools/capabilities to get by. Encounter design itself is also usually really good, giving you lots of options. Main complaint is simply not enough different enemy types(though it's better in the sequel).
 
Huh? Linear games have been the norm for most of gaming history. In fact, we get non-linear games more than ever nowadays, with a lot of people being downright unhappy with that fact, tired of all the open world designs.


I dont think most games are like 'movies', no. Naughty Dog's games are undeniably more 'cinematic' than most others, but I'd also agree that it can lead people into thinking that's all they are. I'd argue Uncharted is probably a more shallow and cinematic experience than most games, though The Last of Us is very much not deserving of being labeled the same. TLOU, especially played on any kind of harder difficulty, actually has a quite fun gameplay loop and rewarding sense of progression. Especially if you like RE4-style survival horror, where you have to scrounge for ammo and items and upgrades and whatnot and have to be smart with how you use your limited resources, and use all your tools/capabilities to get by. Encounter design itself is also usually really good, giving you lots of options. Main complaint is simply not enough different enemy types(though it's better in the sequel).

And TLOU 2 gameplay and level design is by far superior to TLOU.
 
Huh? Linear games have been the norm for most of gaming history. In fact, we get non-linear games more than ever nowadays, with a lot of people being downright unhappy with that fact, tired of all the open world designs.


I dont think most games are like 'movies', no. Naughty Dog's games are undeniably more 'cinematic' than most others, but I'd also agree that it can lead people into thinking that's all they are. I'd argue Uncharted is probably a more shallow and cinematic experience than most games, though The Last of Us is very much not deserving of being labeled the same. TLOU, especially played on any kind of harder difficulty, actually has a quite fun gameplay loop and rewarding sense of progression. Especially if you like RE4-style survival horror, where you have to scrounge for ammo and items and upgrades and whatnot and have to be smart with how you use your limited resources, and use all your tools/capabilities to get by. Encounter design itself is also usually really good, giving you lots of options. Main complaint is simply not enough different enemy types(though it's better in the sequel).
Maybe I shoukd have been more specific and also add story driven games.
 
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