With today’s launch of The Last of Us Part II Remastered, it’s finally time for PC users to learn what happens in the second part of Joel and Ellie’s iconic story (now soon to be reinterpreted in the HBO show’s second season, too).
Originally developed by Naughty Dog, this PC port was a collaboration between Nixxes Software, which handles most of Sony’s PC ports following its acquisition from the PlayStation company, and Iron Galaxy Studios. The latter is also a fairly famous porting house, although its work (without Nixxes in that case) on The Last of Us Part I’s PC port was initially criticized before a slew of patches improved the situation.
Let’s start with the upscalers. The Last of Us Part II Remastered supports NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution (including DLAA, though it’s filed under anti-aliasing alongside SMAA and TAA), AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.1 (and AMD FSR 4, according to the official info, although it did not appear at all on my NVIDIA hardware, not even grayed out), and Intel XeSS. On the latency front, NVIDIA Reflex is supported on NVIDIA hardware and AMD Anti-Lag 2 on AMD hardware. On the frame generation front, it supports NVIDIA Frame Generation and AMD Frame Generation 3. However, it does not currently support NVIDIA DLSS 4 (Super Resolution) with the new transformer model, nor does it support Multi-Frame Generation.
NVIDIA stated that both were in the game in a blog post that accompanied the latest GeForce Game Ready driver; however, they are nowhere to be found in the game, and it is not currently possible to force either of them through the NVIDIA app Override feature. Furthermore, the original blog post on NVIDIA’s website has been amended to remove any mention of this. We reached out to both NVIDIA and Sony multiple times but got no response. We can only assume that there’s been a delay, and DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation might be added post-launch with a patch.
On PC, The Last of Us Part II Remastered offers a variety of tweakable graphics settings:
- Level of Detail
- Texture Quality (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, major on VRAM, minor on CPU)
- Texture Filtering (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Shadow Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Screen Space Shadows (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Image Based Lighting (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Bounced Lighting (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Ambient Occlusion (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Screen Space Reflections (Performance effect: major on GPU, moderate on VRAM, and minor on CPU)
- Real-Time Reflections Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on VRAM, and major on CPU)
- Real-Time Clouds Shadow Reflections (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Screen Space Sub-Surface Scattering (Performance effect: major on GPU, moderate on VRAM, and minor on CPU)
- Refraction Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Depth of Field (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU; can be enabled for cinematics only)
- Depth of Field Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Motion Blur Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Bloom (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
- Particle Density (Performance effect: major on GPU, minor on VRAM, and major on CPU)
- Volumetric Effects Quality (Performance effect: major on GPU, moderate on VRAM, and major on CPU)
- Lens Flare (Performance effect: moderate on GPU, minor on both VRAM and CPU)
The Last of Us Part II Remastered also includes sliders for Motion Blur Intensity, Camera Shake, Film Grain Intensity, Lens Dirt Intensity, and Field of View. The latter is particularly welcome as an option, even in a third-person game.
From the list of available graphics settings, you might have already guessed that there’s no big new graphics feature available in this PC version compared to the PlayStation version. It’s a shame, really, because it’s been nearly five years since the debut on PlayStation 4, and the game does show a little age in some parts, especially in some in-game models. Don’t get me wrong, the marvelous artistic work and the excellent animations shine even more with the enhanced definition available on PC, but you can tell it’s not a game that was made this year.
Besides, on the higher end of the hardware spectrum, there was definitely headroom to add features like ray tracing. On a PC powered by NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition and AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D, neither CPU nor GPU were ever fully engaged both in terms of percentage and temperature. With DLAA enabled at 4K resolution, Frame Generation activated, and all settings pushed to the max, the game averaged 150 frames per second, the maximum being 185 and the minimum 119.
I also re-checked the same zone (the initial Jackson part with lots of NPCs around) with DLSS Quality and DLSS Performance. The former bumped the average frame rate to 175 FPS, while the latter got it to 190 FPS. Even without the transformer model, DLSS Quality maintains great image fidelity, while you can definitely tell the difference with DLSS Performance. Either way, stuttering is minimal on this rig, which is great news as it would be quite distracting in a cinematic game like this one.
Other than that, there’s not much more to tell. Just like all of Sony’s PC ports of late, the game supports spatial audio and the full extent of the DualSense controller features, such as haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, both of which increase the player’s immersion within the game. The game also takes advantage of Microsoft’s DirectStorage and supports HDR displays as well as Ultrawide displays.
The content is almost the same as the PS5 version of The Last of Us Part II Remastered, save for two additional characters (Bill and Marlene) and four new maps for the roguelike survival mode ‘No Return’. Both additions will be available later today on console, too.
However, the main course for PC users is experiencing the exceptional story campaign. I won’t delve too much into this except to say that I fully agree with Kai’s original review—this is one of the best games ever made in its genre, and it is absolutely unmissable for anyone who enjoyed Part I. As such, it is hard not to recommend it, even though it’s an entirely straightforward, albeit not problematic, port.
