Mystery has surrounded Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 4 remaster of its survival horror classic, The Last of Us. Announced by error and with a somewhat muted marketing push, it’s a remaster where the developer has seemingly been unwilling to actually show us the game in action, a state of affairs that persisted into E3 where it was mysteriously absent from the Sony press booth. Quite why this was the case remains a puzzle – Naughty Dog had nothing untoward to hide. It’s a brilliant game.
We’ll be approaching it on Digital Foundry via two distinct articles, produced by authors coming to the game from two totally different perspectives. Tomorrow, my colleague Tom Morgan unleashes a full PS3 vs PS4 comparison and tells you about it from the perspective of someone who completed the original – essential reading for any potential double-dippers out there. This article is different: aside from playing through a 20-minute pre-release press demo, I’ve never played The Last of Us to any great degree. Dim recollections of the demo and editing the tech analysis aside, I’ve nothing to compare it to – I’ll be judging it solely on its merits as a PlayStation 4 game, while at the same time attempting to answer all the major questions players may have.
So let’s look at the tentpole enhancements as Naughty Dog has outlined them. Principally, we’re looking at 1080p resolution at 60fps in both single and multi-player, a 4x detail increase to texture maps and a 2x resolution boost to shadow maps. Texture streaming is no longer required owing to the PS4’s prodigious RAM, and there’s longer draw distances, better LOD and improved particle effects. In essence, Naughty Dog has scaled up the original game to full HD and boosted assets to match, while doubling frame-rate. How does that look? Well, we’ve prepared a 22-minute 60fps gameplay capture here, downscaled from full resolution captures, and we’ve provided a 1080p60 download that should work just fine on most modern computers – and indeed the PlayStation 3.
This segment – chosen to leave the heart-rending prologue unspoiled – gives a much better account of the quality of the game than the prologue, and it’s important to point out that this is a remaster, not a remake. Where existing higher quality assets are available – for example, cut-scene character models – they are utilised (Update 29/7/14 12:34: we’re now pretty convinced that the cut-scene models aren’t used during gameplay after all), but there’s little evidence to suggest that Naughty Dog has upgraded any of the environments, or boosted geometry. First impressions aren’t actually that impressive – The Last of Us’ prologue initially has you in control of an unenhanced character model and despite the mooted enhancements to texture and shadow quality, the overall impression is that next-gen is actually much more of a leap than you’d give it credit for. Geometry quality is unimpressive, environment detail is relatively spartan and this section does little to showcase the game at its best.
1080p60 download
Check out this video the way it was meant to be seen, at native resolution and frame-rate. We’ve encoded the video so it should run well on most modern computers – and it works a treat on PS3. Please use the torrent link first for best download performance.
Gameplay torrentGameplay download (3.2GB)Mirror #1Mirror #2
It’s also apparent that there’s still a yawning chasm between the quality of the pre-rendered cinematics – almost certainly rendered at a much higher resolution, then downscaled – and the game itself, resulting in a jarring leap between FMV and gameplay not helped by a small pause between them. Uncharted’s cinematics were rendered in-engine but were designed to look like gameplay with seamless transitions, making for a more consistent experience and that is lacking here. What’s clear is that Naughty Dog has completely re-rendered each cut-scene though – they would have been 30fps on PS3 to match the gameplay, and they’re running at 60 here, with compression artefacts only really a noticeable problem on very dark scenes.