PC gamers rejoice! Last year The Last of Us Part II Remastered dropped on PS5 giving fans more content and a new game mode. And now, Part II of this cult classic is finally available on PC. 

I was sceptical, considering the numerous issues players faced with The Last of Us Part I PC port in 2023. It launched with a myriad of issues, riddled with bugs and performance issues that took some time to fix. 

But this time, developers Naughty Dog brought on Nixxes Software to join Iron Galaxy for the PC port. I had all my fingers and toes crossed that this meant I was in for some smooth sailing – performance wise, at least. 

The Last of Us (Part I) leads players on a perilous journey across a post-apocalyptic United States as Joel and Ellie. The hardened survivor and the young girl – who may hold the cure – form a bond as they navigate their terrifying world. 

Part II shows life four years later, taking a darker, and somewhat controversial direction. It delves into the cycle of revenge and the moral complexities of a world where everyone is struggling to survive. 

As a PC gamer myself, I was thrilled simply being able to experience The Last of Us Part II. And I was even more delighted when the port ran rather well. It worked solidly across performance and fidelity options and the game only crashed once in my entire run through. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for me. 

If you’re comparing the remaster for PS5 to PC you might find slight differences in the minor details. But overall, the PC remaster holds its own. The Last of Us Part II features a wide range of environments, from claustrophobic interiors to expansive landscapes. The enhancements made to these landscapes may seem small, but did have a positive impact – especially with draw distance. 

The PC coloration is bright with solid rendering, resulting in sharper, more detailed characters. This helped further enhance the (spectacular) performance by Ashley Johnson as Ellie. 

The remaster includes three lost levels, each introduced by Game Director, Neil Druckman, and other fun extras to explore. You can also delve into some guitar free play to strum some tunes. 

But the most exciting addition is No Return – a roguelike play that lets you fight your way through a series of randomised combat encounters. Being narrative-heavy, replayability of the actual game is quite low, unless you wish to relive the trauma. But this new gameplay option gives those who have finished their campaign a chance to itch that clicker-killing scratch. Unlike it’s name, it’s the reason I will be returning to the game.

Despite the controversy this game (and now the HBO show) has faced, The Last of Us Part II is a gripping tale of revenge with edge-of-your-seat scenes and terrifying combat. While the PS5 remaster felt more like a patch update with bonus content, it paved the path for the PC release. And it was a pretty solid PC release at that. 

The post The Last of Us Part II Remastered (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Mascot platformers were once the biggest properties in console gaming.

Anyone and everyone took their shot at creating memorable, usually fluffy avatars that were meant to become synonymous with the platform they appeared on. Ratchet and Clank is only of the few series, however, (especially outside Nintendo) to survive through to the 9th generation of consoles however.

A critically-acclaimed launch title for the PlayStation 5, Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart was a showcase for the power of the new PlayStation hardware, in particular the extremely fast SSD and associated decompression blocks. Using this hardware, the game featured incredibly impressive portals that moved you between entire worlds at the whim of the player, something entirely impossible on the slow mechanical hard drives of the PlayStation 4, not to mention its underpowered CPU cluster.

Now in-house porting studio Nixxes continues their overall excellent work in making PlayStation a powerhouse on PC too.

But Sony has had a bit of a mixed record with PC releases lately, with The Last of Us Part 1 coming in at a particularly shocking state at launch (though much improved now). Luckily, Nixxes has done a generally excellent job with this port, and some bugs aside it is a solid, scalable PC port that nearly every PC gamer will find works with their rig, to some degree or another.

But to discuss porting strategy for a second, PlayStation continue their bizarre habits of not starting off the PC audience with the beginning of the franchise. It is strange to see A Rift Apart release ahead of the 2016 PlayStation 4 game. This was an issue with the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection too (imagine diving into Uncharted 4 without any background on Nathan Drake or Chloe Fraser) and it continues for another flagship PlayStation franchise here. It seems that PlayStation is only interested in porting PlayStation 5 titles at this point – and any preceding games that help introduce and make sense of the world aren’t getting their turn on PC. I would strongly encourage PlayStation to revisit this approach, as PC gamers deserve to have the full picture of a franchise. For Ratchet and Clank especially.

Given the 2016 PlayStation 4 game was a soft reboot in line with the movie’s release, this would have been a perfect opportunity to start with that game before building up to A Rift Apart. For players new to the franchise diving straight into this game does assume quite a bit of familiarity with the characters and their backstories.

One of the key selling features for the original release was the innovative use of the PlayStation 5’s SSD drive, a massive upgrade over the slow laptop hard drives as found in last gen consoles. The game is uniquely coded around this capability, and unfortunately this does have slight implications for the PC release. Even with a very high end CPU and 7,000MB/s PCI 4.0 NVMe drive combination, loading still won’t be quite as fluid as on the PlayStation 5. It results in some small stutters and differences that you’ll probably only notice if you’ve played the game before on console.

The port is otherwise very competent, with, since it uses the same engine, the same basic setup as the two PlayStation 5 Spiderman titles on PC. There’s a wide range of graphics and display options, and of course all the original release’s content is present and accounted for.

You have a choice of 3 different temporal upscaling options (DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS), all of which present passable images, and it was great to see two new additions to the game’s ray tracing arsenal, even if current hardware’s performance can’t quite keep up with their demands.

At the other end of the scale, A Rift Apart scales down excellently to lower-end hardware, and playing through such a full-featured title on the Steam Deck was an excellent experience. I could manage a solid 30FPS using FSR2 or XeSS temporal upscaling which still produced a pleasing image, in stills and in motion. This is fantastic to see, as some newer titles – especially those that are current-gen only on console – haven’t quite been able to work properly on Valve’s handheld device.

So is Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart worth a replay if you already tried it on PlayStation 5?

Well, if you have a very high end PC rig then you’ll get higher resolutions, higher frame rates and ray-traced shadows and ambient occlusion that the PlayStation 5 is not able to produce. But the PlayStation 5 version remains an excellent version, particularly in its 40FPS mode on compatible 120Hz 4K TVs like my LG C2. There aren’t any new exclusive game modes or content to speak of so those looking for a dramatically different experience on PC won’t find it here.

To be clear, this is because the PlayStation 5 version is excellent, not due to any fault in the release on either platform. Nevertheless, the PC release will be the definitive edition going forward, especially as hardware matures to match the ambition of its included feature set.

It has been a pleasure to see Sony and PlayStation embrace the PC as a new platform for expanded reach of their most precious franchises. This latest entry is an excellent addition, which while not transformative to the core experience, will stand the test of time as the new definitive edition. More importantly, it has launched in a state far better than some other recent PC releases.

And while I did experience some bugs and oddities, porting house Nixxes has demonstrated they have the capabilities and commitment to address these. Onto the next PC port – The Last of Us Part 2, please!

The post Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.