The Last of Us Part 1 was released on September 2nd. It is the remake version of the story-driven action-adventure masterpiece The Last of Us (2013). The game will be available first on PlayStation 5 then, followed by PC.
To be honest, the graphics in the Last of Us (2013) and the Last of Us Remastered (2014) still looks great today. It makes people wonder what kind of improvement the remake will bring to us, and the answer is surprisingly terrific.
Naughty Dog has totally rebuilt the game resources in the Last of Us Part 1. The characters look more detailed, the textures have higher resolution, and the foliage is denser. The game feels more tense and real, especially when an explosion occurs, with the newly added environmental destruction features and the greatly improved particle effects.
A screenshot of the game shows the explosion and the smoke look way better than in the previous versions.
The game provides two render modes on PlayStation 5, Fidelity, which has native 4K, and Performance, which has dynamic 4K and is targeted at 60 FPS. Both are great options, but we recommend Performance mode more since it will provide a smooth frame rate while keeping most of the awesome graphical performance.
In a word, the game’s graphics are remade to the level of the Last of Us Part 2.
A screenshot of the configuration options of the DualSenseTM controller.
The graphics are not the only significant improvement in the Last of Us Part 1. Many people have greatly admired the accessibility features in the Last of Us Part 2, which help certain players to enjoy the game when normally they wouldn’t. Now, that function has come to the Last of Us Part 1 as well.
We tried to test those functions with one of our coworkers. He has High Myopia and can barely see things further than 1 meter without his glasses. However, he found the accessibility options, especially the high-contrast mode, to make the game-playing experience much more enjoyable.
The high contrast mode will change everything useful to the player into obvious colors while the rest fades into the background. Blue means friendly, red means enemy, and yellow refers to useful kinds of stuff. It helps the players to know where everything is even if they could not see it clearly before.
A screenshot taken from the high contrast mode shows that the player can easily find enemies no matter what the lighting condition is.
Furthermore, the travel cues will guide the players to the next waypoint in case they get lost, and the audio cues will hint to the players about their surroundings. The game will also provide slow motion and auto-aiming in case the player has trouble with shooting combat.
A gif from our playthrough shows how powerful the auto-aim assist is.
In order to help players enjoy the story, the game provides an extra narrative that will describe the cutscenes for you, and the puzzle skip function is quite useful if you get stuck by some of the puzzles or if you simply want to spend more time experiencing the story.
There are still tons of functions we haven’t tried in our test, and the best part of it is that they are all fully customizable. The color in the high contrast mode and HUD can be changed to other combinations for the color-blinded users. The audio cues can be modified so that they will not distract you in certain scenarios. Some combat settings can have their difficulty lowered in case the players feel they are too overpowered.
A screenshot of the accessibility menu shows the high customization freedom of this system.
It is a fully customizable gameplay experience that is totally determined by the players themselves.
The Last of Us Part 1 is a great choice for those who haven’t tried the previous two versions or want to experience it again now that is has been brought to the same fidelity and accessibility as Part 2.