The Last of Us on Steam finally gets its first big patch, but it still has the jitters
Early reaction to the first big update is mixed—some people are seeing real improvements, others say nothing has changed.
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The first full-on patch for The Last of Us Part 1 on Steamis live, and as is usually the case with these things, the early results seem mixed: Some players are saying the update has dramatically improved the game, while others are still struggling with poor performance and crashes.
“Patch 1.0.2 addresses some crashes, improves performance in some areas, and fixes several gameplay and UI issues including some animation, texture, and lighting bugs,” developer Naughty Dog said on Twitter. It added that it is “continuing to watch and investigate player reports, and will keep you updated on future improvements and patches, including a mouse jitters fix.”
Because, unfortunately, the “jitters” issue is not addressed in this patch. Naughty Dog had intended to address the problem in a hotfix, but said earlier this week that it had to delay the fix because it caused “unexpected issues” elsewhere. Mouse and camera jitters “for some players, depending on hardware and display settings,” remains in The Last of Us Part 1’s known issues list.
The patch does promise to improve texture streaming to reduce CPU usage, which was another big problem for players. (On the upside, it also gave usEyebrows Joel, for which wegive thanks.) Some users have reported improvements on that front—AxelStuon Steam, for instance, said there’s “no more stuttering because of CPU and that decompressing thing”—but many others aren’t seeing it.
“Sadly, I see no improvement on my 5600X/3080 12Gb setup—the 5600X is being pounded and very rarely drops below 90% utilization which is insane,“Dry_Mud_8098wrote on Reddit.
“Update made the game so much worse for me, last played the game in the university building the other day, went to boot it up today after the big update and now the ground textures are missing lmao it’s just all void black,“Ghost4530said. “They really outdid themselves with this one, oh and the vram usage in the graphics menu is even more broken now than it was before. I honestly wish I could rollback the update to the last one, game worked much better for me and besides one bug in the intro has been relatively bug free on my PC.”
Another user,mackzett, reported no change after the patch had installed until they rebooted—after that, they had “better performance, less judders,” although their CPU usage was still “really high.” So, be sure to reboot after installing.
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We at Naughty Dog and our partners at Iron Galaxy are continuing to watch and investigate player reports, and will keep you updated on future improvements and patches, including a mouse jitters fix.For more info, please check out our known issues page: https://t.co/Xr072rK76TApril 7, 2023
The bottom line is that the patch aims to improve much more than the hotfixes did, but your mileage may vary—and if The Last of Us Part 1 is running well for you already, you might want to forgo this update in favor of a more universally beneficial patch that will (hopefully) be coming in the future.
The full patch notes for The Last of Us Part 1 v1.0.2.0 are below:
Left Behind Standalone
Accessibility
Localization
AMD
Steam Deck
Epic Games Store Version
Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill.Lotsof Henry Cavill.
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