Hands on: The Last of Us Remastered

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Hands on: The Last of Us Remastered

With The Last of Us Remastered’s PS4 release just weeks away (July 29th), I dove into a pre-release version of the game to see exactly how Naughty Dog is leveraging PS4’s hardware to upgrade last year’s biggest Game of the Year winner.

First, there’s the immediately noticeable bump in native screen resolution. The jump from 720p (PS3) to native 1080p (PS4) gives the visuals a major shot in the arm. The crisp new presentation banishes those nasty jaggies to the margins, while higher resolution environment textures adorn the lovingly crafted post-apocalyptic environments.

The Last of Us Remastered

But the kicker is the new framerate. I’ll admit to being at least a bit skeptical on hearing that Naughty Dog would target a smoother, more fluid 60 frames per second for The Last of Us Remastered. I wondered whether it would add a distracting layer of artificiality, that it might somehow interfere with the game’s cinematic look and feel. Luckily, based on my hands-on experiences at a recent media event in New York City, those concerns feel entirely unwarranted. Played at the higher framerate, The Last of Us Remastered has a silky smooth feel that makes aiming and camera control feel more responsive and natural.

Conveniently, the PS4 version was shown side-by-side with the original PS3 game. Curious, I picked up the DualShock 3 and panned the camera around for a few seconds, before hastily switching right back to Remastered. It’s nice to see that Naughty Dog is giving players the choice to lock TLOUR to 30 frames per second — which PlayStation.Blog’s own Ryan Clements currently favors — but for me the higher framerate is no contest. I suspect this one will boil down to personal preference.

The Last of Us Remastered

The Last of Us RemasteredThe Last of Us Remastered

Then there are a slew of subtler visual details. Lighting quality has received a boost, with improved shadow detail. Joel and Ellie’s in-game character models also look more detailed, sporting higher resolution textures that allowed me to see the fabric weave in Joel’s filthy flannel shirt. The 1080p presentation also helped me spot subtle visual details I’d never noticed in the original PS3 version, like the way tiny streams of blood trickle down Joel’s arm when he’s injured, or how rats weave erratically through garbage-strewn ruins.

The gameplay remains unchanged, though the higher framerate does lend a feeling of increased responsiveness. The most notable difference is that the L2 and R2 triggers now control aiming and firing — and yep, you can switch back to the classic L1 and R1 controls if that floats your boat.

The Last of Us Remastered

Though I didn’t get a chance to try out the multiplayer mode (a personal favorite), the campaign is looking mighty promising. The Last of Us Remastered will come complete with all previously released DLC, including the excellent story chapter Left Behind. And at a reduced price of $50, it’s a good bet for new PS4 owners who missed out on one of the best games of the generation, or seasoned TLOU veterans eager for another dose of Joel and Ellie.

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148 Comments

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  • Really excited to play this for the first time! Heard great things.

  • I cannot wait to play this game, again.
    Masterpiece.

    And,
    i cannot wait to play it with the Ds4 Controller, and use the Sharing Feature with this game.

  • @Hayterfan

    It says early access to multiplayer items, not the actual game.
    Which means you get them right away in multiplayer.

  • ha so i hear, if you have tlou you still paying full price for the remastered. big f didlydo. f that. i guess my ps4 is gonna keep gathering dust until 2015.

  • Okay did this guy SERIOUSLY say that he was worried 60 FPS would make the game less cinematic? Please… someone… revoke this guys ability to write ANYTHING about video games. Thank you.

  • It’s been a year since I’ve played The Last of Us and it has left an indelible mark on me as a gamer. I’ve been holding out for a copy and when I heard that it was coming to PS4. I knew that I had to get it. I’m excited for this. I never played Left Behind, so that’s a bonus. As well as 1080p visuals. Naughty Dog, Thank you :)

  • lightningfastpig

    I can’t believe you haven’t tried multiplayer mode. TLOU multiplayer is really unique and fun. What I love there the most is you yourself can destroy the other team on your own when you can. Anyway, I hope they revert back to the original without the latest upgrades in ps3 because it really messed it up where the pros became more dangerous and the noobies became more nooby. Unless they fixed it or something. I stopped playing ps3 after a few plays with the new upgrades/skills. Hopefully ps4 would be better. Cheers!

  • can someone plz help me i just got log off psn it keep giving me this error 8002A548 and when i do connection test show psn failed to connect

  • Any word if the PS3 trophies will transfer to the PS4 trophies and unlock?

    I just recently got 100% on the PS3 list and that was a real hassle to go through on grounded mode +. Also, those DLC multiplayer trophies were very annoying, get 3 downs and don’t die on certain maps seems to encourage people to play on Interrogation, get 3 downs and hide the remaining time, or quit if they don’t get the maps they want.

    I would definitely buy the PS4 version just to play multiplayer with all the new players, but it will make me want to go for all those trophies again, and I don’t plan on it, so I’m going to pass if they don’t transfer. Still a great game, game of the year for its time, highly recommended.

  • Just let us download video footage like you guys did with Killzone Shadowfall.

  • Looks amazing even in these screens. Raw PS4 data on my TV is going to be treat.

    Thanks for bringing this title to PS4.

  • @robakalunchbox yes, more than 60 fps make it less cinematic, because we are all used to watching movies at 24 frames per second. Before this has come up by the 1886 developer, I felt the same way. 30 fps feels less real and more immersive in an artistic way.
    I prefer movies at 24 fps which ultimately makes me like games at 30 better. Some of it is due to our technical limitations, which we can’t visibly sense as good at 24 / 30 fps as with 60, which is a good thing in my opinion, which is also part of the 30 fps immersiveness. And please don’t bull**** me with “oh we got the hardware to do so”, no we don’t, not even your fastest computer, maybe in 10 years. If we are able to process visual effects so convincingly that a higher framerate would not reveal artifacts, then that’d be the moment to go 60 fps. If you are filming movies at 48 fps, the lightning has to be perfect, the makeup and of course CGI has to be top notch. But even with such a high grossing movie such as The Hobbit, 48 fps looked cheap. 30 fps is like makeup, fooling the eye, which is a good thing in this case.

  • As happy as I am to see such a fantastic game being PS4’ed. Im sure im as ticked off as most people when this happens.

    Bought Tomb Raider on a PSN sales..1 month later it was free, 2 months after that it was announced for PS4
    Bought this, loved it, now theres a PS4 version thats full price. Giving the faithful gamers a discount for upgrading would be a fanastic way to show some love.

    If either game had an upgrade fee id take it in a heart beat. I get its harder for disc based games but PSN games theres no reason why it cant be done

  • @ thezenguy
    “ha so i hear, if you have tlou you still paying full price for the remastered” The game isn’t full price. Its $10 below full retail pricing has an upgraded presentation and some new tweaks and feature with the paid DLC. Re-releasing the game on PS4 is an good idea. A lot of people moved from Xbox to PlayStation have never played the game me included.

  • I’ve made it a policy of mine not to buy games that I already have but this might be the one instance where I break that rule… I’ve got another two weeks or so to make up my mind!

  • Looks great..but i wish they would add servers for online…sick of laggy host’s.

  • I HOPE SONY DOES’NT FORGET THAT THE GAMERS ARE THE ONES WHO DECIDE IF A PLATFORM IS SUCCESSFUL OR NOT! IF SONY KEEPS INFURIATING THEIR LOYAL FANS BY NOT OFFERING CROSS BUY DISCOUNTS THEY WILL DIFFIDENTLY WON’T BE ON TOP FOR LONG! MAYBE NOT TODAY,MAYBE NOT TOMORROW, BUT YOU WILL SEE BACK LASH FOR THIS SONY!

  • Finally a game for PS4, keep them coming.

  • So sick of hearing about the most overrated “game” of all time. Crappy “gameplay”, crappy story that is a complete rip off of The Road with Zombies, broken AI since Ellie is invisible to enemies, and it’s just not fun.

    I miss when video games were video games and not linear scripted interactive movies with QTEs. QTEs have also really gotta go since they’re not real gameplay.

    Why do people praise mediocrity?

  • Well Sid who confermed the 60fps? I have a solution lock the game at 30fps and show us some gameplay side by side with the ps3 version so we could see at least the visual differences,I am having real trouble trusting you guy’s after the Killzone shadowfall disaster we were lied to then and i think we are being lied to know.I loved the game but the AI was horrible was that fixed?We will not see any gameplay until this game is released thats the truth.And im sory to say this but sony is really getting on alot of customer’s nerves the hype is over bring the games not “remastered” ps3 ports.

  • Sorry for my spelling XD

  • One more thing those pictures are not from the actuall game thats concept art REALLY SONY !!!!!!!!

  • i played through this game about 8 times, best game ive ever played. I cannot WAIT to play through all those tears and pain again on the ps4

  • @seraphim_falcuno
    Your post is ludicrous.
    What does it say about a person, if they don’t like The Last of Us? Do you believe a person’s enjoyment of a game is a reasonable gauge of them as a person? I’d hope not. If anything, it speaks that they’re able to think for themselves – something you’re surely not able to do, as you seem capable of only mimicking every piece of editorial drivel said about the game.
    How about the people that went in expecting a decent story, and were severely disappointed? Was that too much to hope? Oh, it was? Okay.
    The fact that you have the audacity to make a claim about the person’s ‘attention span’ is hilarious; Red Dead Redemption required for more patience than The Last of Us ever demanded. The Last of Us was a blockbuster – if you’ve seen any zombie movie, you’ve seen ‘The Last of Us.’ The story of Red Dead Redemption stood far superior to the Last of Us; the former tread new ground, the latter managed to only rehash areas already covered.
    Ugh.

  • 1) Please, for the love of all things great and beautiful, drop this “30fps is more cinematic” rationale. It is straight-up dishonesty.

    2) The option to lock the game at 30fps suggests that the game otherwise runs at a variable frame rate, especially since the technical explanation is a “targeted 60fps,” whatever that means. And quite frankly, Mr. Shuman’s “I detected no drops” is hardly reassuring.

    TLOU Remastered is, in my opinion, Sony’s real chance to show that the PS4 really can deliver a “next gen” experience, so to speak. If 1080p/60 is really unattainable, even for a game which is a last gen remake, then I really question whether a PS4 purchase will ever be in my future. (the console’s dearth of media capabilities notwithstanding)

  • this should be released earlier in digital psn, we dont have preload already :/ i was counting with pre load this title
    also people aways get phisicaly copies earlier, come on

    by the way..
    i didn’t see anywhere, but this will be available at 12pm EST or PST?

  • I was a Xbox gamer last generation but got feed up bought my PS4 love it and Im looking forward to finally playing the game i missed out on.

  • Why are you announcing more DLC in leaks when people are buying non-refundable versions of this?

  • Not qute sure about TLoU yet. People tell me it’s overflowing with quick time events, (Short scenes where you have to hit onscreen buttons in perfect timing or you fail.) and that’s a HUGE turn-off for me so I avoided it. Got a PS4 on launch day.Still unsure about it.

  • At what point do you think the technology is there to give people who already bought the game that already want to buy it again on PS4 a discount?

    I hear the cute figures of fifty percent of people who own a PS4 never owned a PS3, why not give a discount? If there is a huge amount of people who never owned a PS3, just give the discount.

  • @Sponge-worthy I’m sorry but your credibility on this matter is a far stretch, so please stop posting nonsense.

  • 30 fps do look more theatrical than 60. The simple reason why is not based on personal preference but on facts.
    The film industry found that 24 fps (with a little motion blur sprinkled in) was the sweet spot for moviegoers. The fact is, the human eye can theoretically see plus 100 fps, but at a certain point it may simply be unnoticeable. When given less information, your brain has to fill in the gaps, as it happens with 24 / 30 fps, which is not a bad thing, considering we are far away from creating real life virtual realism. A higher framerate means the visual effects have to look even better, but since we will be limited to hardware and tools for a long time in the future, covering up unrealism is not a bad thing. When I play Halo on my computer, it looks cheap and old, due to its age but when playing on the XBox on the other hand, it doesn’t look as bad and outdated, due to the lower frame rate, which means again, less information is given to work with.

    You are free to express your liking towards higher frame rates but please don’t deny the existence of a theatrical effect, because you have no clue what you are talking about.

  • Ive done two playthroughs on PS3 on normal and one plus and I traded it wen i traded in my ps3 for the 4 and Im too hype for this!!! 1080!!!!!!!

  • Amazing Naughty Dog.

    If you love the work of Ashley Johnson the voice of Ellie you can watch her on the new webseries from Felicia Day.
    Just search in youtube Spooked and you can enjoy Ashley Johnson in this comedy. If you like it just support the channel and maybe there will be a new season.

    Thanks!

  • Funny…all the things you said in this sentence “Then there are a slew of subtler visual details…..”,can be seen on PS3….and frankly if you didn’t noticed that before…you barely played the game or rushed throught it.ND is the best dev when it comes to details too….so I always look for tiny details on their games.

    Anyway the PS4 is the same game…a joke made to fool sheeps to buy the same game.But everyone do what they want with their hard-earned money.Sheeps too.

  • Will the pre-order Remastered DLC be available eventually for everyone? I adore TLOU, but $50 for a graphical/fps upgrade, cutscene commentary and photo mode is not a price I’m willing to pay.

  • I can’t wait to play Factions MP on this new Remastered version with full DS4 set up. I wanna hit it, Hard!!!!

  • Pretty excited to go through this again.

  • (Part 1 of 2)
    This is BS that people that purchased the digital version on the PS3 won’t get a discount on the PS4. It’s not as if we were able to sell the copy and make our own discount. Even if we were required to erase the PS3 version to get at least a 50% discounted PS4 version that would be something. This was the first digital game on PS3 that I purchased and though it’s an advantage to not have to load a disc I found that the REAL advantage is to SONY who save money off the bat since there is no disc, middle man or retailer to take their cut as well as not having the game re-sold at a loss to SONY.

  • (Part 2 of 2)
    Thanks SONY by rewarding my loyalty to your brand by saveing yourself money only to have you insult me by charging me the same amount as a newcomer when I already purchased it as a digital download. I was looking forward to playing the PS4 version and even stopped playing the game again when I heard a PS4 version was coming so as to make it worth the wait. You could have made additional money off of me again even with a discounted version and I could have enjoyed a new version of the game but this isn’t going to happen because you are greedy and I have dignity. I’m sure you’ll be successful with your REMASTERED LAST OF US without integrity standing in your way.

  • I am so ready for this new version. I have never played ANY online version of any of my games and I am considering the remastered TLOU to be my first attempt at multi-player. I may never sleep again. I wonder if Headshots will feel different in getting the reticle lined up.

  • @mikeattic: You’ve done an excellent job expanding upon the industry sales pitch, so I will not impugn your credibility in that regard. But as we are no longer living in the era of hand-cranked film cameras and projectors, nor are we even discussing a unilateral form of expression (movies) in this forum, let’s talk about video games, here, in the 21st century.

    To borrow a term of art from one medium (“cinematic”) to rationalize away the shortcomings of another is both illogical and intellectually dishonest. Movies are one-way experiences: decisions regarding composition, lighting, depth of field, color, and action are delivered to the audience on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Whereas, video games are truly interactive experiences. (As an aside, this distinction is the basis for Roger Ebert’s famous/infamous assertion that video games cannot be works of art)

  • The fact of the matter is that if Naughty Dog could have gotten TLOU to run at a locked 60fps on the PS4, they would have. Sure, there may be some handful of gamers out there somewhere who are in fact looking for last-gen performance from their next-gen console. But for the sake of honest debate, let’s call a spade a spade and ask Mr. Shuman to own up to TLOU’s actual performance (or lack thereof) on the PS4.

    Because really, if you accept substandard performance on the excuse of some artistic or “cinematic” concern, then you’re already behind the curve of both commentary and analysis on this issue. And hey, don’t take my word for it. Just Google “The Great Framerate Non-Debate” as an example.

  • ENABLE PRELOAD PLEASE! Why? 50GB that’s why. I have a 50Megabit connection, that’s 6Megabytes a second at that speed it’ll take me 8.3 hours to download TLOU:R. If it preloaded during the night it won’t be so bad for most people as oppose to manually starting the download then they realize how big and long it’ll be to get the game. Or maybe when they turning their awesome ps4 on and seeing TLOU:R downloaded, a pleasant surprise. More attachment to their console for being awesome for such a feature.

    Please use your management or your chain of command and get this in the works. A last minute surprise for us.

    -Curt

  • @Tortri. Math fail. It does not take 8.3 hours to download 50 GB of data on a 50 Megabit connection. More like just under 2 and a half hours. It takes about 15 seconds to do the math on a standard calculator or you can find a download speed calculator on Google that will do it for you. You probably meant to say you have a connection capable of up to 50 Megabits, but if it takes 8.3 hours, then your actual speeds from PSN are far less than that.

  • Seriously…no pre-load? So happy I got the digital copy ( LOTS of sarcasm there…..)

  • Too bad TLoU wasn’t released by Activision, Ubisoft, Warner Bros, or EA so we could get the PS4 version for $10 if the PS3 version was purchased. I really enjoyed it on the PS3, and was looking forward to it on PS4, but alas…

  • I still see glitches been watching the stream why couldn’t the leaves on the vine be fixed from waving fast or when crossing a river it makes to water glitch and fast flow and what about objects in the water or when the wind blows makes it stutter please fix or I won’t repurchase this game

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