"The Last of Us Part 1" is not immune to the shader plague (opens in new tab) that causes many PC games to stutter and crash.

Sony's latest PC port is choppy on all hardware, despite the game's modest system requirements. Players report stuttering, frame rate inconsistencies, and frequent crashes.

The root of the problem seems to lie in the game's shader compilation, which has become a common problem in PC games over the past few years. The graphics card must do some preliminary processing before the world is rendered correctly, which must be done at least once in every scene in the game as preparation. In some cases, developers can pre-compile shaders so that this is not necessary at the start of the game, but this is not common.

The Last of Us Part 1 allows you to jump right into the game and let the shaders compile in the background, but you will get a warning about performance issues. I decide to play the game right away, but the shaders only reach 40% progress for 10 minutes before crashing. When I rebooted, the progress had jumped to 80%. My PC has an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, Intel Core i9 12900K, and 32 GB of RAM.

I was told to wait for an early cutscene in the intro sequence of the game, presumably to load the shaders for the next sequence. Other than that, it worked fine until Joel and Tess took their first steps into the overgrown city. In the game's subreddit (opens in new tab) and Steam forums (opens in new tab), players with various hardware setups, from Nvidia 4090s to 2070s, continue to stutter and crash until the shaders are compiled reported that they are still experiencing stuttering and crashes.

On Steam, the game has over 1,400 reviews (open in new tab), most of them "negative". Many of them criticize the time it takes to compile shaders, the amount of crashes, and the fact that it eats system resources even when finished; a negative review by Steam user Bänjah (open in new tab) says: "Crash of Ass™ Part 1."

The PC version was co-developed by Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy: Legacy of Thieves Collection" (open in new tab), the same studio as the PC version. It is unclear how much effort Naughty Dog put into the PC version itself, but "sharing the story and experience on PC as well as PS5 is something Naughty Dog has embraced and will continue to support," he said in a blog post today (opens in new tab), and will suggesting that it will be part of the PC porting process.

Iron Galaxy's last PC port, "Uncharted," has limited graphics options but seems to run well for most people, except for a bit of fumbling at startup. Sony's last PC port, "Returnal" (opens in new tab), was developed by Climax Studios, while the PC version of 2021's "God of War" (opens in new tab) was created by Jetpack Interactive.

Sony has not commented on the port's performance or whether it plans to release a patch anytime soon.

The huge success of HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us (opens in new tab) has almost certainly convinced many to finally give the game a try, but until it works properly, it might be better to start replaying it instead.