The Last of Us Part I Is Now Steam Deck Verified, With v1.1.0 Update

The Last of Us Part I is now Steam Deck verified, thanks to a new update that fixes several graphics and performance issues on the handheld gaming device. While the game was certainly playable on the Deck before, it was nowhere near the optimal experience, resulting in frequent crashes and some visual glitches that turned lead character Ellie Williams' hair into spaghetti. The verification comes packed with update v1.1.0 — a welcome addition, given developer Naughty Dog initially claimed that it wasn't a priority. The claim made sense at the time because the studio was facing criticism and addressing hotfixes for its terrible PC port.

The remaining chunk of the patch is aimed at fixing the Windows PC version, starting with optimisations to improve the CPU and GPU performance. In my technical review of The Last of Us Part I PC, I mentioned how the game would completely hog your processors' cores, even while simply waiting in the main menu as the shaders complete building. That process was extremely time-consuming as well, an Naughty Dog claims to have reduced this with the latest update. Numerous crashes related to graphics settings have been fixed, in addition to one that occurred when trying to save Photo Mode pictures in 4K resolution. User reports also mentioned a delay when exiting the pause menu and trying to shoot immediately after — that's been fixed as well.

Normally, enabling VSync should get rid of any screen tearing when panning the camera, but some of it persisted in The Last of Us Part I PC, which the developer has now addressed in patch v1.1.0. Being a full-blown remake of the original 2013 game, Naughty Dog added a bunch of fun modes to the new version, including a Speedrun mode, which throws a timer onto your screen for accurate splits. The studio has now rectified a glitch where the timer would roll back following a crash or when quitting to the desktop.

VRAM management was a big issue in this PlayStation–PC port, with the game originally requiring massive doses of memory to run at anything beyond the Low preset. The update has now added a Very Low graphics preset that would allow those with low-end graphics cards to be able to play the game, even if the visual fidelity looks poor.

“We at Naughty Dog and our partners at Iron Galaxy are closely watching player reports to support future improvements and patches,” the blog post reads. “We are actively optimising, working on game stability, and implementing additional fixes which will all be included in regularly released future updates.”

Last month, Naughty Dog revealed that it has begun work on a brand-new single-player experience based on the franchise, details of which will be revealed in time. Additionally, the studio scaled down the team working on The Last of Us multiplayer game as a means to ‘reassess its quality and long-term viability.' As it turns out, the company summoned Destiny makers Bungie to evaluate the game, who then raised concerns about the project's ability to keep players engaged for long periods. The game was expected to feature a new post-apocalyptic region and a cast of NPCs, marking the first project in the franchise where Neil Druckmann wasn't involved as lead writer or director.

The Last of Us Part I is now available on PC and PS5.