The Last of Us™ Part I

Tally it all up: a near-perfect story strapped into a port that almost destroyed it.

A fixed point in the history of narrative games

Start with the weight of the thing underneath. The 2013 original swept nearly every award of its year — BAFTA's Best Game, Best Story, Best Performer and audio achievement, the GDCA's Game of the Year, Best Narrative and Best Design, a D.I.C.E. Game of the Year, a Metacritic 95. Almost single-handedly it nailed shut the long-doubted question of whether games could tell a cinematic, adult story; the answer, after this, was yes.

A decade later the Joel-and-Ellie line still hasn't been beaten on emotional density, and the acclaimed TV adaptation reproduces it faithfully shot for shot, the original voice cast even cameoing back in. That is the core this remake is preserving — a masterpiece that needs no fresh proof, only careful keeping and a new coat of paint. Grasp that, and you grasp why the port disaster made players so furious: what got broken wasn't some ordinary new release, it was a milestone many treat as an emotional landmark, and nobody wants to watch it crash to desktop on their own machine.

Who it's for, and who should walk past

The buyer is clear: anyone who has never played this story, wants a high-density linear narrative, and has hardware up to the job. For you, the patched version is the best-looking, most complete-staged way to start, and the journey is worth clearing your weekend for — phone off, one sitting, all the way through. The non-buyer is just as clear: if you already played it on PS4 and only want to re-buy for the visuals, the upgrade doesn't earn the full price, and the money is better saved for an actual new game; if what you want is open exploration, gear progression and a long grind loop, then a tightly linear, freedom-light, credits-equals-end narrative piece is wrong for you at the root, and no amount of good story will keep you awake. Know which experience you're after before you open the wallet — it's far more useful than fretting over the exact score. There is no shame in either answer; the worst outcome is a buyer who wanted a sandbox and got a corridor, or a newcomer who skipped one of the medium's best stories because a number looked low. Match the game to your appetite and the verdict mostly writes itself.

The version to buy, and where this lands

As for which edition: if you're playing only on PC, please wait until it has both big patches installed (around 25GB and 49GB) before you buy, because the launch hell of hours-long shader compiles and constant crashes has largely been smoothed over. If your budget is tight and you happen to own a PlayStation, though, the PS4/PS5 remaster is still the steadier, cheaper pick, and the experience gap is nowhere near as wide as the price gap.

In the end, the staging and that father-daughter story remain unmatched to this day — that is its immovable value, and on the story alone it deserves a number near the ceiling. But the botched PC launch, stacked with zero new content, cut multiplayer and a full-price tag, buried that greatness under crashes and stutters for a long while before the patches landed. The composite 8.0 isn't the score of the story itself; it's "masterpiece" minus "port accident" minus "content stinginess," the number players actually held in their hands during those launch weeks. The patches have fixed it now, and it finally deserves its own image again — but that disaster goes on its record, and it belongs in this review too.