40 Minutes to Load Graphics? Last of Us Part I PC Port Is a Mess

pcmag.com:

If you bought the PC port of The Last of Us Part I, brace yourself for long load times and bugs. 

Sony launched the hit PlayStation game for Windows on Tuesday, bringing the zombie-driven adventure title to Steam. But some gamers say the PC port is unplayable, citing frequent crashes and other technical snafus. 

“No words to describe such a poor PC port, with lots of glitches, bugs, stuttering scenes,” wrote one user review(Opens in a new window) on Steam. 

You’ll likely encounter the problems when you first run the game on a PC. It will tell you it needs to compile the shaders to fully render the graphics. For us, this process took over 40 minutes. But other users report(Opens in a new window) having to wait more than two hours for the shaders to fully compile. Fortunately, this seems to be a one-time process. 

You can start playing the game while the shaders load in the background, if you’re willing to settle for a temporary drop in graphics.

But the PC port also has some game-crashing bugs, according to players. “I waited for almost 2.5 hours for the game to build shaders while crashing in the main menu every 5 or so minutes—one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a game,” wrote another review(Opens in a new window) on Steam.

So far, we haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs during our brief playtime.

Others have complained the game consumes an excessive amount of PC resources. “Terrible optimization. Game takes more than 8 gigs of VRAM on medium settings, 100% CPU utilization in menu. And the temps are really high too. Probably going to refund soon,” wrote(Opens in a new window) another user. 

The collective negative feedback has caused The Last of Us Part I to so far receive “mostly negative”