The last big hurrah of the PlayStation 3 era, The Last of Us launched on June 14th, 2013 – five months before the arrival of PS4. A technological masterpiece for the era and a crowning achievement for Sony first party development, there’s a strong argument that developer Naughty Dog pushed the ageing hardware to its very limits – a fitting send-off for the console by one of its most accomplished developers. Almost seven years later to the day, the studio is set to repeat the trick with the imminent arrival of The Last of Us Part 2.
Preview coverage for this title is a little tricky. While we’ve played the game, what we can explicitly comment on is highly limited and the only assets we can share from this slice of the game have already been shown on last week’s State of Play. But what we can confidently share is that, put simply, The Last of Us Part 2 does not disappoint. From a technological standpoint, there’s a clear path of progression from The Last of Us Remastered, through the still-stunning Uncharted 4 and the often overlooked Lost Legacy, right up to this latest Naughty Dog showcase.
Some of the basics are easily covered – essentially remaining unchanged from prior trailers and indeed Uncharted 4 before it. Rendering resolution on PlayStation 4 Pro is still 1440p, backed up by the firm’s clean temporal anti-aliasing solution. Performance is solid at 30fps, with few deviations, and actually improved overall compared to Uncharted 4’s showing on PlayStation 4 Pro. In terms of image quality and frame-rate, we don’t anticipate many complaints.
