So let's look at the tentpole enhancements as Naughty Dog has outlined them. Principally,
we're looking at 1080p resolution at 60fps in both single and multi-player, a 4x detail increase to texture maps and a 2x resolution boost to shadow maps. Texture streaming is no longer required owing to the PS4's prodigious RAM, and there's longer draw distances, better LOD and improved particle effects. In essence, Naughty Dog has scaled up the original game to full HD and boosted assets to match, while doubling frame-rate. How does that look? Well, we've prepared a 22-minute 60fps gameplay capture here, downscaled from full resolution captures, and we've provided a 1080p60 download that should work just fine on most modern computers - and indeed the PlayStation 3.
This segment - chosen to leave the heart-rending prologue unspoiled - gives a much better account of the quality of the game than the prologue, and
it's important to point out that this is a remaster, not a remake. Where existing higher quality assets are available (for example, cut-scene character models) they are utilised, but there's little evidence to suggest that Naughty Dog has upgraded any of the environments, or boosted geometry. First impressions aren't actually that impressive - The Last of Us' prologue initially has you in control of an unenhanced character model and despite the mooted enhancements to texture and shadow quality, the overall impression is that next-gen is actually much more of a leap than you'd give it credit for.
Geometry quality is unimpressive, environment detail is relatively spartan and this section does little to showcase the game at its best.
It's also apparent that
there's still a yawning chasm between the quality of the pre-rendered cinematics - almost certainly rendered at a much higher resolution, then downscaled - and the game itself, resulting in a jarring leap between FMV and gameplay not helped by a small pause between them. Uncharted's cinematics were rendered in-engine but were designed to look like gameplay with seamless transitions, making for a more consistent experience and that is lacking here. What's clear is that Naughty Dog has completely re-rendered each cut-scene though - they would have been 30fps on PS3 to match the gameplay, and they're running at 60 here, with compression artefacts only really a noticeable problem on very dark scenes.
However, more GPU-intensive effects may have impacted The Last of Us Remastered's other major enhancement: 60fps gameplay, doubled from the PS3 30fps standard (and based on our analysis videos, a target it frequently had issues sustaining). To answer the question everyone's been asking, frame-rate isn't locked to 60fps, but The Last of Us Remastered does spend the vast majority of its time at the optimal refresh. Problems can kick in during busy combat scenes, and just like the PS3 version, particles and transparent effects in particular can take their toll - the first confrontation with a fungus-spewing Bloater sees frame-rate hit a minimum of 48fps.
The good news is that this is pretty much as bad as it got across multiple hours of gameplay, and it's telling that in the 14-minute performance analysis video below (comprised of a number of gameplay clips), the game holds its lock well for the vast majority of its duration. You'll need to skip ahead to the nine minute mark to see the combat clips that caused genuine issues for this first iteration of the Naughty Dog engine running on PS4. At this point it has to be said that the game's day one patch was not available for testing, so there remains the possibility that things may improve once that hits - and we'll be sure to update you if that is the case.
