The Last of Us' PC port is bad, but the bugs are great

A bug-afflicted Joel in the PC port of The Last of Us, with incredibly bushy eyebrows.

(Image credit: Zerindo on Reddit / Sony)

The PC port of The Last of Us Part 1 is not good. In fact, it's bad. We're talking shader-plague bad, random-crashes bad, all-the-Steam-reviews-are-real-angry bad. It's a shambolic situation for a marquee Sony game and yet another in a long line of exhaustingly shitty PC ports.

But hear me out, what if it's also a little bit good? Because I've been scanning through some of the clips and screenshots people are sharing online, and I think TLOU PC might be one of the finest works of absurd comedy of our era. I mean, look at this:

PC Joel lookin hella fine from r/thelastofus

To think, if TLOU's PC version hadn't careened into the platform backwards and on fire, we'd never know what it'd be like if Joel was played by Bogdan from Breaking Bad, and the world would be just that little bit darker.

Hair, in particular, seems to be an issue for the game at the moment. Whether Joel's eyebrows, Tess' waxy locks, or Joel's daughter's desperate, tragic attempt to mask her premature hair loss using dry pasta, everyone is currently running around the game's post-apocalypse in dire need of a shower.

New tlou pc graphic 💀 from r/thelastofus

I think my favourite of the bugs I've seen is the one that just drenches everyone, though. I can't begin to fathom what causes it, but a quirk of the code has been generating the most thoroughly sodden cast in videogames history, droplets bouncing this way and that with every flap of Joel's jowls. It makes the entire game look like it's taking place in 50°C heat, thereby turning it into an example of climate fiction.

PC weird new glitches, the characters get wet during a cutscene for no reason from r/thelastofus

People are sharing all sorts of other bugs out there (like the fact that Tess can levitate, an underexplored aspect of her character in the PS5 version) in The Last of Us communities online, and particularly in the TLOU subreddit, and I'm sure there are more yet to come. For now, we can just sit and meditate on the game's message during the one and a half minutes it takes to build its shaders.

PC Shaders go brrrrr from r/thelastofus

After all, as a player going by LemonZitroneCitroen said, maybe the state of the game's port just enhances the whole thing. "This version of the game is incredibly immersive," they said, "The world of The Last of Us is a harsh, unforgiving one and the people are suffering. We, the player, are in this cruel world and so too, should we suffer with its characters … We PC players are the spirit of The Last of Us".

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.