The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered Steam Deck Performance Review
The most recent PlayStation PC Port was Spider-Man 2 and the results on Steam Deck were inconsistent to say the least. Yes, technically it worked, but mileage varied drastically, and there were a lot of concessions to be made.
Right out of the box, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered comes with a graphics mode titled Steam Deck. It has most of the settings already set to low values and although the result might not look as good as I remember it from 2020, it works well and maintains a solid 30 FPS. The biggest sacrifice being made is the frame rate and the character models.
However, with a little tweaking further into graphics and visual settings, you can improve the visuals, the frame rate and have a much better overall experience. Also, like most demanding titles on the Steam Deck, you won’t get much out of each battery charge as you can hear the fan working on overtime.
Feel free to adjust settings as you see fit, but after a good amount of tweaking, here is what I found provided the most balanced experience between visuals and performance with The Last of Us Part 2 on Steam Deck. Under Graphics, increase level of detail and texture quality to high, shadows to low, image based lighting off, bounced lighting off, ambient occlusion off, reflections either low or off, refraction medium, motion blur off, bloom off, particle low, volumetric low, lens flare off, chromatic aberration off and film grain off. Under display, frame rate cap to 60, vsync off, upscale method FSR 3.1.0
After adjusting these settings, the visuals look noticeably better. It’s not how you should experience the game, but it’s more than serviceable on Steam Deck. With the adjustments you are able to have a higher frame rate of lows 50’s for the most part with slight dips into the high 40’s, which aren’t that noticeable. You could probably achieve 60, but the visual sacrifices would be too great.
As for the game, it currently holds a 93 on OpenCritic with 95 percent of critics recommending and I concur with that. I even find myself wanting to make it to the next checkpoint despite initial intentions only to play long enough to see how Steam Deck performs. If for some reason, you haven’t had a chance to play The Last of Us Part 2, I strongly recommend that you do and if you’re only option is Steam Deck, the good news is that it works pretty good.
