What was with the hype over graphics in The Last of Us?

I picked up that PS3 black friday bundle with The Last of Us and Arkham Origins and I gotta say I am very disappointed with the graphics in The Last of Us. It seems like there's hardly any AA if any at all, there's a lot of bad textures, and the blur bothers me. The shadows look good though.

It shocks me that people were saying it actually looked better than PC games... Even multiplat games running on my 460 look way better than it.

It's a Sony exclusive.

I personally think KZ3 and KZ2 are still the best looking games on the ps3.

I thought the graphics were pretty mediocre in TLOU. Didn't look as good as the Uncharted games even. A lot of the textures were really bad and Im not really a stickler for things like that

what, you just learned that cows were blowing smoke about their games? just remember back to all the MGS4 praise and watch a playthrough and see if that doesn't put you in a boredom coma

Well I didn't own a PS3 until now and I'd seen my old roommate before I moved play BF3 and it looked pretty good to me.

Yeah I got the same bundle. And the graphics aren't that great. I remember people were claiming it was the new graphics king or some crap.

it's not just about pixels, the art direction and just pure attention to detail is top notch in the last of us. some parts look better than others but overall i think the game looks great.

Agreed but lots of cows were outright saying it could be a contender for best looking game of all time and matched up with stuff like Crysis 3 and Witcher 2. Oh and another thing, Witcher 2 looks nowhere as good as it's hyped up to be if you ask me. Also runs very poorly for how it looks.

Now I didn't believe them but I expected it to at least look good most of the time...

the art direction may be good, as are the animations, but the actual graphics are not that great

when i see TLOU all I see are jaggies and mud.

Technically, it doesn't look at all removed from Uncharted 2. Plus, it looks worse because it's pushing the hardware too hard and has some disgusting textures.

And the art is crap.

I find it hilarious when people call hermits graphic whores when you get people over praising or nitpicking at the graphics of certain games regularly. For me a game is 90% gameplay and everything else is secondary. I'm not going to let some gammy textures or a bland colour palette bother me if a game is fun. Fair enough if a game is a bit repetitive or lacking then I might need something pretty to distract me!

also, that game takes forever to freaking load.

that 2x blu-ray drive

yeah, i wish it could be installed

It's a great looking game

I thought it looked great, some of those cut scenes were simply fantastic.

Top 5 game of ALL time. Awwww yahhh

Looked great to me... really liked that snow level, was surprised how good that looked. Anyways I need to play the game again, this time on my 1080p plasma.

one of the best looking games of the generation if not the best. Now go and read any review you want to see that is not just the cows saying this but when you're butthurt your butt hurts.

@cain006:

go get an LED HDTV ... and throw away your grandmother's sdtv

@hippiesanta: I am using an HDTV. The game just doesn't look very good. The shadows and lights impressed me but that's it. There's many bad textures and the AA is terrible or nonexistant.

I only played a couple hours but it only loaded once. Sure it took a long time but it's not a big deal to me if it only does it once. At least it's not like STALKER.

TLOU is a victim of uncanny valley. In three years all of those blurry textures and jaggy edges will stick out like a sore thumb

Ah look - someone mentioned TLOU. Stand back, a lem/hermit circle jerk is incoming.

Edit: too late

Your first mistake was taking cows words seriously or like they had any merit

The cut scenes looked fantastic. And honestly overall it was probably top 10 on consoles last gen. I am not a huge fan of the game play in TLOU but the story and production value is top notch. IMHO Naughty Dog was very overrated with the Uncharted series but The Last of Us saved them in my book. They still need to work out how to make a fun, non linear game though. Story and graphics are only part of the experience. I want challenging and rewarding game play. I'm sure they will bring it this gen.

the problem is that the game has a 90+ on Metacritic which mean that plenty of people found it to be very enjoyable, so why change? And what's the problem with being linear anyway? There are many kind of games out there, not everything has to be a boring open-world game like Skyrim. If you want challenge then raise the difficulty. Both Uncharted and TLOU offer a higher degree of challenge than most games of last gen.

I just played it, the initial load takes forever but I just had a random load in the middle of a cutscene (right after the QTE event during the ambush in the truck) kind of jarring

the in engine cut scenes look pretty good, but the actual in game portions are no where close to best of this gen

It looks great for a console game, but beyond that no. Why is a console game not being up to snuff with even middle of the pack PC games of the last few years a shocker?

@jg4xchamp: it's not but people were/are saying that tlou is one of if not the best looking game of the gen

@cain006: You bought a 7 year old console and expected to be impressed by graphics. not sure if srs. Even your 460 is miles beyond what's powering the PS3 man

Exactly this. Fanboys were actually convinced by the pre-release trailers which were running on PCs, with about 4 times the resolution and AA that the final version would actually have.

That said, it does look fantastic for a game on a 7 year old console. But yeah, those saying it looked as good as (let alone better than) PC games are hilariously delusional fanboys, end of story.

I remember the cows calling it graphics king...

It's a great game but the graphics are pretty poor (at least the technical aspect of them, art style is fine).

Pro tip - Never listen to cows

best graphicks best story and atmosphere best game this gen and one of the best of all time for me

Game look good compared to last gen. Game looks atrocious (outside character faces) if you own a pc and compare its graphical fidelity to pc titles

Lol.

I'm a huge fan of TLOU and think the art style and the overall look and feel of the game are just fantastic. It does however suffer from a few muddy textures, pop-in and jaggies. For such a huge project I'm not massively surprised.

Thing to always remember is YOU DON'T PLAY THE GRAPHICS, YOU PLAY THE GAME.

It's in my top five games of all time along with Deadly Premonition (looks like a ps2 game), Deus Ex: HR (despite being fantastically stylised the graphics looks pretty bad) and Bioshock Infinite (again not the best looking game ever but amazing art style.)

If you only judge a game on how good the graphics are you'll get exactly what you've asked for... Style over substance and generally very shallow games plus you'll miss out on some great titles.

I don't understand why someone has to mention this every time anyone criticizes any game's graphics. Yes, everybody knows that gameplay comes first. That doesn't mean we can't talk about graphics, and compare them. If nobody cared about graphics, they wouldn't be advancing every year. Just because someone expressed disappointment in the graphics of game, that doesn't mean it's the only thing they care about. It's just an observation. But every single time there's a criticism regarding graphics, someone has to chime in and say "but gameplay is more important!". Of course it is. But this particular thread is about graphics. Is that against the rules or something?

I think a lot of it depends on what TV you're playing on to be honest. But yes I didn't find TLOU graphics to be mind blowing, but the detail they put into the game was fascinating. In fact I didn't even find Witcher 2's to be that great either. But than again I wasn't exactly maxing it out.

The graphics was fine for the game. I played through the game fine and didn't even notice the bad texture and jaggies because i was into it. The environment was done nicely also, it may not have been mind blowing to notice it yea, but not bad enough to notice it also. I mean unless you was looking for it. I never do look for graphics when i play the game.. if i notice it it's because it's either really bad or really good.

Not at all. But if everyone agreed then it wouldn't be much of a discussion now would it?

In future if you let me know what I can write about in the forum that would be a great help thanks. Just put up a list for me.

The Witcher 2 is a gorgeous game and it runs flawlessly at max settings for me, what didn't you like about it's graphics?.

You do know TLOU was created in 18 months right? With such a small window of work, it looks really damn good.

How far are you? I do remember feeling the first part of the games graphics/environments not being as good as later on? I think they game is gorgeous but could really do with some AA to clear up the jaggies. Give it time and you become so immersed in the world you don't notice the little things.

Luckily you only have to do 1 load a play season though.