It’s official: the first game that caused my GPU to overheat wasThe Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised.
I maxed out all the settings, it looked and ran beautifully, andI was having a wonderful time making the most of the photo modeto capture the dystopian world in all of its lush, overgrown beauty. Then, after taking in the near photo-realism of Joel’s house, with gorgeous light fluttering through the windows and down the stairs, the game closed. My PC told me the GPU had overheated and needed to chill out for a bit. Oops.
To be fair, my PC had also been running for about 36 hours at that point.
Photo Mode Makes This Risk Worth It, Probably
After a break, did I turn down the settings? No, of course not; the game is too pretty for that, so I decided I’d just have to keep an eye on things. I pressed on, continuing to take photos of the world, and since then (so far), the only thing cooking has been me with these pictures.
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered on PC might just be one of the best-looking games there is. It was effortless to capture many of these pictures because the scenery just sets itself up for your eyes in almost every instance, with minimal need for filters or touch-ups. Wherever you look, it’ll look devastated, but also devastatingly beautiful.
On the hardware side of things, the smart thing to do is probably to make some compromises so as not to put my 4070 at any further risk, but I never said I was smart. I just want to take in this whole game at its very best, even if it’s the last thing my PC does.
Okay, if it overheats a second time, I’ll lower the settings.
The First Time I’ve Played The Game In Five Years
This also makes me realise the graphical jump the game has gone through since I last played it. I played at launch, in 2020, on the PS4 Pro; it was incredibly impressive at the time, and still is, being the most graphically impressive exclusive that console ever got. But now, we’re five years on and in a new generation of hardware, not only with the PS5 remaster, but with updated PC hardware that can better handle the games.
As someone who enjoys photo mode and photography in general, I wasn’t quite prepared for how much this game was going to pull me in on the artistic side of things. Of course, I knew it was beautiful from my first experience with it in 2020, but I didn’t know how well it held up now, both with the remaster and with more powerful hardware.
Now please, if everyone could read this article every hour for the next few weeks, I might be able to afford a new GPU when the inevitable happens.
