The Last of Us on Steam finally gets its first big patch, but it still has the jitters

The first full-on patch for The Last of Us Part 1 on Steam is live, and as is usually the case with these things, the early results seem mixed: Some players are saying the update has dramatically improved the game, while others are still struggling with poor performance and crashes.

"Patch 1.0.2 addresses some crashes, improves performance in some areas, and fixes several gameplay and UI issues including some animation, texture, and lighting bugs," developer Naughty Dog said on Twitter. It added that it is "continuing to watch and investigate player reports, and will keep you updated on future improvements and patches, including a mouse jitters fix."

Because, unfortunately, the "jitters" issue is not addressed in this patch. Naughty Dog had intended to address the problem in a hotfix, but said earlier this week that it had to delay the fix because it caused "unexpected issues" elsewhere. Mouse and camera jitters "for some players, depending on hardware and display settings," remains in The Last of Us Part 1's known issues list.

The patch does promise to improve texture streaming to reduce CPU usage, which was another big problem for players. (On the upside, it also gave us Eyebrows Joel, for which we give thanks.) Some users have reported improvements on that front—AxelStu on Steam, for instance, said there's "no more stuttering because of CPU and that decompressing thing"—but many others aren't seeing it.

"Sadly, I see no improvement on my 5600X/3080 12Gb setup—the 5600X is being pounded and very rarely drops below 90% utilization which is insane," Dry_Mud_8098 wrote on Reddit.

"Update made the game so much worse for me, last played the game in the university building the other day, went to boot it up today after the big update and now the ground textures are missing lmao it’s just all void black," Ghost4530 said. "They really outdid themselves with this one, oh and the vram usage in the graphics menu is even more broken now than it was before. I honestly wish I could rollback the update to the last one, game worked much better for me and besides one bug in the intro has been relatively bug free on my PC."

Another user, mackzett, reported no change after the patch had installed until they rebooted—after that, they had "better performance, less judders," although their CPU usage was still "really high." So, be sure to reboot after installing.

The bottom line is that the patch aims to improve much more than the hotfixes did, but your mileage may vary—and if The Last of Us Part 1 is running well for you already, you might want to forgo this update in favor of a more universally beneficial patch that will (hopefully) be coming in the future.

The full patch notes for The Last of Us Part 1 v1.0.2.0 are below:

• Fixed a crash that may occur while quickly swapping between character skin thumbnails
• Fixed a crash that may occur on version 1.0.1.6 during shader loads when booting the game for the first time
• Fixed one known crash that would happen randomly during gameplay
• Updated texture streaming to reduce CPU usage
• Fixed an issue where DualSense and Xbox One controllers’ analog sticks failed to respond
• Fixed an issue where extraneous SFX played in both main and in-game “Options” menus
• Fixed an issue where the Depth of Field setting’s (Options > Graphics > Post-Effects Settings > Depth of Field) sharpness may change based on the Render Scale’s settings (Options > Display > Resolution Scaling > Render Scale)
• Updated Graphics settings (Options > Graphics) user interface to accurately display VRAM usage
• Fixed an issue where Environments Texture Quality setting (Options > Graphics > Texture Settings > Environments Texture Quality) did not display the correct VRAM usage
• Fixed an issue where the pop-up to enable diagnostics after a crash did not appear
• Fixed an issue where certain artifacts and weapon skins textures may not properly render
• Fixed an issue with the tutorial’s user interface not displaying correctly
• Fixed an issue where mouse wheel scrolling in menus with dropdown options may accelerate faster than intended
• Increased active loading to reduce load times on gameplay progression
• Fixed an issue where camera orientation may warp to cursor position after exiting the Pause menu
• [Photo Mode] Fixed an issue where camera will not rotate in while in the Lighting tab
• [The Quarantine Zone] Fixed an issue where the player and buddy characters may suddenly appear wet during gameplay
• [The Quarantine Zone, Left Behind] Fixed an issue where lighting and texture may flicker during gameplay
• [The Outskirts] Fixed a gap in geometry visible during gameplay
• [The Suburbs] Fixed an issue where animations may fail to load during gameplay
• [The Suburbs] Restored the window-breaking and car-shaking FX in the sniper in-game cinematic
• [Tommy’s Dam] Fixed an issue where horse animations would fail to load during an in-game cinematic
• [Bus Depot] Fixed an issue where water FX may appear choppy during gameplay
• [The Firefly Lab] Fixed a LOD issue where enemy NPCs’ helmets may vanish or appear corrupted

Left Behind Standalone

• Fixed an issue where watergun shots would appear to hit Riley but not register while using Slow Motion with V-Sync off
• Fixed a crash that may occur while following Riley in the mall
• Improved level of detail in the Halloween store
• Fixed a crash that may occur when triggering the optional conversation at the Affordable Getaways poster
• Fixed an issue where textures of narrative elements appeared low-quality in a cutscene
• Updated ESDF control scheme in the arcade minigame to use ‘G’ as the alt key to better match gameplay punching input

Accessibility

• Fixed an issue where the Screen Magnifier may fail to work 
• Fixed an issue where Navigation Assistance’s directional icon may clip through the player character model

Localization

• [ENGLISH, HUNGARIAN] Adjusted language used when referring to the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and touch pad
• [THAI, LATAM SPANISH, KOREAN] Corrected translations in menus
• [SWEDISH] Added missing text-to-speech in menus
• [SWEDISH] Corrected language on crash window

AMD

• Fixed an issue where incorrect defaults for graphics settings were applied to AMD RX 5700 and RX 6600 Series GPUs

Steam Deck

• Fixed an issue where PSO Caching may freeze at 50% completion 
• Fixed an issue where plugging in a DualSense controller while viewing cutscenes from the Cinematics menu may force a player into gameplay
• Adjusted the user interface to show Steam Deck controls in the Screen Magnifier menu
• Adjusted positioning of the Weapon and Health HUD elements

Epic Games Store Version

• Fixed an issue where the “Who’s a Good Boy?” achievement did not unlock despite the player meeting the requirements
• Fixed an issue where the sky may render black