(Un)Charted Territory
With a Hollywood blockbuster adaptation in the offing, now is the perfect time to enjoy the adventures of Nathan Drake and friends in Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection for the Playstation 5.
Pairing the two most recent entries in developer Naughty Dog’s globetrotting saga – 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and 2017’s The Lost Legacy – this double bill gives gamers old and new a chance to experience the seminal sequels with a next-gen sheen.
Heavily cribbed from the Indiana Jones ‘dry quips, exotic vistas and explosive set-pieces’ playbook, the Uncharted series is potentially the closest gaming has gotten to an interactive blockbuster movie franchise.
First up, Uncharted 4 plays as the chiseled adventurer’s swansong, Nathan dusting off his pistols for one final score and incorporating some genuinely emotional beats with both a long-lost sibling and his long-suffering sidekick (and now wife), Elena.
The Lost Legacy is an altogether different affair – expanding beyond its initial DLC roots to become a side-sequel in its own right.
Acting as a ‘greatest hits’ collection, this leaner effort refines and remixes some of the series’ highest highs (train sequence!) with the double-act of series mainstay Chloe Fraser and Uncharted 4 antagonist Nadine Ross, as mercenaries teaming up with a shared goal in mind…mostly stealing ancient artifacts in India.
Both are fantastic games and jewels in the Playstation crown, with just enough time passed that their combination of climbing, combat and gunplay remain fresh and exciting throughout.
But are they worth playing if you’ve already done so on a Playstation 4? Well…
What’s Old Is New
Despite the new generation of consoles seeing their first birthday, we’re still very much in a time of cross-gen efforts, with Ghosts of Tsushima getting a spruce up for the PS5, as have God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Days Gone, with faster framerates and in some cases added content.
Whilst some of these upgrades have been free of charge and simply tweaks to the original PS4 code, others – like Ghosts and this Uncharted effort – do have costs attached for gamers to make the leap to PS5.
The uprade in this case is £10 for those owning either title on the PS4, or £45 for new treasure hunters.
What does that get you?
Well, first up is a raft of new visual settings – a ‘quality mode’ which outputs a native 4K image, ‘performance mode’ doubles the frame rate of the original titles, but at a similar resolution to those who’ve experienced them on the trusty PS4 Pro, and a ‘performance plus’ mode which kicks things up another notch to 120fps but sacrifices visual fidelity.
The game also loads at a ridiculous pace now – Uncharted has rarely been a game which lets you pause for breath, but now the SSD of the Playstation 5 brings those moments down to alomst zero.
The graphics have also been given a bit of a touch up – not that they needed them as both titles remain some of the best looking console games ever, full stop. The character detail is phenomenal, and any backseat gamers are in for a treat with incredibly well-acted story beats interspersed liberally through the action.
Uncharted 4’s pacing is a lot more deliberate, owing to the tale of Nathan’s twilight years of tomb raiding, but The Lost Legacy distils the series’ best moments into one fantastic, streamlined package and will instantly make you an even bigger Chloe fan.
Slightly disappointing are the audio and controller upgrades – 3D Audio graces proceedings, which does create a more atmospheric and bombastic soundscape whether creeping through echoey ruins, blasting away in a deafening shoot-out or squeezing through the crowds of a bustling street market. It’s great, but best experienced through headphones rather than a traditional TV and soundbar setup.
The biggest missed opportunity was making more of the DualSense controller – you get the trigger tension that we’ve now seen from a number of shooters, but it’s far from as pronounced and visceral as you may experience in say, Call of Duty: Cold War, not as immersive as we found in Returnal (which was transformative) or playful as Astro’s Playroom.
One moment of the feel of the patter of light raindrops which subtly turns into a full-on monsoon in the opening moments of The Lost Legacy did feel special, but there’s no use of the microphone or clever vibration tech which makes the PS5 such a unique gaming platform.
So the Legacy of Thieves Collection is prettier, faster, and button-bashier…but is is better?
A New Legacy
Setting aside the comparisons to its forebears, Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection remains a thrilling, exciting, hilarious and pulse-pounding adventure for its runtime.
The changes are less drastic than some might expect, but they only serve to nip and tuck an already amazing experience that bit closer to perfection – and even better for the uninitiated.
PC players may wait to see what the (imminent) future holds for the ports, but Nathan and co. have never looked or played better…it’s a steal.
Review code provided by Playstation.
