Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection PC Edition - Fortune Favours the PC
Sony, it seems, has finally realised that in the hills and valleys of PC land, there be gold. What was once the dream of many card-carrying master race members is now a reality. Sony first-party titles are an actual thing on the PC and it seems that the momentum isn’t slowing with barely a week going by without a new Sony PC game-related announcement hitting our favourite gaming sites. The latest to make the transition is one of the biggest. That’s right Nathan Drake, Chole Frazer and the entire Uncharted gang are making their first keyboard and mouse appearance and as far as first impressions go, it is a pretty good one.
So let’s get the game stuff out of the way quickly as I am sure most of you know the deal with the Excellent Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy titles. Top-quality action-adventure titles feature an A+ voice cast, production values that would be envied by Hollywood’s biggest studios and rollicking stories that combine myths, legends and pirate tales into one big satisfying experience. That hasn’t changed here, this is still the same game you have seen on the PS4/5. There are no surprises here for old fans so if you have the game already on a console (especially the more recent PS5 re-release) you probably won’t find an enticing reason to jump back in again on PC, especially with the price tag. Those who have never dipped their toes into console land however will finally be able to experience one of the greatest adventures in video games for the first time. That is as good a reason as any for this port to exist.
Now we move on to how the game performs on the potentially more powerful PC platform. There has been a definite scale of quality in the Playstation PC ports. Some have been pretty rough like Horizon: Zero Dawn, while others like God of War, have been amazing and have used every bit of power the PC platform gave it. The Legacy of Thieves collection sits somewhere in between those two extremes. It isn’t a bad port at all, with only a few little graphical anomalies rearing their head from time to time, but it does have its quirks that show that Sony still hasn’t quite fully grasped PC land just yet.
The first of those quirks is launching the game itself. The game boots into the last of the two titles you played. If you wish to switch from Uncharted 4 to Lost Legacy, or vice-versa, the game then shuts down and restarts into the other title. It is an awkward and clumsy way to do things and while most people will probably play one game and then the other in order, for those that are switching their playtime between the two it becomes an irritating annoyance. I feel like Sony would have been much better simply having two, separate games listed in people’s Steam library than the clunky solution they came up with.
The other slight annoyance is that the game really fails to take advantage of the power a top-of-the-range PC offers, missing many of the graphical settings and tweaks that PC players are used to in this day and age. It does support AI solutions like DLSS and has a decent selection of graphical tweaks, but it does miss some stuff that the enthusiast PC gamer likes to play with. Not being able to cap the framerate limit is one that can potentially make the game tough to record or stream for content creators and there seems to be a lack of adjustability to brightness and HDR settings, things you would expect to see in a modern PC game.
These issues however are relatively minor because the important things about this port are still just as amazing as they were when I first played the game upon release. These are some stunning-looking games and there is no doubt there is extra detail and improved lighting in this release that makes it even better. The detail in the character models, especially the main figures in the stories, is right up there with the best the industry has to offer and the lip-syncing, something that is notoriously hard to get right, is bang on. There are no two ways about it, these are stunning games. The voice performances from the entire cast are without doubt exceptional and honestly, the score is something that John Williams would be proud to call his own. The entire collection screams world-class production values.
As for the gameplay, it is still a blast, but the same problems are still there. The actual adventuring, climbing and exploration are perfect. The gunplay, however, is not the game’s strongest point. This is something that has been true of the entire franchise so it is no surprise. Granted, it is much better than it was in Uncharted 3 and serves its purpose adequately, but it isn’t engaging or exciting in the way other 3rd person shooters can be. By the end of the game, it gives off a very “going through the motions” feel that comes about through a general lack of variety.
All that being said, there is simply no other game out there that scratches the same itch as Uncharted. There are many reasons why this is one of Sony’s premier franchises and all of those reasons are present and correct in the PC ports. Despite a few transferring quirks and some issues with the gunplay that have always been there, this collection is a great way to experience these epic titles for the first time. Just don’t expect to be surprised if this is your second (or third) time buying the game. Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection is yet another example of Sony finally respecting the PC as a legitimate platform for gaming and as someone who loves their PC, it is wonderful to see.
