It’s odd, isn’t it? To play Uncharted on PC. It’s far from the first big well known franchises to get from being a Sony console exclusive to PC, but something about Naughty Dog’s series that always made Sony hardware look like a magic box producing game flow and transitions no one else could achieve on any other hardware, makes this port feel extremely weird. But here we are, sadly, starting at the end of the franchise, or at least a big transition point, instead of the beginning.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, originally for PS4 from 2016 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, also for PS4 but from 2017, combined into one package and released first on PS5 at the start of 2022 and now on PC.
Uncharted didn’t become an instant success. The first game, Drake’s Fortune, from 2007 was impressive in many ways, but also deeply flawed and often frustrating. Sure, it was a generational leap of quality in comparison to Tomb Raider: Legend from a year before and even Anniversary from the same year, but the game was often more unfavorably compared to the adventures of Lara Croft, even if visuals, animation work and character banter were praised from the start. But then Uncharted 2: Among Thieves came out in 2009 and basically redefined what a cinematic action adventure can be. And the influence of what that title has achieved can still be felt in third person action adventures today.
Very importantly, people started to really like the characters of the series and them, and the situations they got in, were key to the popularity of the second and the third titles. The stories were always just there to created a sense of adventure and motivate characters to do stuff, they were never particularly great on their own. It was the characters, the situations and extremely fun mix of adventuring and action. Which is why it is so odd to think that Legacy of Thieves Collection might be the way some people will get to first experience the series. Because for all intents and purposes, Uncharted 4 is a goodbye to the characters of the original trilogy, with the emotional core of the title being the continuation and conclusion of all of the experiences they, and you the player, went through in the first three games. While The Lost Legacy is a transition into an idea of other characters being the main heroes now, the playable character also being a returning one.
If you didn’t experience the adventures from the previous games, it’s not like you won’t understand what’s going on. It’s that you won’t feel the same way. So… Unless Sony does make a new re-release of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for PC and you have no way to play the first three games, unless you’ve already played them, I would strongly suggest at least watching a longplay of them or a good let’s play, like ones from Chip and Ironicus.
With this out of the way, you really have to play Legacy of Thieves Collection if you like action adventure games. I mean, holy crap are these two titles amazing. They no longer “redefine” the genre quite as drastically and now, ironically, feature even more ideas from TR: Legend, Anniversary and Underworld, except polished to near perfection. But these titles are still many steps above the titles of the same type we get today.
The action, while in my opinion still the weakest part, is incredibly cool when everything clicks just right. You seamlessly switch between stealth, sitting in cover, jumping around, using a grappling hook to throw a grenade one one swing and then drop punching someone in the face on the opposite one, then blind shooting to the next enemy only to brawl with them a bit to grab their weapon and hide for a few moments to get into stealth again. Even when there are no set piece encounters happening and it’s just a more or less normal shootout, the action is exhilarating and fun. If you don’t die immediately when trying to do all that cool stuff. It still doesn’t have the precision and agility of greats by Japanese action game greats like, say, Capcom or Platinum Games, but at least it doesn’t feel “unfair” and checkpointing is very nicely thought out.
Platforming is fantastic and the way the levels are designed is incredible. The game manages to be linear, without feeling linear, completely avoiding the typical problem of the modern Tomb Raider and the like titles, where you have one clear path through the level, always providing many different ways to get to the same necessary spot, always leading you subtly to where you need to be, without you consciously feeling the hand holding. It’s amazing how they didn’t make the climbing fully freeform and systemic, like what, say, Assassin’s Creed or Breath of the Wild strives for, while still keeping the excitement and the feeling that you are making the path, not just following one. It helps that unlike recent Tomb Raider titles, it’s very rare where these fully contextual actions like jump distances and ledge grabs or distances at which you die or not feel “fake”, so the flow of player actions almost always goes naturally.
What’s really improved as well is the puzzle design. Unlike TR franchise, Uncharted was always slightly less focused on puzzle solving aspect and it’s changed for Uncharted 4 and especially The Lost Legacy, and the way they bring these more into the forefront is really cool. And where Uncharted 4 is still more interested in the flow and guiding the players during the puzzles, The Lost Legacy often goes fully TR and lets you figure things out without any hints or comments from the characters that spoil the puzzle solving. Speaking of, The Lost Legacy also includes a really cool wide open level with several sections that you explore in any order you want and that whole thing (and the game in general) honestly feels more like a Tomb Raider than the whole “Survivor trilogy” of the Tomb Raider.
The games still look and feel astonishing and almost no magic is lost in the transition to PC and high framerates and resolutions. It’s not quite flawless, for example the pre-rendered video segments that the game sporadically uses to introduce cool crossfades from one scene to the other or other little inserts are far more noticeable, because of their lower bitrate recording and set framerate. But it doesn’t detract from just how seamless the whole experience is as you go on a globe trotting adventure without a single visible loading screen in sight (apart from when you go from the main menu into the game). There are also occasional visual bugs that can pop up that are only fixed by going to the main menu and reloading again. Keyboard and mouse controls seem to be rather meh, though I’d highly recommend playing the game as intended on a controller. And the fact that you need to launch into the game and then switch the game instead of having an external game selector is really odd. But otherwise, it’s all fixable and Sony seem eager to support their PC titles for now.
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is incredible. There’s still nothing quite like this as far as action adventure games are concerned. Some sequences feel impossible as you’re playing them, having (almost) full control of the craziness that’s happening on screen. It’s not perfect and it is probably not going to have quite the same impact if you have not played the first 3 games. But this is still an amazing experience that you should have.