I have a confession to make: I never played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy when it came out on PS4.
I've always been a bit skeptical of spin-off titles in any medium, be it Marvel TV shows or the endless series of Pokemon games that don't explicitly involve throwing Pokéballs at pocket monsters. After finishing the fourth and seemingly final Uncharted game, A Thief's End, I felt like I'd had my time with not just Tomb Raider treasure hunters, but the franchise as a whole.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were originally PS4 games. Although its presentation has been improved for the Legacy of Thieves collection, the games themselves remain essentially unchanged. For our full review of each, check out the links below:
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Review
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy Review
And so the PS5 remaster of both titles, together under the banner "Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves", understandably serves to not just challenge that position, but to topple it. Playing Legacy of Thieves taught me two things: that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is an ace, and that the PS5 is ready for a new Uncharted game.
But first, let's all joke aside: you're probably wondering how these games run on Sony's latest and greatest hardware. Uncharted 4 was, is, and continues to be an absolute milestone in the field of interactive entertainment. The final act in the story of Nathan Drake's treasure-hunting career deftly wields quality Hollywood set pieces with a wry, heartfelt story that would make Marvel's Russo brothers proud. Developers Naughty Dog have long sold games that lived up to their cinematic inspiration, but A Thief's End's polish and visual fidelity really made it something special.
If it's possible to raise those cheers even further, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves does. Everything in Uncharted 4 is as good as you remember it, but now powered by the power of PS5. You get a 4K/30fps fidelity mode that bumps up the resolution for sharp detail, but the really significant change comes with the higher framerate options.
I thought it might go against the main appeal of Uncharted - mimicking Indiana Jones, a more cinematic 30fps might have been the more appropriate approach.
But the fluidity of the Legacy of Thieves pack's "Performance" and "Performance Plus" visual options is a revelation. With enhanced responsiveness, the 1440p/60fps option does little to tarnish the game's presentation, and yet it's buttery-smooth with barely any sign of a dropped frame anywhere. For those with access to a 2.1Hz HDMI 120 TV, the 120fps playback of the Performance Plus option is even more impressive. Although the 1080p resolution makes for a smoother overall presentation, it's still a gorgeous game, and the liquid-like motion means more precise actions, like lining up a headshot, become surprisingly easier.
However, the game's Performance Plus mode is not locked to 120fps, even if it's downgraded to a reduced resolution. But frame rate drops are rare and almost unnoticeable. It's a fantastic achievement, and while 60fps mode was my favorite middle ground, it's a stunning option.
A PS5 Uncharted game
What Legacy of Thieves does perfectly, however, is put Lost Legacy on par with A Thief's End. It gets the same upgrade treatment, and because it's part of the same package, it's clearly pretty much the same as its stablemate.
In a post-Nate Drake world, Chloe Frasier is a worthy replacement, and to the shame of my 2017 assumption, Naughty Dog wraps a worthy narrative around her jungle-scouting adventures. Yes, it's much more of the same: climbing walls, shooting rank and file soldiers, robbing graves. But it underscores the fact that the core gameplay loop Naughty Dog has landed on with its action-adventure titles is greater than the sum of the parts that include the main hero of its franchises: I'd play a game with the Uncharted mechanics with or without that jagged pitch.
As such, Lost Legacy Collection proves to me that it's about time Naughty Dog got to work on a new "Uncharted" game. I'm putting Uncharted in quotes here to emphasize that I'm not necessarily referring to a direct sequel, but rather a spiritual successor with the building blocks of Uncharted at its heart.
The power of the PS5 can be squeezed, and as these PS4 updates show, there's mind-boggling potential in a game that uses the Uncharted blueprint built from the ground up for the PlayStation 5. beloved franchise, but the lighter, grittier tone set here it's one I desperately want to see revived and supercharged on this new generation of consoles.
Is it worth the upgrade?
However, The Lost Legacy isn't without its flaws: Uncharted 4's multiplayer mode is missing to begin with. It wasn't the most inspired addition in the first place, but for those who measure a game's value by what it offers them, it's a large part of the game thrown away.
The removal also doesn't help those who aren't sure if the remaster is worth the full price launch treatment. They were already great games, and with Microsoft letting its biggest Xbox hits run at 60fps with FPS Boost, and some PS4 titles getting free 60fps upgrades (God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone) too, the value here is best measured against the quality of the games themselves, which is thankfully top-notch. Couldn't a 1440p/60fps patch have been given to the original PS4 titles, like The Last of Us 2 was? We may never know the answer, though a patch certainly wouldn't have made the cash registers ring again.
With no new content and the addition of the most progressive 120fps mode reserved only for those with the latest TV tech, it's mainly the new features that justify the expense. Adaptive triggers and haptic feedback don't feel very additive here, while the surround sound of the originals was already impressive with decent headphones, to the point where the (albeit excellent) 3D spatial audio doesn't feel like miles away. The originals.
As for fast SSD load times, right off the bat it's very impressive, but in games, the Uncharted series has always done well to hide its loading screens behind landslides, crumbling ruins, and character crashes. in any case; there is no fast travel mechanic, for example, what benefits
Legacy of Thieves could also have settled for some kind of roundup option for those, like me, who haven't played the PS3 entries in the series for a decade. Outside of the games themselves, additional content - the kind that bolsters a deluxe re-release of a classic movie - is essentially absent. So you have a package that ticks all the boxes for a PS5 remaster – spatial audio, DualSense support, improved frame rates – but the extras are pretty straightforward. The quality of the games themselves is again the essential magnetizing attraction, especially if you missed them the first time around.
And so, more than anything else, you want more. More Drake? More Chloe? Not necessarily, just more Uncharted, with more power behind it.
The Uncharted series is one whose cinematic ambitions have only been limited by the power of the console it was featured on. With the PS5, it's hard to imagine what the series would be capable of, given the impressive display even the original PS3 release had. The franchise's Latin tagline, "Sic Parvis Magna" (so big things come from little things), may no longer apply: it's hard to think of many bigger game series. But with the power of the PS5 behind it, what great things could come from great things?