THE Uncharted games are among my very favourite PlayStation titles, so hearing they were getting a PlayStation 5 upgrade was welcome news indeed – as was the review code turning up in my inbox so I could play the new edition and share my thoughts.
The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection releases on January 28 for PlayStation 5 and contains graphically enhanced versions of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016) and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017).
The actual games themselves are fantastic and remain so, which means I’m not going to review them – they’ve been out long enough and are critically acclaimed enough for you to know if they’re something you’d enjoy by now (I loved them, for the record).
The Legacy of Thieves Collection combines the most recent two Uncharted games into one package and gives them an overhaul to take advantage of the improved processing power of the PlayStation 5. The Legacy of Thieves collection is also slated for a PC release at some point this year, but there’s no specific date on that yet.
Chiefly, the differences are native 4K graphics and improved lighting effects, haptic feedback through the PS5 DualSense controller, higher frame rates, and 3D audio.
The visual effects are very nicely done indeed and look amazing on a 4K or 8K TV with HD, and the haptic feedback is a nice touch which adds to the experience but isn’t a game-changer.
While the new lighting effects and visual enhancements are great, there’s still a few polish things which have been overlooked – generally minor things like some instances subtitles not matching the spoken dialogue – that was a bit surprising since they wouldn’t have taken a huge amount of work to fix.
The actual games themselves remain completely unchanged – I mean, to be fair, if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it – but it also means the upgrades are largely aesthetic, which makes the AUD$75 asking price a bit steep when you consider you can get the PS4 versions of the games second hand for a couple of bucks each and they’ll still look pretty good anyway (they’re basically five years old, after all). If you’ve got the PS4 versions and want to upgrade to the better visual effects etc, you’ll be pleased to know you can import your PS4 savegame from Uncharted 4 or The Lost Legacy to the Legacy of Thieves Collection too.
If you’ve already got the most recent Uncharted games, the upgraded lighting effects and framerates etc aren’t enough to make this collection worth getting (especially at AUD$75!) – but if you missed them games previously, this is definitely the best way to experience them on your PS5 while we wait for confirmation as to whether there’s actually an Uncharted 5 in development…
