The arrival of the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC is a pretty important moment in PlayStation’s ongoing push into the platform.
There’ve been other important titles to make the leap from console exclusivity to cross-platform, like Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn and God of War. But Uncharted‘s arrival on PC feels like a significant section of Sony’s walled garden has finally crumbled to the ground. A franchise that has been a PlayStation stalwart since the launch of the PS3, Uncharted has never wandered far from the PlayStation ecosystem. Before it shut down in March, Uncharted: Fortune Hunter, a mobile game on iOS and Android, was the only game in the franchise to make it to another platform.
Until now.
Uncharted is one of those franchises that, in the era of more rusted-on platform exclusivity, would make an Xbox or Nintendo owner wonder if they’d backed the wrong horse. It had this effect because that’s exactly what it was supposed to do. Uncharted is and has always been a franchise of system-selling games. They looked so cool that they made the purchase of a PlayStation that much more enticing.
But there were some that never took the bait. The PC lifers, the ones that wouldn’t ever deign to buy a PlayStation and turn their noses up, even now, at the Steam notification that indicates a game has controller support.
Those people, who committed to loving PC gaming right through an era when it definitely did not love them back, can now buy an Uncharted game on their platform of choice. That’s wild. It’s the kind of resolution to this story that would have been unthinkable even five years ago. If you’d suggested to PlayStation brass of 2017 that it bring its games to the PC, particularly the Windows OS owned by its bitter rival, they probably would have laughed until they cried, dabbing their eyes with money made from exclusive Call of Duty content.
But things have changed. Attitudes, all around the industry, have changed. That sense of protective paranoia from players and executives alike has lessened somewhat.
Maybe I’m looking at this with the rose-tinted glasses of someone who knows a lot of PC players. I’ve had to listen to them gripe about platform exclusivity for years, watching them shoot covetous glances at games like The Last of Us and quietly ask to borrow my Sony when no one was in earshot.
So, for those people, I’m excited. I’m excited that you finally get to enjoy these great games and see what makes them special. I’m excited that you finally get that little taste of the exclusive console life you’ve craved without having to comprise your values.
I hope they get you the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection package as well, so you can have the complete set. It’s a bit strange, starting from the fourth game in the series (and a spin-off of said fourth game), but I think it plays fine as an entry point to the franchise.
Not a review, more of a vibe check
I’ve played a little bit of both Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacyon PC over the last week, enough to get a feel for them but certainly not enough to review them. I’ve reviewed Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy before. I’ve even reviewed this collection when it debuted on the PS5. Much like Spider-Man, as good as these games are, I just don’t have it in me to review these games a third time. I hope you’ll forgive me. I’m getting old, man. You can go back and read any of those reviews and, as a broad overview of the experience, I think they will serve you well.
What I can tell you is that on my mid-tier work-from-home gaming PC, I was able to run both of these games on Ultra settings in 1080p resolution with a solid 60fps frame rate. That’s not bloody bad, considering the graphics card in this machine is a well-worn Nvidia GTX 770.
I was going to say that if anyone at Nvidia ANZ is reading and would like to help me out with one of those shiny new cards, I wouldn’t say no. I was going to say that this one has lost its pizazz, but I can’t. Not really. Not when it can run both of these games so smoothly on such dated hardware. If you’ve got bigger and better gear than me, and most of you probably do if we’re being honest, I think you’re going to be well placed to enjoy these games at their most beautiful. I think that speaks volumes about the performance and optimisation work that’s being done on these ports. God of War and Spider-Man arrived in similarly sparkling shape. Horizon: Zero Dawn, famously, got off to a rough start on PC, but whatever issues plagued that game, it really does seem like Sony has a firm handle on things now.
Like Spider-Man, I’m still going to recommend that you play Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC with a controller. Hopefully no one blows up at me in the comments for saying so this time. Someone on the Spider-Man article got very worked up about that recommendation, another die-hard PC enthusiast no doubt. The keyboard and mouse controls are fine in a pinch, and if you prefer them, you can use them, but these games weren’t designed to be played with those specific inputs. If you have a DualSense lying around, better still. Plug it in with a USB and enjoy many of the features you’d get on the PS5, like the pressure triggers and precise haptic feedback.
And with that, I feel we may have come to the end of Uncharted 4‘s life at long last. Unless PlayStation decides it would like to give Uncharted 4 the Last of Us Part I treatment, this feels like it might be the end of the road until Naughty Dog is ready to talk about the franchise’s future.
What a run this series has had. Sic parvis magna indeed.
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