Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy are remastered for PS5 but are there enough improvements to justify the price?
There are two obvious reasons why this remaster collection exists and neither of them justify selling it as a brand new, almost full price release. Uncharted 4 is an excellent game, that comes recommend to all, but while this is technically a superior version to the original PlayStation 4 edition the improvements are minor and no more notable than many other PlayStation 4 games that have received similar updates for free.
However, Sony has the Tom Holland Uncharted movie coming out soon and so, understandably, wants to show off the series at its best. There’s also the fact that there hasn’t been many PlayStation 5 exclusives released lately and so someone at Sony obviously thought it would be a good idea to release this as a separate product, instead of just a free update.
The game costs £45 to buy it new but if you already own Uncharted 4 or The Lost Legacy, which is also included, you can upgrade for £10. By Sony standards that’s relatively generous, although this is exactly the sort of thing that Microsoft always make available for free, and it’s probably not wise of Sony to draw attention to that fact.
For something billed as a collection this is very short on content, as all it includes is 2016’s Uncharted 4 and its standalone expansion The Lost Legacy from the subsequent year. You might have thought Sony could’ve thrown in the pre-existing Nathan Drake Collection, which contains Uncharted 1, 2, and 3, but that’s not the case. All you get is one full length game and one seven hour long adventure, with absolutely no new content or museum features.
You can read our full review of the PlayStation 4 version of Uncharted here but if you’re not familiar with the series it’s a third person action adventure originally inspired by Tomb Raider, with all the games having a similar mix of platforming, gunplay, and puzzle-solving. Although competent, none of those individual elements are very complex, with the game relying heavily on its cinematic presentation for much of its appeal, with graphics so good that in our original review we said ‘you’d swear it was running on a PlayStation 5’.
Six years later and the game’s last gen origins are more obvious, but the original looked good not just because of its technical qualities but the art design and attention to detail, with the best motion capture in the business and peerless voice-acting. More than any other video game, Uncharted 4 feels like you’re playing your own action movie, a deft mix of Indiana Jones and Die Hard that includes some of the best set pieces gaming has ever seen.
There’s a run in the middle of the game, when the characters get to Madagascar, that is so well staged it must have other developers weeping in despair. And it’s all the more impressive because of the variety of the action, including a relatively linear car chase, a small open world section, and an excellent puzzle-platform sequence set around a clock tower.
Given the fundamental simplicity of the story (hero Nathan Drake is a treasure hunter and… he’s hunting for treasure) the game should, in theory, overstay its welcome at around 15 hours, but the variety of situations and the exceptional presentation means it never really does, despite a few sections dragging on a little too long.
The Uncharted games usually star Nathan Drake as the protagonist but The Lost Legacy focuses on fellow treasure hunter Chloe Frazer and Uncharted 4’s mercenary antagonist Nadine Ross. Both are strong enough characters that Nate is never really missed but while the game has the same sky-high production values it’s very obvious that many of the set pieces are just copied and pasted from Uncharted 4 and earlier entries in the series.
Depending on your history with the games the finale on a train is either a thrilling end sequence that ranks amongst Naughty Dog’s very best or a shameless copy of a near identical section from Uncharted 2. You can read our review of the original PlayStation 4 version here but as outrageous as it can be, when cannibalising its own predecessors, The Lost Legacy remains thoroughly entertaining throughout – just maybe don’t play it straight after Uncharted 4 (or 2).
Although presumably Naughty Dog took some interest in its creation, this remaster is by Iron Galaxy and changes very little. There’s a performance mode where you can play at 60fps or a 4K option if you’re happy to stick to 30fps, plus a Performance+ option to run the game at 120fps and 1080p.
The remasters add DualSense support, fast loading, and 3D audio but if there are any changes to the graphics themselves Sony hasn’t talked about them and it’s not at all obvious to look at, even when you compare the two side by side.
Unless you found the frame rate a problem in the originals, we’d struggle to recommend spending even £10 on the upgrade. That ends up putting this in a similar situation to Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which also featured classic, unmissable games in a deeply cynical and overly expensive package.
To maintain consistency with that review we can’t mark down Legacy Of Thieves Collection for doing the same thing, but we can for the fact that it doesn’t include the multiplayer mode from the original – which was a substantial and very enjoyable part of the package.
If you haven’t played Uncharted 4 before we absolutely recommend you do, as it’s one of the very best games of the previous generation, but we’d advise you just buy the PlayStation 4 version as it’s cheaper and you get the multiplayer. Then you can worry about whether you want to pay for the upgrade later.
Knowing that there’s a remake of The Last Of Us coming up, it’s now very hard to get excited about that prospect. The problem is that the graphics in Naughty Dog’s games are so good the first time around that there’s really no need to upgrade them at the moment, and taking the time to do so (while charging substantial amounts of money) feels like a waste of time and talent.
Uncharted 4 is a fantastic game, that deserves to be preserved for all time, but this remaster wasn’t necessary to achieve that and feels more like a cynical exploitation than an honest celebration.
Uncharted: Legacy Of Thieves Collection review summary
In Short: Uncharted 4 is one of the best action adventure games ever made but this remaster does so little to improve the experience it doesn’t feel like anything other than a cynical cash grab.
Pros: It’s a testament to the originals that the games still look and play better than almost any other modern game, with superb presentation and a variety of set pieces that belays the relatively simple gameplay mechanics.
Cons: None of the changes are significant, making even the upgrade fee seem expensive. The Lost Legacy’s reuse of older set pieces is still pretty outrageous. No multiplayer.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed) and PC
Price: £44.99
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Iron Galaxy and Naughty Dog
Release Date: 28th January 2022 (PC TBA)
Age Rating: 16
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MORE : Uncharted 4 remaster collection upgrade costs £10 – PS4 originals delisted
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