A little less than a year has passed since our review of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves, a proposal with which the boys of Naughty Dog wanted to bring together the magnificent Uncharted 4 and the standalone game The Lost Legacy in a single product with visual improvements . The first re-edition of the latest adventures of Nathan Drake and associates was designed with Sony’s next gen in mind while now we want to discuss its arrival on PC and, by extension, also on Steam Deck.
A unicum for the IP, of course, but not for Sony, which in recent years has begun a path of expanding its borders even outside the PlayStation bubble, also allowing PC users to be able to enjoy some of the most popular productions. exclusive to the entertainment giant. So how did this version behave? After the test of Marvel’s Spider-Man on PC, expectations are very high, at least on a par with our impatience.
Come gira Uncharted 4 su PC?
Sony offers the collection on Steam and Epic Games, with exactly the same contents already seen in the re-edition for PS5 and at the same price point, that is to say € 49.99 for the entire package. A tempting opportunity to relive or discover the wonders of a title that has lost none of its original spirit, thanks to elements of fine workmanship that on balance have not aged by a day, starting with its iconic gameplay and sector first-rate narrative. Let’s start, as always, with our test machine and the requirements recommended by the software house.
To play this Legacy of Thieves correctly you need at least a Ryzen 5 1500X or an Intel Core i7-4770, that is, respectively, a first generation AMD Ryzen with Zen architecture dated 2017 and an Intel Haswell from 2013. Alongside them, at least 16 GB of RAM memory and 126 GB free on the storage unit. The GPU required for these recommended requirements is the timeless GTX 1060 or an AMD RX 570. The minimum required base to play is even more contained, but we invite you to take a look at the complete requirements of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves for find out all the technical details. On day one, the game will support technologies such as NVIDIA’s DLSS 2 and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, the two companies’ proprietary upscalers that allow you to obtain a performance boost by reducing the rendering resolution. In addition, there is no lack of full support for DualSense and the haptic feedback of the Sony controller to fully enjoy the experience already offered on PlayStation 5, while the game menus have been completely redesigned to meet the needs of the PC public, with many sliders and options. to play with to get the perfect square for your setup.
Our test focused on two platforms. The first, of course, is the Steam Deck. Valve’s handheld has already proven to be able to handle games with much more important requirements very well, but we could not help but put it to the test even with a title of this thickness. The PC on which we tested it, however, is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and an RTX 3060, therefore well above the specifications required by the manufacturer but not at the top of the hardware market.
Straight to the point, without too much affectation
The first, huge difference with the PS5 version, of course, concerns the game settings. Where we had three presets packaged to best unleash the potential of the latest Sony console, on PC the changes are substantial and the enormous configuration variability made it necessary, as for the other ports of the Japanese house, the inclusion of many setting options, represented by various automatic presets that in general are able to meet the needs of most without having to come to terms with individual values, which are still available for fine optimization.
Between Low, Medium, High and Ultra we opted for the latter to get the maximum possible from the game engine and at the same time appropriately test the hardware at our disposal.
In general, the collection is enjoyable at all resolutions, guaranteeing about 90 fps on average in FullHD, 55 at 1440p and 28 in 4K, with minimums of 73, 45 and 25 respectively. In short, the optimization is pretty good even at maximum possible detail, with frame drops that are never really substantial, which guarantee a very pleasant general fluidity, especially from the QHD downwards.
By activating the DLSS these values surge and at 1080p it is possible to reach 100 and 110 fps on average, respectively with the Quality and Performance presets. Similarly, even in QHD there is an important increase in the framerate, passing to 73 and 80 frames per second on average. Finally, in 4K it is possible to go up to 42 and 50 fps, making the product extraordinarily pleasant even at maximum detail and at the same time reducing game latency.
It should be noted that at maximum quality settings we are on a very different track compared to the PlayStation 5 edition, with improved textures in accuracy and a reproduction of shadows in relation to the Fidelity mode of the console version. We have not highlighted substantial distortions in terms of lighting and LOD, although in the first case a difference can be perceived by virtue of the presence of decidedly more contrasting shadows, which give the whole a sense of greater realism and more generally, albeit artifact, a greater feeling of depth. The PC setting that probably comes closest to what is shown on PS5 is the High preset, going further down if we take Performance mode into consideration. The tactile sensation is precise and punctual, with a DualSense perfectly calibrated for the occasion and elegant in every intervention, capable of giving the game that fourth dimension that we did not think we needed before its implementation (although the need to use it in mode remains wired to benefit from its exclusive features). The sensations regarding The Lost Legacy are very similar even if, thanks to the peculiar setting of the title, the differences to the eye are more negligible.
Uncharted su Steam Deck
The coverage on Steam Deck passes, as well as for previous Sony ports, for a green check that promises an optimal gaming experience. Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves is “perfect for Steam Deck”, at least on paper. Of course there is a substantial difference compared to the other editions. Assuming that to get full playability on Valve’s handheld it is necessary to purchase the collection on Steam and not on Epic (although with some workaround it is possible to have access to your Epic library), what fans and owners of the console already know is that to play on the go you will have to give up the haptic feedback of DualSense.
Another factor with which the already owners will surely have already come to terms on more than one occasion concerns the image quality and resolution. Very often, in fact, it is necessary to accept certain limitations to be able to obtain adequate gameplay, and this Collection is no less. The recommended preset for Steam Deck, automatically detected by the game, is Low.
With this solution, the experience is decidedly more washed out and less contrasted, but in any case it is possible to play safely on the 45 fps on average for about an hour and a half. Aiming for better graphics, you can go up to Medium to get an average of 30 frames per second for the same duration and better visual satisfaction. Frame drops are negligible, and luckily for us, Steam Deck’s Van Gogh APU is perfectly compatible with AMD’s FSR 2. With the Quality preset it is possible to go up to about 40 fps at medium detail, which becomes 50 if you aim for Low.
Things change little by focusing on Balanced, with which you get greater overall stability. It is useless to focus on Performance, since we are already on rather low resolution regimes and going further does not allow the algorithm to remedy the amount of information lost along the way, between rather evident artifacts at the edges of the characters and a graphic rendering that is only passable. Our sweet spot is obtained through the Low preset with FSR 2 on Balanced, not failing to lock the frame rate to 30 from the system settings to reach 2 hours of autonomy, which become 2 hours and 30 minutes by manually setting the clock of the GPU on 800 MHz.
In short, we are talking about a certainly pleasant experience, which once again allows us to praise Sony’s excellent work in optimizing its titles for a large and heterogeneous market such as the PC one.
