Uncharted: A Rogue Saga PC Review: The Best Collection for PC Gamers

In retrospect, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is actually a game from seven years ago.

I still clearly remember that seven years ago, when I just entered university life, I used the money I earned from working during the summer vacation to buy my first PlayStation 4 console in my life. And the first game I bought on this PlayStation 4 happened to be Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, which was just released at the time.

In order to understand the plot of the "Uncharted" series, I also bought "Uncharted: The Drake Collection" at that time, which made up for the plot and gameplay of the first three works in the series. To be honest, although the reworked "Drake Trilogy" is better than the original version, the difference between the two is still noticeable when compared to "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End", which belongs to the next generation of graphics quality. It made me clearly feel the shocking picture quality improvement brought about by the alternation of console generations.

When I first saw the scene where the Drake brothers sailed away from the enemy's pursuit in the prologue of "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End", the characters' faces were rich in skin textures and expression details, and the rain was washed away. The scattered water marks formed on the glass surface after the wiper broke up, these made it difficult for me to distinguish whether I was watching a movie or a real game screen.

This top game audio-visual experience is exactly what Naughty Dog Studio is good at. Including "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" follow-up rumored work "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy", and another top IP under 's naughty dog ​​ - two works of the "Last Survivor" series, almost all of them will be The "movie narrative" level of modern video games has been developed to the extreme. Smooth cutscenes, motion capture performances completed by professional actors, and linear plots with just the right sense of rhythm make this type of game just an ordinary action-adventure type in terms of gameplay, but it can bring players like The feeling of being personally involved in the filming of the film. For anyone who owns a PlayStation 4 console, they are must-see titles.

And now, Sony brings Uncharted: A Thief Collection, which includes Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, to PC, and it's still the same as on PlayStation 5 The next-generation upgraded version of the game is obviously to allow more PC platform players to feel the charm of Sony's first-party game "movie narrative". From this point of view, if the "Uncharted Sea: The Drake Collection" is ported to the PC platform first, the player's interest may not be so strong. For today's PC platform players, even if "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" and "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy" are both games from six or seven years ago, the experience is no better than the most popular ones today. The 3A games are inferior.

In terms of the actual screen look and feel, the "Uncharted: A Collection of Rogues" ported to the PC platform does not have much visible picture quality improvement compared to its PlayStation 4 version and the upgraded PlayStation 5 version. On the one hand, it is because the original version of "Uncharted: A Collection of Rogue Legends" is still at the top level of the game industry even today; on the other hand, this ported version spends more energy on the graphics In terms of optimization and performance scheduling, it is used to ensure that more players can experience this game with a relatively low configuration standard.

From the official configuration requirements, you can see that the minimum running configuration of this game is a 4G version of the GTX960 graphics card, and the AMD R9 290X with the same 4G video memory, and the CPU is lowered to Intel i5-4330 and AMD Ryzen 3 1200. The power consumption performance of these graphics cards and CPUs is basically the entry level among the player groups today. Therefore, most players' computers should be able to run Uncharted: A Collection of Rogue Legends smoothly at 1080P resolution.

As for the recommended configuration of the PC version, the official one is only the most mainstream 6G version GTX 1060 and 4G version AMD RX 570, with Intel i7-4770 and AMD Ryzen 5 1500X processor, overall it is a very friendly configuration. If you still want to increase the performance, take this 3070Ti I used to test the game as an example, with Intel i5-10600KF and 16G memory, the game is at 4K resolution, turn on DLSS ultra-high performance, vertical synchronization, and then put all the After the image quality option is adjusted to the highest and the 30-frame limit is lifted, the game can run smoothly with a stable 60-frame image, and there is no obvious frame drop and freeze. At this time, the memory usage is only more than 5G, which shows that the optimization of the PC version of this game is indeed quite solid.

As for the specific picture performance under different picture quality settings, I simply tested the minimum and maximum picture quality standards of the game. In terms of actual look and feel, the difference between the highest image quality and the lowest image quality at the same resolution is mainly reflected in the dynamic light and shadow and the detailed texture of the water surface. For example, at the lowest quality, the shadow of the game character's face will appear irregularly jagged, but after switching to the highest quality, the shadow effect is significantly improved. In addition, in the ocean scene in Chapter 12, you can also clearly see the sea surface at the highest quality, which has richer ripple details than the low quality. But in addition, it is actually difficult for the naked eye to observe the difference in the details of the picture through the screen.

Top is the lowest quality; bottom is the highest quality

In addition to setting different quality standards, the PC version of Uncharted: A Thief Collection also supports NVIDIA's DLSS technology and AMD's FSR 2 technology. After these two technologies are turned on, it can significantly improve the performance of the number of frames when the game is running, and reduce the occupation of the game's video memory. In actual experience, although the two functions cannot be turned on at the same time, the effect of turning on them separately is actually quite different. After the comparison, I personally feel that the game screen optimized by AMD will be softer and the lighting will be more natural, while the screen of NVIDIA will be sharper.

Especially in scenes with light sources, AMD (bottom) is softer than Nvidia (top)

In terms of operating experience, the PC version of "Uncharted: The Legend of Thieves Collection" also supports the vibration and haptic feedback of Sony's DualSense controller Function. When players experience scene changes, shooting and driving, they can feel the different vibration effects of the handle, as well as the different trigger rebound strengths of different weapons when shooting. However, compared to Sony's deeply customized vibration feedback effect for a number of new games on PlayStation 5, the handle adaptation of "Uncharted: A Collection of Thieves" is still somewhat less meaningful in terms of the richness of vibration details.

After talking about these things outside the game, let's talk about the game itself.

For a player like me who has already cleared two titles on PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, Uncharted: A Rogue Saga Collection really doesn't have to be a repeat experience. First of all, as one of the most well-known Sony first-party games, players who want to play it have basically already cleared the game. In addition, this type of linear game itself is a fast-moving consumer product that is amazing in the first week and supplemented in the second week. After the ordinary player gets through it once, there is a high probability that he will no longer have the desire to open the game. Therefore, if you are an old player of the PlayStation platform, in addition to recalling the past, there is probably no need to start it for the first time.

But if you are a PC player who has never been in contact with this series before, or a player who has only learned about this game through "cloud clearance", then "Uncharted: A Collection of Rogues" is definitely a ported game for all Sony PlayStation platforms. Among them, one of my personal most recommended works - the other is "The Last Survivor: Chapter 1" which has not been launched yet. The comprehensive quality of these two games, even after being released for many years, is still the best among all the 3A masterpieces you can call the name. Among them, "Uncharted Seas: A Collection of Rogue Legends", with the theme of archaeological treasure hunting and simple and easy-to-use gameplay, is in my opinion more suitable.Works that are suitable for players of all ages to experience.

The story of "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" takes place after "Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception", and Nathan and Elena live a happy little life. But suddenly his long-lost brother Sam appears, begging him to come out again to help him continue his search for the treasure of the famous pirate Avery. Drake, who is mixed between the two identities of brother and husband, once again embarked on a global treasure hunt. At the same time, he has to face the various problems brought about by his family and career and find himself again.

The retirement of middle-aged Drake

As the final chapter of the "Uncharted" series with Nathan Drake as the protagonist, "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" can be regarded as the culmination of the series. In addition to the various tributes and easter eggs to the previous series in the plot, the improvement in the performance quality of this work is also visible to the naked eye. In the course of playing for more than ten hours, various large-scale action scenes are not uncommon, and the puzzle-solving links with exquisite design and moderate difficulty can bring some intellectual challenges to players in addition to frequent battles. The pace of play. Before you knew it, the game was cleared in a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere. With blessings to the Drake family, the player read the list of game producers at the end. The European and American special effects action blockbuster.

and "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy", which was launched as a DLC, still continues the relaxed and lively narrative style of the "Uncharted" series as a whole. But after replacing the protagonists with Chloe and Natien, two more popular female characters in the series' previous works, "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy" still produced some strange chemical reactions that are not the same as the previous works. . This work focuses on the process of how the originally unrelated partners developed from a simple employment relationship at the beginning to a friend who can entrust each other's lives in the process of treasure hunting. The various interactions and conversations between the two along the way, compared to the Drake brothers in the real story, can indeed show the unique personalities of the female adventurers and their views on different things. For the entire "Uncharted" series, it can be regarded as a rather interesting attempt.

Compared with the generational alternation on the screen, the gameplay of the "Uncharted" series has always been conservative - not climbing walls and fighting, but solving puzzles and watching performances. But "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End" and "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy" still bring players some different new elements. For example, stealth combat in the grass, the semi-open box garden map level, and the application of new props hooks and wall pegs in different environments. Although these essentially did not change the level design and gameplay of the "Uncharted Seas" series, they did enrich the player's game experience in the game in addition to combat and puzzle solving.

And in the final analysis, the "Uncharted" series has never been the kind of work that only relies on gameplay to attract players. The main reason for this series' longevity is that even if you look at the entire game industry, there are few movies that can surpass it. Narrative performance. An adventure movie with more than ten hours of continuous climax is the most appropriate evaluation of the "Uncharted" series, and "Uncharted: The Collection of Rogue Legends" is the culmination of the entire series in every aspect. It was a wise decision to choose to port such a collection to the PC platform.

As the first "Uncharted" for PC players, "Uncharted: A Collection of Rogues" can meet all your expectations for a "movie narrative" game. Even if you may not clear it a second time, as long as you have the experience of clearing the first complete level, this work is actually worth the ticket price.

And if you are an old player of the series, it will also be a good choice to review the adventures of the Drake family after the game is discounted.

Of course, it would be best if Sony could put the first three remakes of the series on PC in one go, allowing PC players to complete the full story of the series.