Hands-on Preview: Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

Some days I wake up in a Panamanian jail, or hanging upside down in a derailed train, and clutch my side in pain to find mysterious gun shot wound. Quickly gathering my compass and treasure map, I hastily make my escape, miraculously surviving several near-death experiences within five minutes whilst evading menacing Russian mercenaries. I’ll raid a tomb, save the world, discover a city of gold, then destroy the city of gold and accidentally refer to my girlfriend as my wife Elena, all the time wishing, “why can’t I do all this with 1080p visuals and a silky smooth 60fps frame rate?”

Bluepoint Games – the folks who gave us the God of War Collection and the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection to name a couple – are answering my prayers, and the prayers of many PS4 owners who did not own a PS3.SCREEN_UNCHARTED_0006_Layer 1Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection was a heavily rumoured, but rather overshadowed announcement in the week prior to E3 – Fallout 4 made sure of that – but it was certainly one I was very glad to see. These are three immensely important games, setting a new standard for story-telling, character creation and voice-performance in the heavily saturated third-person action game genre, with even the Mission Impossible films taking inspiration from Uncharted 3.SCREEN_UNCHARTED_0004_23904Having played a very brief slice of the remastered Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, specifically from the Warzone mission (shown above) in which you scale across rooftops suppressed by machine gun fire from one of Lazarevi?’s helicopters, I’m glad to report that Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, is seemingly ready to roll. Immediately, it’s obvious that the textures are all up-resed and tweaks to the physics engine have been made, including additional hair physics for Drake. It ran effortlessly; there was absolutely none of the hiccups sometimes found in a port. Granted, it was a very brief slice – as a seasoned Uncharted-vet I blew through it in under two-minutes – but if the rest of it holds up as well as this demo did, I’ll be happy.

Sure, the multiplayer components are not included in the collection, but improved visuals and performance (along with Uncharted 4 multiplayer beta access) is absolutely enough to have me open my wallet come October 7th 2015. If I weren’t as massive an Uncharted fan as I am though, I’d be skeptical at the performance and attention to detail of all three games in the package, outside of this one brief scene.