Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy are not the first Naughty Dog titles to be remastered (or simply upgraded via patch) with a doubled frame rate on a new platform.
But it does have consequences for responsiveness, which can be a significant issue in a shooter franchise that also features life-or-death platforming challenges. That’s not a problem per se some would even argue that it makes sense, since Naughty Dog is aiming for a cinematic feel. Game development is full of compromises, and the aforementioned circumstances have meant that each of these games has been limited to a frame rate of 30 frames per second at launch.
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The studio is also renowned for its technical mastery, with each game making the most of the PlayStation hardware of the moment. Its two franchises during that period, Uncharted and The Last of Us, have set the standard for a certain type of experience within the genre: the largely linear, narrative-driven, cinematic third-person shooter. Over the past 15 years, developer Naughty Dog has created some of the defining games of the modern action/adventure landscape. I’d go so far as to say that one of the new visual modes is a revelation. Considering how pedestrian this package seems on the surface - the expected coat of higher-resolution, higher-frame-rate polish and some key quality-of-life improvements, all courtesy of the PS5’s increased horsepower - I find myself surprised at just how much I appreciate its upgrades, and at how much of a difference they make. Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection marks the series’ debut on PlayStation 5, bringing to Sony’s newest console the two most recent (and arguably, the two best) entries in the franchise: 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and 2017’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.