The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have seen some amazing games in their two years on the market, but their presence means that some of the later games on the previous consoles get lost in the new generation spotlight. In order to prepare us for the final game in the Uncharted series, A Thief’s End, Naughty Dog teamed up with BluePoint Games to bring us a PlayStation 4 port of the first three games named Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. So if you have never played Drake’s Fortune, Among Thieves or Drake’s Deception, or are simply wondering what kind of modifications have been made to these games, then you are definitely in for a fantastic experience, as well as a few unexpected surprises.
The main narrative of each Uncharted story has been entirely unchanged, including the exploits in El Dorado, the shenanigans in Shambhala and the incidents at the Iram of the Pillars. Each game follows the adventure templates as set by the legendary treasure hunting movies such as Indiana Jones, National Treasure, Romancing the Stone and The Da Vinci Code, with plenty of clichés and twists and turns shaking the foundations of each adventure. From the damsels in distress, the traitorous allies and the supernatural treasures that hold a dark secret, Uncharted has all of these in spades, as well as several moments which parody the conventions, such as when Elena first meets Nate and Chloe on the run in Uncharted 2.
All three of the original games ran at 720p and 30 frames a second. While this helped to emphasize the film look that Naughty Dog were going for, by the time that Drake’s Deception was released back in 2011, the development team confirmed that they were pushing the PlayStation 3 to its limits. As you might expect, this limitation is no longer present on the PlayStation 4, and now the Uncharted games are running at 1080p and twice the frame rate of its initial release. All of the character and location models and textures have also been upgraded, along with the lighting systems and the addition of ambient occlusion.