Uncharted is finally on PC, but is it worth it?

First of all, let’s take a look at the graphics settings. This is compared to, for example, Spider-Man, whom we reviewed a few months ago. much easier. Detailed settings for graphics and each of its components are replaced by a few simple items. We usually see this as a regret, if not a major flaw, but the situation is a bit different here, and we’ll talk about the reason in a moment. However, from the classic setting, the display mode is not missing – although there is only the option to play the game in a window or in a window without borders and without fullscreen, which is strange and therefore you cannot directly change the resolution in the game – two upscaling technologies, vertical sync, blur in motion and beyond low to ultra settings to change the quality of textures, anisotropic filtering, shadows, reflections and ambient shading with the ability to enable improved quality of the model. And that’s really all. So no, there is no ray tracing before you start asking us in the comments.

As you can see, the list is not the largest. But the reason we think this is enough can be summed up in one word: optimization. The inherent advantage of Uncharted is that it is not an open world game. The individual locations are linear, and all the breathtaking views have been meticulously optimized already at the release of the original games on PlayStation 4. This is carried over to the PC version absolutely flawlessly, and, with absolute exceptions, we did not register a sharp drop in frames, a poorly optimized location, or other such technical imperfections that spoil the gameplay. This goes hand in hand with a constant frame time, which stayed between 8 and 12 milliseconds most of the time. Since it’s not an open world game and is a little slower compared to them, it certainly makes sense.

The reason everything works so well is because the PC version is a port in itself. In other words, it does not offer any graphical add-on. In fact, here and there you can also notice a few little things, where you can see that we are not using the maximum capabilities of the computer, and the graphics as such have not suffered much. However, I managed to stumble upon one point where the difference can be noticed. (See image below)

Have you seen him? On PC, some vegetation is missing in one particular corner and on certain railings. And its absence is in line with the original PS4 version, so there’s a lot to think about. But this pedantic look, which an ordinary player will not have and under any circumstances the game looks just fine, which, probably, will not surprise anyone. But even so, there are still a few purely computer functions. The developers are proud of a slightly redesigned user interface, support for ultra-wide resolution, of course, a keyboard with a mouse and unlocked images.

So that gradually brings me to some more specific numbers. The main build we tested the game on is includes an RTX 2070 Super graphics card, an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor, and 32GB of RAM.. And when playing with DLSS or FSR enabled in balance mode, that is, with an internal resolution of 835p from native 1440p, and other graphics settings to the absolute maximum, we moved somewhere between 80 and 110 fps on average. Of course, a lot depended on the complexity of the scenes. Enclosed corridors with few effects and light usually worked even better. However, open and detailed areas with enemies and large views were mostly kept within those 80 frames. There is a more pronounced drop here and there with a really wide field of view. and probably the biggest drop we experienced with this setup was in the auction mission where there was a lot of reflection, play with lights and NPC characters. The whole site in Madagascar was just as challenging. The game is played in both places constantly, and sometimes a little less than 60 frames. However, this is an excellent result.

We even tested the game on a low end RTX 2060 with an i9-9900KS where the overall images were about 10-15 lower at the same settings, but here I would be careful. Although this is only an order of magnitude lower card, it sometimes struggled with the game, and unlike the processor, which, logically, was almost not loaded, the video card had to squeeze everything out of itself. While the game is mostly in high detail with DLSS and 2K resolution keeps within 70-80 frames per secondeven during the shootouts, he was not afraid to fall even at 40-50 frames per second. If you have older graphics cards, you will need to play very carefully with the detail settings at the beginning and sacrifice a bit for higher frames per second. It doesn’t change the fact that the game looked great in the finale; what about the more powerful RTX 3070 Ti with I7-12700KF, where we could also play in 4K resolution, naturally under the effect of DLSS, and in fact, either work on the same, or again on some 10 images better results.

I think that in itself speaks of good work. Not perfect, to be honest, but combined with the way the game looks, Sony and Iron Galaxy are definitely nothing to be ashamed of. As for some of the minuses, there are only minor technical flaws, which honestly can be ignored. Several times it happened to us that when we viewed a certain page in a certain place, the number of images decreased to 50. However, this never happened in a duel.which not only delighted us, but also surprised us. She appeared here and there small bug with textures and in exceptional moments physics failed, but it’s hard to tell if it’s a bug in the PC version or the game itself. Oh, and once in about 10 hours of testing game crashed. In all other respects there is nothing to complain about.