Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection on Steam Deck gives me deep PS Vita nostalgia

2012’s Uncharted: Golden Abyss wasn’t the best Uncharted game. It wasn’t even the best Vita game at the time, but that didn’t really matter. It was an Uncharted game that looked great, running on a handheld. Those of you who can’t really remember handhelds before the Switch may not understand, but there was something truly magical about seeing games that looked like this on a portable device. The future of the Vita seemed exciting…until it wasn’t. RIP PS Vita – You deserved so much better.

Anyway, fast forward to now, and we have another Uncharted game, two in fact, running on a handheld, and once again I have that magical feeling. A feeling that I am living the future right now. Steam Deck, Valve’s excellent Linux portable PC, packs quite a punch (especially when you look at its price not far off that of a Switch OLED, a much, much less powerful machine). The Legacy of Thieves collection combines PS4 hits Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy, and while I’m sure it works great on a proper desktop PC, I’ve played it exclusively “on deck” so to speak. I’m lovin ‘it.

I’m no longer a tech wizard, mainly because I don’t have time to keep up with the latest happenings in the GPU space, but I can tell you this. Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves looks absolutely great on the Steam Deck. I played around with the graphics settings a bit and using AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2 on “Balanced” I was able to run the “high” graphics preset at a frame rate that mostly hit 35-40 FPS.

I can hear PC fanatics clutching their chests when the pain hits. A locked 40 FPS would have been better to set the Deck upgrade set to 40, but I went for more graphical beauty. The old me hates me too, but the new me just enjoys a perfectly playable game that dazzles on the Deck screen. If you have the hardware, you can play in 4K, Ultra-wide, but would that have impressed me more? I do not think.

Handhelds always tend to be a step or two behind what home consoles can do, and while the Steam Deck isn’t as powerful as PS5 or Xbox Series X, the gap feels closer than ever. This is a “proper” console game, one I played on PS5 not too long ago, and stripped down, it looks and feels just as good. Take it apart and the FSR2 can make it look a little rougher than ideal, the frame rate isn’t a smooth 60, and the install size will make your onboard storage shudder, but my word, my son, is in awe.

For a long time, I wanted Sony and Microsoft to release new portable devices. I like the Switch for its library of Nintendo titles, but other than that it feels a bit lacking for my liking. With Deck, neither company needs to enter the portable device market. Load it up with Uncharted, Spider-Man, God of War, Days Gone, and Horizon, and you might as well have Vita 2, albeit quite thick.

In short, if you want Uncharted on a handheld, this is it. It’s not a stripped down, custom built version, it’s the console version and it’s brilliant.

Sony provided a Steam code for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.