Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Review

"Uncharted Territory"

Overview

The Uncharted collection brings together the highly popular Playstation 3 series to the current generation console. While not much is done, these games do generally hold up well despite the passage of time.

While some areas are rougher than others, looking at you "Drake's Fortune" they still had their great moments. This is was the first time I got to play these titles since I didn't have the console last generation and they were a fairly well done series.

Though when it comes to these games there's no multiplayer so not a ton of value for players wanting to comeback unless you're a big fan of the series as not much has changed. For players that have never experienced the games previously then this is a great starting point.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

In the first adventure Drake has been questing about though this seemed to be his first real big experience and there certainly was some crazy things going on. Drake's goal is to find El Dorado and some clues take him to a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Despite being small it's filled to the brim with enemies as there must be a massive military group on that place. It honestly felt like a huge shooting gallery that had some well done cinematics intertwined. I will mostly pass it since this was an older game though it still has not aged well and with a collection like this I would have assumed there would have been more done with the games.

I may make it sound worse than it is, but with every neat puzzle I solved there were literally dozens of enemies within spaces that just kept pouring in. This was definitely the weaker of the collection, though did do a great job in establishing the characters.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

The sequel takes place sometime after with Drake having a new squad of thieves going after the Himalayan valley of Shambhala. This game branched out the story perfectly while greatly expanding the cast and doing a great job in building a better story. There were so many epic moments presented in this game as the scale grew into a larger global adventure. The game was also longer and featured much stronger character connections than the first. While it still felt like a bit of a shooting gallery again the locations you visited varied well.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

This was my favorite of the series taking a bit of a "The Last Crusade" style with a global adventure which brought familiar faces while once again bringing back some old ones. While it did recycle bits of the previous and go a tad to the extreme at times it was a much better story than the other two.

Going back to those epic moments there was some truly crazy stuff that you may need to suspend some belief for, though it was awesome to witness. It also took great strides in really building a background to the main characters and connecting them in ways the first two games never bothered to try with. Combat also featured some better spacing compared to the others and focused more on close quarters than before. The goal for this game was

Gameplay

The collection mostly looks fantastic and runs smooth though the original game is really showing its age. They all play very similar and look almost the same which creates a good connection between them, but doesn't really display any evolution. You could really see the difference by the third title as some areas were just absolutely gorgeous, especially a part taking place in an old mansion castle which was stunning.

The main parts of gameplay are largely based around shooting sections, mixed with some entertaining parkour and concluded with beautiful cutscene intermissions. The collection also brings some new campaign versions in for more casual play or a extra difficultly for the crazy ones. There's also a photo mode built into all the titles and new Trophies for players to earn.

The Conclusion

The Uncharted Collection is great for those that have never tried out the games and would like to check out the series though I don't see much value for those that have already played the games before.

It really doesn't do anything different from the original versions though it does streamline the experiences well. I wish they would have spent some more time touching up the games a bit to keep them up to date, but they still played smooth.

I did have problems with the shooting gallery feeling that came up many times in the games, but that did get some remedy as it progressed. Nathan Drake was an interesting character that had some charm, yet I did find his supporting cast to be the strongest part of the series.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Review on Playstation 4

Rating Overall: 8.0