Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

This was my first run through of Nathan Drake’s fantastic trilogy of action platformers on PlayStation 4 and I ended up beating 4 as well just to finish off Nate’s story. There are some aspects of the original trilogy that have not aged well though such as Uncharted Drake’s Fortune’s shooting and more mundane graphics. The engrossing narrative surrounding the graphics and gameplay though are what Naughty Dog have become known for and with each game offering its own self-contained narrative, I believe replay options are increased. To me, 2 is the clear winner with its impressive antagonist and excellent set pieces. The train chapters from that game were as frantic as ever and I found myself glued to the screen even ten years after beating it for the first time. While Drake’s Fortune does everything weaker than 2 and 3, it does introduce us to the series leads Nate, Elena and Sully and the fact that game spawned 3 sequels and 2 spin-offs is a testament to how important that game was in 2007. Drake’s Deception finds itself somewhere in-between the other two. Its narrative is gripping and exciting and the set pieces offer new possibilities such as riding on horseback. However, the game tends to lean too much on scenes from previous games and the villains are honestly less memorable than Navarro and Roman from Uncharted 1. Nevertheless, all three games create a wonderful 20 plus hour package that every PlayStation owner should experience all the way through and with Nathan Drake’s story seemingly over, there’s no time like the present.

Rating: Sic Parvis Magna

9/10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It Takes Two

Image
  2018’s A Way Out by Hazelight Studios was an ambitious middle market title that aimed to bring cooperative play back to relevancy. While I liked the game I found its gameplay to be fairly safe, offering little in the way of interactivity or challenge. The game had good intentions though and highlighted what Hazelight Studios’ intentions were. Reintroduce cooperative and linear narratives with an emphasis on local co-op. This brings us to It Takes Two, the continuation of their formula. It Takes Two can’t simply be placed into a single genre of game as it features a plethora of different gameplay mechanics and styles. This variety is one of the game’s major strengths and helps each new chapter stay fresh and interesting. The situations that May and Cody find themselves in are endlessly entertaining, with each new area offering the pair some new gadgets. One moment you'll be wielding guns fighting bees inside a tree, and the next you’ll be completing platforming challenges in space...
Read more

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (PS3)

Image
50 Cent: rapper, actor, businessman and television producer. However nowhere in his Wikipedia bio does it say that he is the eponymous hero of two games. Now I had seen both of these games on shelves for years as a kid but never gave them a second glance. Gangsta rap was never really my thing in my youth and I’d much rather have played the Mass Effect trilogy again for the thousandth time. But whilst scanning over YouTube I noticed a number of videos claiming the second game Blood on the Sand (which will be referred to at points in this review as BotS for my own sanity) was a cult classic. Now as an adult I’m probably more into rap now than I have ever been before so after looking up the game on Ebay and finding a copy at a good price (some copies sell for upwards of £40), I decided to play the game in one night and I’m very glad that I did. 50 Cent: BotS is primarily a Third-Person Cover Shooter that plays similarly to the Gears of War games. You duck in and out of cover using a varie...
Read more

Castle Crashers Remastered

Image
  The Xbox Live Arcade was full to the brim with high quality independent titles that were made on a miniscule budget. Some of my personal favourites were State of Decay, Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Plants vs Zombies, games that perhaps lacked polish but had a satisfying core gameplay loop and some originality. One of the more famous XBLA games though was Castle Crashers, a hack and slash made by The Behemoth developers previously known for their work on Newgrounds. Now I played the demo of Castle Crashers a lot back in the day but never actually got round to purchasing the game myself, only briefly playing a few chapters whilst round at a cousin’s house. So when notified that a remastered version was available on the PlayStation store, I decided to pick the game up along with two friends and finally complete a game I last played over a decade ago. Castle Crashers is a game best experienced with at least one buddy. Playing through the game in singleplayer is fine but the game thrives...
Read more