The Master Thief Collection

Back in April, Sony gave away some free games to all PS4 users as part of their Play At Home initiative, encouraging people to not go out during lockdown. I’d been eyeing up the Uncharted HD collection for a while, so when I saw this was being given away, I snapped them up right away. Everyone loves a freebie! Well, it took me a few months to get around to playing all three of them, but here are my thoughts and my full playthrough videos for each one.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007/2015)
I can’t believe it’s been over a decade since I last played this. The PS4 remaster is outstanding, the 60fps presentation and more precise controls make it look and play really smoothly.

I seem to be playing a lot of action/traversal games in a row. After coming off Tomb Raider, Nathan Drake’s sense of adventure leaves something to be desired. Traversal has a more ‘automated’ feel, puzzle solving is at a bare minimum and treasure hunting is perfunctory. Make no mistake, Uncharted is a shooter/combat series first and foremost, and when you emerge into yet another arena full of chest-high walls and boxes with ammo and grenades sitting on top of them, you know what’s gonna happen, again and again and again.

To be fair, it’s not a bad shooter, the cover mechanic works well enough, the weapons feel good to use, the combat arenas show some promise, but it’s not as refined or complex as the sequels and it’s got its fair share of annoying choke points or arbitrary rules. It also makes very little effort to atone for its astonishing violence, presenting itself as a cheesy (through well-produced) adventure B-movie with a plucky cast of characters making quips and gags at one another, all the while the everyman protagonist slaughters what must be hundreds of human beings.

Anyway, enough has been said about this series by now and I don’t need to ramble on about ludonarrative dissonance. It was fine, I enjoyed playing it again, but that will probably be the last time.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009/2015)
I last played this about nine years ago, and while I’m sure there have been a lot of third-person shooters released since then, this still ranks as one of my favourites. Taking what made the original work well and expanding (and combining) every aspect, be it the platforming, the spectacle or – crucially – the combat scenarios, the Uncharted sequel goes full throttle and rarely stops for breath. Yes, much of it is a linear, scripted roller-coaster affair, but when you get into those combat arenas and all the options open up for you to experiment with, it’s great fun. Making use of vertical space, stealth, hand-to-hand combat, long and short range weapons and explosives, Uncharted 2 is an impressively dynamic combat game.

The remaster is excellent, too. Silky-smooth framerate, flawless presentation, no loading breaks, high-quality animations and cutscenes integrated seamlessly with the gameplay – Uncharted 2 was already a high-quality production but this version seals the deal. It also makes it easier to play, as I found I was popping off headshots more frequently since the aiming / scrolling speed is smoother – or maybe it’s just the better controller that helps.

I struggled at times with sticking to cover – not sticking where I wanted to, getting stuck where I didn’t want to – it often felt fiddly and that’s not something I recall being so much of a problem in the original, but again, it’s been a while and maybe the game has just aged in the intervening years. Certainly, the raw spectacle of fighting in a collapsing building or jumping from one speeding truck to another, is less impactful when you know what’s coming – I remember being blown away by it the first time around, amazed that these scenarios were playing out while I still had full control and weren’t just cutscenes or window dressing. Still, it manages to impress today and remains a very enjoyable action-adventure title with just a few little blips that spoil it here and there.

Another stunning remaster by Bluepoint Games, and this is the only one of the three I hadn’t played before.

It’s more of the same, a mix of “push-foward-to-navigate” sections and some shooter combat, wrapped up with some great character chemistry, natural writing and performances, over-the-top peril dialed up to eleven, and Drake seemingly surviving superhuman odds, while gunning down several hundred more people. I know realism isn’t what they’re going for here, but the most ridiculous scenario is one in which, after two days wandering a desert without water and being on the verge of death, Drake still somehow manages to pull himself together enough to slaughter a small army he stumbles across!

I enjoyed my time with it, and it’s hard not to be won over the absolute roller-coaster of an action-packed journey this takes you on. However, compared to Uncharted 2, the combat feels a little bit… scrappy, for want of better word. I like the new ‘grenade return’ throw feature and the expanded hand-to-hand repertoire, but it does mean both of these feature more prominently in normal combat, and I lost count of the number of times I was unable to avoid being blown up because I was locked into “fist-fight” mode with some nearby enemy as a grenade landed at our feet. Or the number of times I had someone come up behind my cover and shoot me before I realised they were there – the enemies flank you a lot more, so you can’t bunker down and you tend to flutter about awkwardly (well, I did). And I swear some of the headshots I got didn’t register, and enemies seem more jittery, or the cross-hair moves more slowly. I dunno, something about it felt slightly “off”, but it wasn’t bad.

There are a handful of good combat arenas, but much of the game is geared towards spectacle and linear showpieces – and, to be fair, these are spectacular, particularly some of the boat and aeroplane sections, but it’s not a game I would rush to go back and play. It’s a one-and-done sort of thing, and this enhanced remastered collection is the ideal way to experience it.

Thanks for the freebies, Sony. Any chance you could give away Uncharted 4 next?

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Revisiting LIMBO (2010/2011)

Just a quick one, this – an indie platformer with silhouette stylings and bags of atmosphere. I originally played it on the Xbox 360 when it first came out and absolutely loved it, and it was great to play it again on PC. I didn’t even realise I owned it; I must have picked it up in an indie bundle years ago, redeemed it on Steam and forgot about it. Two and a half hours later and it’s all over.

Less is more, and this is a game of absolute ambiguity. Is the boy dead? Is he trying to find his sister? What’s with all the other kids and why are they trying to kill him? Why is there a factory and a hotel and a forest and a giant spider in here? Are we in the the imagination of a boy who’s filling this world with his nightmares before death? And is that shattering glass at the end alluding to what it looks like? Who knows! I’d rather not know and just enjoy it. Limbo knows when to shut up, and its soundtrack does too, presenting little more than haunting ambience throughout. The whole thing is seriously evocative, moody, creepy and wonderful. And its gameplay makes excellent use of physics and puzzle-solving as you move from left to right through oppressive monochrome environments without a word uttered or printed.

If I had any complaints it’s the trial-and-error nature of the gameplay, especially early on. The game delights in killing you with sinister traps that you couldn’t possibly avoid almost as much as something like Abe’s Odyssey or Flashback, and when you ‘die’ you just pop back instantly to a checkpoint like it never happened. Surely a more organic form of challenge would suit the game better and be less jarring?

If by some miracle you haven’t played Limbo yet and it sounds good, give it a go. It’s on every format, it’s excellent and it’s something you can clear in an evening or spend a couple of leisurely nights on with the lights down and the sound up.

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Playing with Lego Pirates – Yarrrrr!

The Lego videogames exploded onto the scene when Lego Star Wars was released, and since then the developers (Traveller’s Tales) have churned out game after game of basically the same thing wrapped up in different licenses – some more successful than others. I picked up Lego Pirates of the Caribbean some time ago for the PC (hooray for Steam sales!), so I felt it was time to finally play the damned thing.

Well, after around 20-odd hours, I can say I have finally completed it to 100%. As per all the Lego games, this is shallow, but accessible and addictive. There’s something satisfying about smashing bits of Lego into smaller bits of Lego and watching little spinning studs get absorbed into you. There’s also something compelling about the gradually opening-up structure and using multipliers to rack up massive scores while unlocking new characters and 100%-ing levels. I didn’t love it, but the more I played, the more I felt obligated to see it to the end.

This is one of the earlier Lego games (2011), before they used voice acting, and is probably the game that made the developers realise they’d come just about as far as they could with grunt-and-gesture-based storytelling. I’ve not seen the fourth ‘Pirates’ movie, but trying to follow the plot in Lego form was hard enough in the ones I have seen!

“Gnrnghgh.” “Hmm-nnnrrgh-mm?” “Nghhrngrrnn!” Etc.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as every other Lego game I’ve played, but the style suits the franchise well enough and the music is epic. I’ve had the main theme running through my head for days now!

It’s no Star Wars or Superheroes, but it’s a decent entry if you enjoy this sort of thing. I definitely need a little break before I play another Lego game.

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