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dkirschner's Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4)
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| [July 1, 2024 07:05:36 AM]
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I wasn't quite sure about this one throughout the first couple hours because:
1. It's Uncharted without Nathan Drake. Instead, you play as Chloe, with sidekick Nadine, two women with relationships to the Drakes who appear in some of the previous games. So it seemed like this was a spin-off, and I assumed it would be lesser than the mainline games. It also doesn't explain who these characters are, though you get that through their banter later on.
2. Chloe and Nadine's banter isn't as funny as Nathan's muttering or his banter with whoever he is with. Especially without knowing really who they are, it was hard to get a read on their personalities at first. The humor is more deadpan/sarcastic.
3. The game jumps right in with no context for why they are out treasure hunting (though again this is explained later). There is about 15 minutes of setting the scene before Chloe and Nadine are off toward some Indian ruins. The speed at which it jumped in was off-putting because the Uncharted games always spend time setting up the adventure.
4. The first main area is on the neon rooftops of a city with a lot of tight spaces, uncharacteristic of the open vistas of Uncharted games. The second main area was open-world-ish. Chloe and Nadine drive around in a jeep looking for clues, and they can find all of these discs scattered around the area. The discs are purely optional (and once I realized this, I ignored them). Only after this section does the game proceed into standard Uncharted territory, climbing around ancient ruins.
It wasn't until they get to the standard Uncharted territory that the game really clicked for me. At some point, Chloe and Nadine had talked enough to help me understand who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. And by the time we get to the standard Uncharted territory, all the typical features of the mainline games are shining. The environments are absolutely gorgeous, both outside and inside. I remember seeing the massive statues of Ganesh from across a valley, knowing that I was going to make my way to them, climb around them, and eventually go inside them. There is plenty of exploration, as well as combat and puzzles, both of which are as expected. I did particularly enjoy the puzzles with the statues swinging weapons around.
In a way, Lost Legacy ended up feeling like a sort of "greatest hits" of aspects of other Uncharted games. For example, the final sequence on a train reminded me of other train sequences in the series; the open-world-ish area with the jeep reminded me of the jeep sequences in Uncharted 4; etc. The two main characters are callbacks to older games, it brings Sam Drake back, etc. etc. In the end, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Lost Legacy. It's not a lesser game than the mainline ones; in fact, one could argue that it streamlines the formula, doing away with flashbacks, longer cut scenes, and other extraneous type missions. It's really quite compact, with a short run time (7 hours for me) that gets you in and out, and tells a fun treasure hunting story along the way. I ended up appreciating how the context and characters were revealed through the characters' banter as they explored. It was an organic way to present that stuff.
So, what started as a game I was unsure about ended up being one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
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dkirschner's Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 26 June, 2024
GameLog closed on: Sunday 30 June, 2024 |
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