Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a huge success for Playstation

IF YOU like adventure, exploration, and great shooter games then definitely get a copy of PlayStation’s exclusive game Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.

ACTUAL archaeologists will likely tell you that treasure tends to be more in the form of enhanced knowledge about ancient civilisations and less in the form of the Ark of the Covenant, buried pirate treasure, or lost cities in the Amazon.

There’s a reason there aren’t any popular computer games about being an actual archaeologist, and that’s because it’s not nearly as exciting as raiding tombs, evading ancient booby traps, looting shiny gold artworks, swinging over spike pits, and firing guns at wild animals/angry natives/rival treasure hunters/mercenaries.

The team at Naughty Dog know this better than anyone, having released five games in their PlayStation-exclusive Uncharted series of adventures.

While the first four games in the series followed the adventures of modern-day Indiana Jones archetype Nathan Drake, the most recent game — Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, released exclusively on PlayStation 4 — shifts the focus from Nathan and onto two secondary but popular characters from the series.

This time around, Australian-Indian treasure hunter Chloe Frazer (the player’s character) has teamed up with South African mercenary Nadine Ross as they search for the fabled Tusk of Ganesh in the Western Ghats region of India.

The scenery is breathtaking, the special effects impressive.

The graphics and characterisation in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy are outstanding right through. The scenery is breathtaking, the special effects impressive, and the world itself just a fascinating place to be in — even if for most of it you’re swinging over chasms, shooting at soldiers or leaping from one precarious handhold to another.

The dialogue and the banter between Chloe and Nadine is superb — whether it’s Chloe making wry, almost self-aware comments on what’s going on, Nadine arguing with her over the best course of action, or just the two of them sharing stories, it’s great to listen to and makes you feel like you’re along on an adventure with actual people.

After an initial opening level or two in an Indian city where you get the hang of the controls and a better understanding of what Chloe and Nadine are up to — along with who their opponent Asav is — the next area is a huge, open-world region with temple ruins, rivers and treasures which can be explored in a 4WD.

Chloe and Nadine make a great team.

For much of the game you’re swinging over chasms, shooting at soldiers or leaping from one precarious handhold to another.

Just at the point where I was starting to get a bit tired of driving around in a jeep, the story focused itself on a particular objective and sharpened up quite nicely.

The game takes about 6-10 hours to finish and is paced well, although it faltered around the three-quarter mark before picking up again for a strong finish.

The puzzles deserve praise for being interesting and thought-provoking but not frustrating — and if you find yourself stuck, there’s an option to get Nadine to solve it for you so you can move on and enjoy the story.

The criticisms I have of the game are relatively minor — a few times I found myself wondering why I was trying to find an alternative route or path when Chloe had a satchel full of C4 and an established lack of qualms about using it to get through ruins in her way, there’s the whole “why do complex mechanisms which have been abandoned jungle fortresses for centuries still work?” thing inherent in all lost treasure hunting stories, and for a treasure hunter Chloe certainly knows her way around a wide range of military-grade weapons and seems to have absolutely zero qualms killing a lot of people.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy has an egaging storyline that should take about six to 10 hours to complete.

A couple of the shootouts felt a little like someone said “Well, we’re overdue for some gunfire. Cue the bad guys!”, and the small arms all seemed pretty interchangeable too.

From a gameplay or plot progression narrative, The Lost Legacy doesn’t break any new seals, but since the mechanics behind Uncharted 4 are still solid, there’s an element of not fixing things which aren’t broken too.

While Nathan Drake has been the iconic star of the series, The Lost Legacy is a stellar game without his presence and stands alone as an outstanding title in its own right.

Naughty Dog have found gold with this game and hopefully we’ll see more of Chloe Frazer in future Uncharted games — she’s an excellent protagonist, likeable, and a natural fit to take over Nathan Drake’s mantle.

If you like adventure, exploration, and great settings then travel by map to your nearest games retailer or the PlayStation Store and get a copy of this one right away.

Originally published as Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a huge success for Playstation