UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves "Collection" Review

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Metacritic gives me a 404 when submitting:

Masterpiece? As a 2022 game, NO!

These "games" make for two nice, very long movies or TV series with serious flaws.

After finishing both games, I am SO DONE with climbing in games. Serious, how does a masterpiece throw tedious and annoying climbing and advancing sections at you again and again and not make people annoyed or bored. What keeps it somewhat interesting is the dialog while doing things. But also ridiculous how casually not serious talking points gets spoken after you survived near death situations. Especially from his wife. They felt stupid and cringe.

I lost count how many Tomb Raiders, Assassins creeds or other games I played where you just climb but holding a stick and pressing A. The rope is nice, but even that gets old.

The game's throw tropes of "let me a give you a boost" like 100 times throughout the game. At some point it becomes really annoying.

It becomes so predictable, how many times you need someone to open a door and have to boringly hold a button (I set it to hold). How often does one need to go up to throw a crate down that is of course always there up to a ridiculous point, there a boost would actually perfectly work in shallow water but the games forces the crate trope on you AGAIN.

Every time you climb around you know something will break, the question is just will you fall down in a ridiculous long fall in a cutscene or will you just drop a little and grab something below, this slipping trope gets repeated throughout the game that it does not scare you or do anything, it just annoys you.

This most or less a "press button to advance story" kind of game, and I am not the biggest fan of those, BUT it't told very well and makes for a great show if you're in that kind of thing.

What is missing is the stunning graphics that for example any Plague Tale games have. The graphics look pretty nice, but also can not shake the last gen look to them. The game looks like someone tried to squeeze the last bit out of PS4 because that is exactly what it is. I am not sure what is "Remastered" of this, the high resolution and high FPS is nice and all, but the shadows are even low res on ultra. The lightning is monotone and the textures are monotone and boring and hard to describe. The game looks like a modern game with a "last gen" filter over it, ironically it's the opposite. I tried the low setting, and apart from shadows I hardly see any difference. The game has an "advanced models" setting, but everything has very low polygon count. "Remastered?" barely.

Storytelling is pretty good, that is why this game is praised so much, but if I want to watch a movie or TV show I will do that, and I do not get annoying tropes or repeated things over and over thrown at me. As an actual game, this needs to lose points.

Stealth gameplay is not the most favorite thing either, but I had my moments of fun with it, but judging the gameplay as a stealth and 3rd person shooter is for sure is worse than many games out there. Can be very challenging on "gripping" difficulty toward the end of the games. You basically have to put out a lot of enemies in stealth in some of the sections, or you're just not going to make it. I find the gameplay on "gripping" hard in a weird way, often the sections because like a trail an error thing rather than you're improving on your reflexes or something.

But the enemy AI is stupid AF, and it feels awkward to cheese them just running away when you are detected to have them to back to not searching. Or when they are suspicious, they talk to each other to look. But all they do it stare in your direction for a while, they do not actually move to where they saw you like in pretty much any other games.

The high predictable stuff gets annoying after a while, like I said with the slipping or breaking of the things you hold on to. Also, bridges and things you walk or drive over you basically know b4 already it's going to break.

And why is this called "collection". Its TWO games. It's not a collection of the franchise at all. It took me 20 hours to complete U4 on "gripping" (switched to moderate for the last two or three fights). And 9 hours to complete TLL on hard.

There is basically ZERO replayability. "Mirror" sounds like at least make a little bit interesting with a funny idea because you have no actually good idea. All the skin unlocks you get only AFTER completing the games is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid.

You have to do all the setting for both games individually, they have two complete separate .exe and settings files. How is this a good port? Like really why not combine them, it's a no-brainer, but it's lazily done.

I am playing on ultrawide and like many other games the cutscenes have forced 16:9. I am not sure if there is a point to it, if they're done it because there are models and backgrounds that would look bugged in 21:9, but my guess is NOT. Because it's all done in game, with stuff that is already there and part of the level.

Story: 9/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 7/10

6.5/10

Do not get me wrong, I LIKE linear single player games as much as I like open world games. I really love both. BUT this is so much on the rail feels so stretched and UNINTUITIVE, so much tedious annoying climbing with no puzzles or anything apart from the usual thing you grip on breaks you fall down and have to climb even more ... for a few mediocre gun play battles in between.
I have to say after how much this game is hyped I am disappointed even when the story kept me going, and I watched 96% of all cutscenes because the presentation and voice acting is good.

What I really liked it the throwbacks when they were kids, that really deepened the story, but they were also stretched with ridiculous climbing sections all over the entire orphanage.

Let me compare this game with modern Tomb Raiders. I do not give those 9/10 either, but I liked them more because they have better gameplay (also boring climbing sections the old fans actually want more off) BUT the Tombs because of the puzzles and graphics just are better than this. The modern TR are more action focused, the gunplay just feels better, even the climbing feels a lot better. I mean I appreciate it but the artificial boost you get midair by this game, so you make it to every ledge, but it looks pretty ridiculous.

[Dante]

I have to agree. I was hyped for the the games thinking I get 2 games just like Tomb Raider but the games are boring and slow AF and the port is the worst from SONY ever.
5/10

[Leeroy Jenkins]

I would also agree, except I couldn't even get past 3-4 hours and that was WITH me aggressively skipping cutscenes after the part where hes in his house because I just couldn't take it anymore. How this garbage got so popular I will never ever understand. Meanwhile the Crash Bandicoot games were my absolute favorite when I was a child, those were actual VIDEO GAMES and made by naughty dog as well. I can't believe it's the same company, it's most likely not the same devs though. I guess people on sony consoles just eat this interactive movie garbage up for god knows what reason

[Dr.Abscondus]

TLDR. No wonder metacritic bounced you.