The blue shell alone makes this game 5 stars. But enough about that. I like how Worlds 4 & 7 are hidden and off the beaten path or whatever. You get freedom in what order you wanna do things in, but the game is never like, "hey there's a fork in the road here you can go wherever you like isn't that cool how we laid this out for you wooooah" If you wanna do things in whatever order you want you gotta work for it. You have to beat the World 2 boss while mini to get to World 4 and you have to beat World 5 while mini or find the cannon in World 4 to get to 7. I like that better than, say, Mario Wonder where it's like "hey here's some worlds you can choose which one to do first" and they like show you all your options. Like the camera pans over to all of them. I like how this game does it better. Whenever I say I like an old game better than a new game I feel like one of those annoying "uhhh video games used to have SOUL. Now they're SOULESS." people but like agggh I just prefer the old one im sorry you know? I don't know if I'm making any sense here just ignore me and this review! Pay me no attention!

Its 2013. My brother's Xbox 360 churns quietly. The disc spins at a comfortable pace. I know the door blocks out the noise, but I still put pillow along the bottom of the door. Blocking out any sound and light from escaping into the hall. Mom will leave her room at 10 pm or so to fall asleep watching tv, and the risk of her recognizing that I'm up past my bedtime is too high.

I smuggled a used copy of the Hitman collection from the local gaming store into our house, hiding it beneath my shirt as I walk in from a "bike ride." Mom hates gun games, but I've become fixated. I don't care for the bald man much, but I keep thinking about the puzzles I've seen on youtube. All the creative ways to eliminate your opponent.

I don't make it far into Hitman 2. I get impatient with the slow walking speed and get caught hundreds of times by indulging in the run button. The limited saves become agonizing, but I'm determined to earn the silent assassination rating. I complete all the St. Petersburg maps and two of the Japan maps. Its a nerve-wracking exercise and once I start marching towards a Japan castle with some not great racial depictions, I bail. I move onto Hitman Contracts.

But that's for a different review. Repeating all those patterns, tracking all those guard movements, late into the night? It sticks with you. I was stunned by how many rooms I instantly recognized. The snowy streets of Petersburg, the back of a transport truck, the estate. The feeling of little clockwork pieces moving on their routes around you.

For revisiting this, I wasn't interested in a challenge. I wanted to explore those memories. As such, almost the entire game was played with invisibility cheats onward.

What a strange experience it is, to wander through those little sandboxes without instantly getting shot by aggressive guards. If I'm in a hurry, I can rush past puzzles and aim directly for the map's targets. But its cozier to drift along the map at my own pace. Observe these little clockwork pieces arriving at their destination. Read signs at the Russia bus station. Wondering who had to design the computer screens and the graffiti art and all the tiles and models and everything outside and in-between.

The sense of humor that will carry the franchise forward builds on itself quickly. Assassinate a playboy in his jacuzzi and the five different bikini girls he's surrounded by pull out machine guns. Arrive in the location of your final target and he's left a plastic standee waiting for you. Most of the jokes lean into "foreigners, am I right?" but its a 00s-ism you kind of have to force yourself to swallow. There's something here. Something to build from. Something special

And there's just a beautiful feeling about perusing through these digital worlds and enjoying the craft of it without the stress of dodging bullets. Its clunky and fairly racist, but you can feel the experimental heart starting to form beneath the surface. Hitman is starting to become Hitman. And its a beautiful process to see.

Столько лет я жил во лжи! "Риддик" всегда называли стелс игрой, а оказалось, что это какой-то уёбищный мутант: корявый стелс и убогий шутер. Я не смог доиграть в это дерьмо. Наиграл часа 3, судя по ютюбу это что-то около трети игры.

И начинается-то все не так плохо: Дизель играет на весь свой талант, графон опережает время, атмосфера присутствует. Маленькие локации с подзагрузками хочется прощать - игра немолодая. И первое задание - убить местного пахана - подозрений не вызывает. Ну, подумаешь, драки так себе. Не ужасные даже, просто не очень.

Потом тебя отправляют в мед. отсек. И вот тут подозрения-то и закрадываются. Игра пишет: старайтесь держаться в тени и не шуметь, и сразу после этого совета ты открываешь дверь, делаешь 2 шага и тебя расстреливает охранник, потому что тени в этом месте нет совсем. Ну ладно, косячок левелдизайна, решил я (какая-то тень от стены там баговала, показывая, что я то скрытен, то нет).

Потом дают пушку и заставляют пробиваться через охрану, подавляющую бунт. В прямых коридорах на тебя выбегает по 2-3 охранника и ебашат прямо в лицо. Прятаться негде, только за поворотом. На стенах висят турели, убить их можно с одного попадания. Но разглядеть их трудно, даже если знаешь, где они висят. Импакт - нулевой. Никакого ощущения попадания во врага. Пушки различаются только скорострельностью и разбросом.

Наконец, выдают ночное зрение. Ну, думаю, щас-то стелс начнется. Но начинается совсем пиздец. 2 раза выключил свет и придушил в темноте 2-х охранников. (После выяснил, что тут можно было взять форму техника для скрытного прохождения дальнейшего уровня, но у меня форма почему-то не бралась). Врагов по-прежнему мало, но Риддик хрупкий как пиздец, оружие издалека косое, а по стелсу проходить просто нет возможности. Я не выдержал и забил.

Из хорошего тут только графон, атмосфера, игра актеров и, возможно, история. Но всё перечеркивается адово всратым геймплеем. Я не верю, что это было хорошо тогда, потому что это слишком плохо. Самая перехваленная игра на моей памяти.

The downside of playing so many video games in rapid succession is that I forget loads of details about previous games I have played. One of the reasons I started writing these reviews was to help jog my memory in the future of my feelings about the game to help trigger my memory. Since completing ‘Uncharted 4: A Thief's End’ I have probably played over 100 games, so my memory of that game was very minimal. I remember there being female characters in the game but couldn’t tell you their names or anything about their back story. Regardless, playing an Uncharted game with Chloe and Nadine was a lot of fun.

Starting off as a DLC for Uncharted 4, then moving to a stand alone game, ‘Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’ is a short game with Nadine and Chloe from previous entries in the series being the main protagonists. Straight away I loved Chloe’s character, I loved how witty, direct and smart she was. People like myself are of course going to draw comparisons with Lara Croft but I much preferred Chloe’s character over Lara’s. I love the dynamic between the two lead characters, it’s not like they are best friends, they are with each other through necessity and their relationship grows over time, with its ups and downs. Naughty Dog are well known for their incredible motion capture work and this game was no exception, even down to the micro-expressions on character’s faces like Chloe (played by Laura Bailey) twisting her tongue in her mouth while she is feeling happy and smug about something.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as the previous instalments in the franchise however I did play the PS5 remaster which provides better visuals and performance as well as utilising PS5’s DualSense controller. The updated visuals are breathtaking and I was in complete awe of it all. The feedback on the controller is my favourite use of the DualSense since ‘Astro’s Playroom’. When firing a gun in the game, the controller gives off a clicking feeling like the bolt of the gun firing back. I couldn’t tell if it was the speaker doing this or the vibration motors themselves, or both. I do remember the stealth being more satisfying and easier to achieve in previous games whereas in this game the stealth was lacking, this caused me to take the approach of going hell for leather in each area with Asav’s men. The gun combat is really fun with an array of guns to experiment with, however I was not a fan of the hand-to-hand combat as I struggled to get to grips with dodging at the right time then attacking. The climbing is great as always however I did notice Chloe will die from falling from certain heights that other games wouldn’t bat an eyelid at. Nadine is an AI character that will run alongside you as you move through each area, she is a great help with puzzles and combat but can sometimes block you from moving through a doorway.

Despite being very similar to previous Uncharted games in many ways, there is a semi-open world area in ‘The Lost Legacy’ where you can drive a 4x4 around the 3 different objectives as well as collect 11 medallions to unlock a treasure bracelet. There are many other types of treasure to find but all you get as a reward for those is an achievement, so, fuck that.The area felt like Uncharted’s equivalent to ‘Bowser’s Fury’. I say semi-open as you can travel around freely but it’s quite a linear area with 1 or 2 paths between locations and it can be an absolute pain to navigate so I wasn’t really enamoured by this area, but it could very well be a sign of things to come for any future games in the franchise.

Storywise, it’s the same cliched “Adventurer goes to get a precious item, they have a rich person with an army also trying to get the item and they fight it out” as you often see so I wouldn’t say the story of this game is its strongest point however it does add more lore to each character's back story and relationships with one another. So on the whole, it does more story wise for the Uncharted universe than it does on its own.

As for the sound design in this game, I loved it, sound effects such as gunfire echo perfectly in the temples you visit throughout the game giving it a cinematic feel.

I had so much fun with this game, normally I’m all for shorter games and not ones that overstay their welcome. ‘Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’ comes in at around 8 hours of playtime and for the first time in ages I would have liked it to have been longer. I do hope we get more games with Nadine and Chloe in the future as they are a good duo and I would like to see their friendship grow.