Zadzooks: ‘Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’ review (PS4)

A treasure hunter and mercenary team up to take gamers on an adventure that Nathan Drake would appreciate in the third-person masterpiece Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (Sony Computer Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog, rated Teen, $39.99).

Set in Naughty Dogs’ popular, exotic universe, usually starring the master of artifact acquisition Mr. Drake, this PlayStation 4 and 4 Pro exclusive adventure instead features the gruff but lovable pairing of familiar secondary characters to the series Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross.

Fans will remember the Aussie Chloe as a tough-as-nails sarcastic thief and occasional love interest to Mr. Drake, while Nadine was a South African leader of a paramilitary group at odds with the Drake clan.

A player controls Chloe and the computer handles Nadine as they first meet up on the rooftop within a civil war-torn India, and the mercenary agrees to help the thief find the mythical Golden Tusk of Ganesh.

Chloe’s father died on that quest, and the pair will face equally hostile and potentially deadly resistance from a ruthless warlord named Asav and his army who are also in search of the relic.

Once again, as par for the course in the wonderfully cinematic “Uncharted” franchise, the detail given to the locations as well as characters and their development is nearly impeccable and often makes it difficult to concentrate on the objectives.

Driving a 4x4 vehicle and hiking around the lush areas of India’s Western Ghats to find the ruins of the Hoysala Empire never stopped dazzling. By the way, according to developers, the environment is the largest free-roaming space in the “Uncharted” franchise’s history.

Gamers will savor their time finding ancient symbols and disks to unlock the land’s secrets and will marvel at the details — be it the ancient stone work on the temples, the gushing waterfalls, the mud (that even leaves footprints after having been walked through), the sun reflecting off of puddles, and the variety of colorful wildlife and greenery.

Better yet, the characters look lifelike and their bodies reflect the type of beating just like one would expect in this adventure.

Chloe’s sweaty hair always seems to have a few strands sticking to her face that she swats away, and her arms and clothing are always dirty. When she looks at her cellphone for captured images, a player will see not only her bitten-off fingernails but slight cuts accumulating from her injured digits or moisture from a recent waterfall encounter as the game progresses.

Throughout the roughly dozen hour long experience, the pair will engage in firefights or stealth missions against Asav’s army, solve Indiana Jones-style puzzles and encounter stunning environmental obstacle courses requiring climbing, jumping, shimmying, swinging, and sliding around ancient temples and city scapes.

Players will even learn about some Hindu mythology and key history of the Hoysala Empire as the treasure hunters find new artifacts and converse among themselves.

Puzzles continue to remain a highlight of the series.

In one case, Chloe must jump around a series of platforms that trigger massive golden warrior statues wielding swords and axs to swing and chop at her. A player must guide her to traverse the correct sequence of platforms or watch her suffer an ugly death.

Or, a set of three circular stone tablets must be correctly aligned to display a horse emblem. However, pieces of the tablets are off to the side and must be injected into the twisting tablets in the correct sequence to properly complete and align the circles.

A few new features incorporated into the game include Chloe using a hairpin to pick locks that may open a door or a weapons crate. The crate will contain a variety of guns, including silencers, shotguns and sniper rifles as well as grenades and collectable trinkets.

Chloe’s aforementioned cellphone captures add to the detail, and she also has access to a map that she will unfold for a player to inspect and hind new missions.

It’s worth noting that a pair of strong female characters star in this video game. That’s a rare event in the industry.

Also, the game mechanics are intuitive and never distract from the action. It’s easy to aim and shoot a gun, take cover, take down enemies in close-quarter combat, drive the vehicle over outrageous terrain, and it’s easy to control Chloe while climbing within the most precarious of situations.

Best of all, it’s easy and a pleasure, to take part in “Uncharted: The Lost Legacy,” an extended movie that is well worth the price of admission

Note: The $40 price tag might be steep, but developers also toss in the complete suite of multiplayer content, including competitive multiplayer (14 maps), a cooperative survival mode (50 enemy waves), and all of the downloadable updates released since “Uncharted 4” launched in May of 2106.