Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Se fosse um DLC, poderia ter aparado as arestas, diminuído o tempo total da aventura e, assim, ter sido um lançamento mais sólido do que foi. Como jogo standalone, The Lost Legacy apresenta pouca coisa nova à franquia e dá a sensação de ter sido feito por um estúdio novato contratado por Naughty Dog e Sony pra surfar no sucesso de A Thief’s End.

Não é um jogo ruim nem nada, e tem a grata surpresa de nos trazer a improvável relação entre Chloe e Nadine, mas no saldo final não acho que é uma experiência que se sustenta tão bem. E o Asav é provavelmente o pior vilão da franquia, caricato ao extremo e de um jeito nada divertido.

First and foremost i wanna say that i love Nadine. I think she is a wonderfully written character with her plumb clumsy naivity & at the same time goal oriented pragmatism and its great to get the chance of getting to know her "other" side apart from being the villain in U4. Chloe is great too but for me Nadine stole the show. Now for the rest of the Game. When i played Uncharted 2 i absolutely adored this game. It was released before the time that "making it Open World" would be the biggest goal of Triple A Developers. Accordingly Uncharted 2 was an ultra linear Game. In fact the linearity of U2 can not be understated and is almost on par with COD Games. I haven´t played through any other Game (maybe actually Pokemon Heartgold) as many times as i have played U2. The thing is that the ultra linearity of U2 makes it the great Game it is. It allows for a Blockbuster-esque cineastic action experience. The very simple combat mechanics of U2 only add to this linear & lighthearted Blockbuster experience. While i liked Uncharted 4 for the story, the Gameplay & level design left me a bit disappointed. The approach to make the levels wider was not something i was able to really appreciate. For me the worst levels of Uncharted 4 were actually the ones with the most Open World like structure. Uncharted has been and still is in it´s essence about linearity. Now the lost legacy does something interesting. It has some very linear and Blockbuster-esque moments mostly in the second half of the Game but it also has the most Open World like section in any Uncharted Game ever. Accordingly it for me combined the grandest and best Uncharted moments with the worst ones. The Open World section to me was an absolute catastrophe of level design. It did not make any sense whatsoever for an Uncharted Game, the narrative and Gameplay mechanics are just not made for this type of level design. Meanwhile if this part was not in the Game it couldve been so much more probably being up there with U2. Thats because the second half of the Game weirdly is ultra linear more so then most parts of U4. Taking this into consideration i´d rate this Game somewhere in the 7/8 territory.

Pros
-Blockbuster-esque Second half of the Game
-Characters
-Nadine

Cons
-Open World Section!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The stale old game play is still a chore at times. But the dynamics and well written/acted dialogue between the characters as well as Naughty Dogs' knack for making games look 5 years ahead of the technology still hooks you in,.

I have to admit, by this point I was a bit burned out on the Uncharted franchise by this point, we already had 4 games and the series really wasn't offering anything new or making major improvements outside of updated graphics. After 4 Uncharted teased there may be more coming, not necessarily as a sequel, but maybe DLC, Sully and Sam talked about a job during the end of the game, but then a few months later we got the reveal for what was branded the final Uncharted DLC, and the main protagonists would be Chloe and Nadine. Now I will admit, I actually think it was a good idea for them to focus on Chloe since she sort of played second fiddle to the main trio in the previous 2 games, and I felt like Chloe was important enough and interesting enough to warrant more development, but we just never got it and after Uncharted 2 her role in the series greatly diminished to a small side character. Nadine on the other hand is new to the franchise, only appearing in 4 as sort of the redeemed villain who turned good. To be honest I didn't really find Nadine to be interesting enough, but I guess it would have felt weird to have Chloe going off on her own and they wanted to pair Chloe up with another chick so there was only a limited pool of characters to draw from.

For the most part Legacy plays like typical Uncharted, you have your stealth segments where you hide and find ways to take enemies out in silence sneaking along tall grass, you have your action pieces where you just go out gun blazes while enemies charge you, then you have your crazy platforming where everything just gets out of control and you are performing unrealistic jumps. It is a bit more open World than the other games, the first half of this game mainly has you driving your jeep around an open jungle and trying to activate different switches to open a door, then the second half is more focused on typical Uncharted linearity and platforming. Either way I guess the story was okay, but it just felt unnecessary as well. It was exactly just that, a little side story Chloe and Nadine went through, surprisingly enough there wasn't super good character development. Chloe got a bit with her backstory elaborated, but Nadine really had almost no substantial development and then the game decides to throw in Sam near the end of the game just to throw in some humor and make things more interesting. Its just, Chloe and Nadine seem a bit too serious, the reason I always liked Uncharted was because of the humor and Nate joking around in the face of danger. Chloe kind of does this, but it really comes off more awkward than it did with Elena or Drake, and Nadine just felt way too serious, which would have been fine in any other game, but since Uncharted is a series of quirky and smart ass characters, she almost feels a little out of place.

Lost Legacy was a fun DLC that didn't drag out and it had a good combination of exploration and platforming, and even had some decent puzzles, but at the end of the day, I felt like it didn't add anything to the franchise. Sure Uncharted 4 wasn't my favorite either, but at least Uncharted 4 added a ton to the overall story and introduced crucial new characters and concluded Drake's story and even gave us a nice epilogue. This just felt like a side story that had no consequence on anything and if Chloe and Nadine didn't go on this adventure, nothing would have changed in the Uncharted universe, it was just them going after some psychopath who was going to bomb a town in India and cause a civil war there. The villain in this game was pretty damn generic and almost as bad as Uncharted 3's villain, I just found him to be your typical Saturday morning cartoon villain who wanted power.

So overall, this isn't bad, and if you are a fan of Uncharted it is a little extra and gives you more of the good gameplay and platforming, and it does give Chloe a bit more development that she badly needed. But at the same time you don't get much either, Nadine really is a bland character and gets almost no development, the game lacks a lot of charm and humor the previous games had, it does feel a bit too similar to the previous games and does nothing new, and the story is pretty forgettable. Its just Uncharted 4 had a good ending, even if I didn't enjoy the game as much as I wanted. But this just feels like a little side story and if Uncharted ended with this, it just feels a bit unsatisfying to me. Hopefully down the road we can see if Sully or Sam get some closure since they end up being somewhat lose ends.

Uncharted the Lost Legacy is a stand alone expansion to Uncharted 4, essencially reusing all art assets and mechanics from that game, but delivering a brand new campaign. This time around you follow Chloe and Nadine, as they go after a famous treasure of Indian heritage, which is also sought after by the land's main terrorist and threat to the government.

What follows is a very -very- Uncharted plot. There is literally no story twist you didnt see coming if you played any of the previous titles already, it flows very much like Uncharted 2, with the exception of one initial open area riped from Uncharted 4.. Now, despite being cliche, its still well written and interesting to play through. Cloe and Nadine are multi layered character, and its enjoyable to see them warming up to each other progressively throughout the game. Naughty Dog writers do know how to write a belieavable relationship in the short running time it goes on. There are some noticeable flaws though. The main villain has no plausible backstory to make him somewhat relateable, all i know about him is that he is a doctor that decided to take up some krav maga lessons, which makes him a powerhouse for some reason. And then there is the banter between Cloe and the rest of the cast, that seems to always drive home the point that "women are powerful". I swear that at points they nearly broke the fourth wall just to comment on how many little games women are the protagonists. While i do agree in that sentiment, i dont feel that it fits tonally with the rest of the game, at least with the frequency it is done here.

The actual gameplay is very similar to Uncharted 4, though disappointinly it doesnt have new mechanics to use in combat. I would have for one love to use the climbing rope on enemies. But the core gameplay of Uncharted 4 is great in combat already, so there is little complains there. It still offers the big combat scenarios with multiple ways to approach, that remind me a bit of fortresses in Far Cry series. The gunplay is satisfying while still arcadey, and the movement is stellar. Beyond combat there is climbing sequences, which are as dull as ever, and also walking segments with banter between characters. And lots of cutscenes of course, which have a very slow pace to most of them, but are well directed.

This one just fails to surprise me, as it could have been a way for Naughty Dog to experiment with the core of the Uncharted franchise, but they decided to just do more of the same. If you enjoyed Uncharted 4 you will also enjoy this, even if on the whole i found this to be slightly weaker.

Love it or hate it; Uncharted 4 is what I’d consider to be a master class in cinematic action adventure games, so I was all for an expansion on the world’s story and characters. Lost Legacy picks up after the events of U4 and makes the rather interesting choice of following Chloe Frazer – series veteran but notably absent from the last game – and U4’s star newcomer Nadine Ross as the unlikely pair team up to find lost cities in India and a mysterious treasure known as the Tusk of Ganesh, which Chloe’s father had been on the verge of discovering before passing away mysteriously.

Chloe and Nadine’s relationship throughout this adventure is really the star of the show here, along with Naughty Dog’s trademark quality when it comes to script and voice acting. Every conversation just feels so real and natural; Nadine being a tough hardliner with a lot of baggage, and Chloe having a more carefree and humorous personality; the clashing and bonding between these two women is endearing and handled with the utmost of care. I liked how the game explores things like Hindu deities and Indian history, the well implemented context really makes exploring a lot of these locations and ruins exciting, and that’s something that Naughty Dog’s always excelled at doing.

Now things are not so simple; this is an Uncharted game and thus we need a generic antagonist – by way of a man named Asav - to chase the women around, strategically placing his mercenaries in key locations so that the women can have a fun little gun fight before solving a puzzle or two. Asav believes he is a reincarnation of one of the ruthless older kings of Hoysala, which is a malice that ties him into his involvement in the Indian civil war. There are some cool ideas at play here, but as a villain he lacks the intimidation factor of a Lazarevic or the cunning schemer factor of a Rafe.

As far as presentation goes I thought the visual design and settings here were pretty much all fantastic. From the dank war torn streets of an Indian city to the lush Western Ghats and ancient ruins; this game’s art just POPS. Naughty Dog does a bit more open world experimenting here by giving you a large open area early on to complete several objectives in, including a really long side quest. I actually quite enjoyed this design choice; I feel like Naughty Dog is getting closer to making an action adventure title that is fully open world (outside of Jak & Daxter obviously)… It’s just that here it takes up a relatively small portion of the game. There’s some puzzle solving in this game too which is standard for Uncharted, most of them are painfully easy but there was one platforming puzzle that you encounter early on that I quite liked.

My biggest complaint here is that the game really doesn’t introduce anything new in terms of game-play or story, in fact the game reuses so many ideas from previous Uncharted games that my eyes almost fell out from rolling so much. I wasn’t terribly excited about being thrown into formulaic combat situations, I feel like they tweaked stealth in ways that made it more uncomfortable, and the fist fighting mechanics were truly awful and thankfully rarely employed. Narrative wise the game doesn’t take much of any risks, they basically steal Rise of the Tomb Raider’s “picking up where my father left off” trope, and the circumstances surrounding why Chloe and Nadine are even working together to begin with are confusing and underdeveloped.

I will say that the game ends on a fairly strong note, and the addition of a surprise character later in the game made the experience more entertaining for me. Hell it’s more Uncharted what can I say? Chloe and Nadine make a strong pair of protagonists. The script, voice acting, setting, visuals, and thrilling cinematic set pieces make this expansion a fun little distraction brimming with quality production value. Just don’t expect anything new here, the game falls back on essentially every Uncharted trope ever conceived and begins to feel frustrating and monotonous at times especially regarding the combat. This one’s for the Uncharted mega fans only