This game is kind of a mess, but a stylish one nonetheless. Also, lord forgive me for replaying these games out of order, and on an emulator no less, but the nostalgia was too strong.

From the moment you boot up the game, things really do feel like they've managed to outdo the mighty GH2 in terms of scale, especially going from the PS2 to the PS3, though I do remember every other version besides PS3 and 360 being severely downgraded in terms of visuals, but the core songlist and modes are complete.

Being the first game in the series developed by Neversoft, they did a shockingly good job considering their lack of experience with music games, this being their first non-Tony Hawk game since 2000 (pretending Gun doesn't exist). Their trademark humour and style carries over well even into a whole new genre, though the note charting definitely takes getting used to coming from the Harmonix games. Sometimes the charting leads to very fun songs, but a lot of the time it's charted so strangely that you can't help but wonder what they were thinking (see the bridge in "Before I Forget") and it can get old fast, especially if you aren't at a skill level where you can comfortably hit almost everything that comes at you. It's probably the game's biggest issue.

The song choices are very solid, and no doubt introduced many people, myself included, to many iconic songs. There's a LOT more songs that are cover versions as opposed to master recordings than I remember in this game, and their quality is mixed but I'd say they're better than the ones you'd find in GH1. The bonus songs are mostly European bands, including songs that aren't sung in English which are always nice to see, and songs that were from more independent labels at the time. The success of this game undoubtedly helped some of these artists blow up, most iconically Dragonforce.

I definitely also need to mention the game's few boss fights. They're very brief but are seriously cool additions to the game and are very memorable. In fact that pretty much applies to the whole career mode, it's not too long and the animated cutscenes between each set of songs are fantastic. That being said, the decision to lock a few of the game's most iconic songs, most criminally Matchbook Romance's "Monsters" (which plays very often throughout the menus to tease you), behind completion of the mostly identical co-op career mode (it does have some new animated cutscenes at least) is genuinely sinful. Use an unlock all songs cheat and don't look back.

The game looks pretty good, and I like how the camera sometimes cuts to the other band members whereas in previous games the camera was basically on your character 100% of the time. When it cuts to the singer, the lipsync is pretty spectacular and it's always nice to see, very rarely your character has lipsync as well for minor parts of the song and it's a really sweet touch. Also worth mentioning the new style of fretboard and overall UI looks great here. Sadly I think the characters you play as are a bit of a downgrade from the last game, and they really get dumbed down and exaggerated.

Overall, it's definitely worth playing but feels like a downgrade from previous games, as to be expected. I admire how it manages to still keep the overwhelming style of the previous games but in an all new way of doing so. Neversoft's tendency to chart very strangely thankfully gets toned down in future games (at least if i remember correctly), but the insane sales also falls off a cliff with it as the whole genre begins to collapse at the end of the decade.

This collection is great but the main attraction, Uncharted 4, is considerably disappointing to me.

I will start with the game's best aspect though, the presentation. I can't put it into words but the game is just gorgeous from start to finish, and runs excellently too. Character models also look incredible, especially in cutscenes and still hold up very well today, in fact it feels like this is as good as it gets for visuals sometimes, but obviously that's not true.

The story is kinda frustrating sadly. There are some things I like about it, such as the flashback chapters where you play as a younger Nathan, though they don't really feel necessary to the story. A lot of the game revolves around Sam, Nathan's brother, that just shows up out of nowhere for this game. He's okay, I guess? It leads to an interesting story but it just feels so ridiculous and stupid even for this franchise known for just being a playable ridiculous action movie.

While playing I also felt like characters weren't themselves, especially Nathan. I know he's meant to not be a particularly good person but at more than a few points he felt way out of line of who he was meant to be. This is redeemed a bit around the second half of the game when he has to spend a significant amount of time with just Elena, which was a highlight and felt kinda like a trip back to the very first game, for better or worse.
The villains are some of the better characters, but they really could have done with more screen time, though in the case of Nadine this is solved with The Lost Legacy, which I'll get to later.
I will say that the ending is kinda predictable but still sweet, it almost made the whole journey to get there worth it.

I have a lot to say about the gameplay but I'll start with the good. In the Uncharted games, you do a lot of climbing and puzzle solving, and thankfully here it's better than ever. For climbing it's usually very clear where you can and can't go, and the animations are super smooth and satisfying. Overall the amount of deaths tied to climbing related jank are at an all time low with this game, which is a godsend. Two new tools are added, the rope and the Piton, and these are not only fun to use but add some new variety to climbing and the rope can even lead to some very cool moments in combat. The other likeable part is the scripted action setpieces, they are fantastic and just as utterly insane as previous games and really are some of the best parts of the game.

Sadly the biggest problem I faced with the game is that the combat is just awful and not fun. The weapons you use are very forgettable and unsatisfying to fire, and most of them feel incredibly weak. That's one thing, but the main problem is that basically every weapon has a huge spread on it from the moment you fire the first shot. Even if you have your crosshair dead centre over an enemy's head, it's more than likely going to completely miss unless you're very close to them, which is a bad idea. Due to seemingly every weapon having this insane spread, it's honestly just as effective to just blind fire while in cover. I finished the game with an astonishing 37% shot accuracy because of this. Genuinely what were they thinking?

This wouldn't be so bad if your enemies also had stormtrooper aim but they don't, in fact they annihilate you very quickly and hit shots from miles away. They also throw grenades if you dare sit still for more than 5 seconds and once you reach the halfway point of the game it feels like every other enemy has body armour which can only really be dealt with up close, but if they're also up close to you then you're very likely screwed. To be fair to it, the game encourages you to use very crude stealth to take care of enemies but it feels honestly pointless as a lot of the environments in the game don't adequately allow for it and it just feels like pure luck whether or not you'll be able to take anyone out. And once again, if the enemy has body armour, it makes it nigh impossible to take care of them in stealth. Due to all of this nightmarish regression of combat, I genuinely struggled at some points playing on the Moderate difficulty, and I say this as someone who beat Uncharted 1 & 3 on Crushing, and Uncharted 2 on Hard. If you play this honestly go on Light or Explorer and don't look back.

Overall Uncharted 4, while visually stunning is just disappointing and a step back from the previous games which doesn't make sense.

Thankfully The Lost Legacy exists, and while it is short and the story is kinda forgettable, and obviously has the same combat problems as Uncharted 4, it honestly felt a little better than the main game, and I don't actually know why.

It could be the fact you play as Chloe instead of Nathan which feels very refreshing, or it could be the fact that the story features a lot less characters and therefore you get a chance to breathe as the story is on a smaller scale, even if the story isn't that great. You also spend pretty much the whole game with Nadine at your side, and I really appreciate her having more screen time.

It does sort of feel like the whole thing is just meant to be a nostalgia trip back to Uncharted 2, with Chloe being the focus of the story and one of the biggest setpieces of the game taking place on a train, but I can't necessarily fault it for that since 2 was an utterly fantastic game.

I don't think I can really say much about The Lost Legacy, it's just a short but slightly more enjoyable version of 4 albeit with a worse story, and it's addition definitely makes this collection far better.

Speaking of this collection, how is it? Very good, at least on PC. I'm not very familiar with the PS4 original so I'm not sure how much of the visuals are an improvement from 2016, but it looks fantastic here and scales well to a lower end device like the Steam Deck. Keyboard and mouse controls, while explicitly not recommended, feel completely fine after fine tuning the sensitivity. I didn't have any technical issues but I hear a lot of complaints about crashing so it might not be a great port for everyone. Though for PC specifically I have to say the audience for this port has to be quite small, as 4 really needs you to have played the previous games to really let the story have any impact, and the previous games were only ever on PS3 and 4. And if you had a PS4, you may as well have just played it all the way back in 2016.

Overall, good port but the game is just a step back in many regards which is a real shame. It looks real nice though, I'll give it that.

I was very impressed by how this game managed to capture the feeling of playing the original game pretty much spot on while having a different tone and making a lot of changes to the gameplay and story. It's a remake that seemingly does not set out to replace the original game but instead be another version of it, and a great one at that. Though to be completely transparent, I never finished the original game, but I did play it for at least like 4 hours, and I did like what I saw but never got around to picking it back up.

A lot of the frustrations found in the original game, like only being able to aim while stationary, and copious amounts of quicktime events, are gone and the frustrations that you will find will usually be the fault of the survival horror genre itself or your own mistakes. I wouldn't dare try and 100% complete this game, it would require an unbelievable amount of patience.

In terms of presentation, it's fantastic. There's little to say, really, as character models, lighting and atmosphere is just spot on, even for a way more action focused game. I vaguely remember some people online having discourse about all the yellow paint everywhere telling you about items and where to go and what to do, and this is completely fine. It is quite abundant, there really is an insane amount of yellow paint, but it doesn't take away from anything and as a player I would much rather have these environmental hints than missing a bunch of stuff or getting lost.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the game's difficulty, at least on Standard. I am notoriously bad at survival horror games and pushed myself to go on the normal difficulty this time instead of being a coward and going on Assisted. There were plenty of times I just very barely scraped by, but in an almost 15 hour long first playthrough I died less than 10 times, and the overall difficulty felt just right. I will say though that I do really miss the original game's hidden dynamic difficulty system, where missing shots and dying would quietly remove enemies or scale back their health and aggression. I'm pretty sure it's not here, and at best boxes will give you better items when you most desperately need it.

If I had to point out some annoyances, it'd be that knives are way too important to have, to a slightly frustrating degree. There's also a ton of easily missable stuff, and the usual survival horror annoyances of spending a considerable amount of time getting lost and backtracking. Also the merchant never shuts up when you're trying to think. That one's forgivable though, because his voice is really nice.

Overall, really good stuff! I really need to take a break from this genre though, it's stressful.