Parent's Guide: Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Uncharted: The Lost Legacy?

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a treasure-hunting, ancient-ruin-exploring, puzzle-solving adventure game from the folks behind the much-loved Uncharted series. This time eschewing the usual 'dude raider' protagonist Nathan Drake in favour of dynamic female duo Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, you set out on a quest for the Tusk of Ganesh - a mythical item Chloe's father dedicated his life to uncovering, hidden in the depths of the Indian mountains, surrounded by a bloody civil war. It's a dangerous business, particularly when a ruthless warlord by the name of Asav has his sights set on the very same artefact, and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it…

How do you play Uncharted: The Lost Legacy?

In terms of gameplay, if you imagine a gaming take on your average Indiana Jones flick, only replacing Harrison Ford with a couple of feisty females, you wouldn't be too far off. Despite the change in protagonist, the game itself will feel immediately familiar to fans of the earlier Uncharted games, as you alternate between exploring crumbling ruins, solving ancient puzzles, and surviving light platforming sections, with quick firing combat combat, driving segments and other set pieces punctuating the exploration.

Inside the game's many ancient temples, ruins and caves - or even on the rainy streets of a shanty town - you'll need to make clever use of your surroundings in order to proceed, whether it's leaping from perilous platform to platform, pushing blocks onto pressure pads to open doors, or swinging from pole to pole as you try to make your way up and over a large chasm, while nooks and crannies hide secret pickups too.

Combat, meanwhile, is a fairly standard third person shooter affair. Most of the larger battle scenes take place in more open areas, with various upturned boxes, stone walls and the like offering shelter from incoming attacks; utilising cover is particularly useful, as you're often taking on a large number of enemies, and sitting out in the open is likely to get you peppered with bullet holes instead. Both you and your enemies can make use of cover, as you return fire with a range of firearms, melee attacks or stealth takedowns (or simply try and run them over with your car).

How easy is Uncharted: The Lost Legacy to pick up and play?

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy goes out of its way to make itself as accessible as possible for newcomers, packing in a range of options to help you find your footing. There are five difficulty levels here, including two levels of easy, which you can chop and change between at any time. The game's 'Options' menu also includes a handy 'Accessibility' section where you can switch on various aiming assists, automatic enemy lock-on and camera tweaks to make combat easier, along with subtitles for the hard of hearing.

While the optional settings help make combat a lot easier, the game also has a hint system for its puzzles. While puzzles are usually at least fairly straightforward, if you end up spending too long mulling over a particular puzzle, Nadine will offer you a helpful hint, with each hint getting increasingly blatant until she actually walks you through it step by step, perhaps highlighting which pillars you need to jump on in what order. 

In fact, the only thing the game doesn't offer any assists with is getting around. With a fairly large expanse of Indian mountains/rainforest to cover, pressing the Touch Pad will let you bring up a map, which has some key locations scribbled on (and, helpfully, crossed off once you complete them), but as there's no way to have the map open as you drive, you'll need to keep stopping your car to check you're heading the right way.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is fully voiced and subtitled. With much less of a focus on combing through textual hints in a journal as compared to earlier games in the series, about the only important non-voiced text is in the odd button prompt or hint that pops up during tutorial sections.

Sample Sentences:

• "Climb up the doors to reach the gate crank."
• "Feel for the vibration."
• "Push Forward. Press X to climb."

Aimed more at an older audience, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy sits somewhere in the middle in terms of mature content - there's no sex scenes or nudity, nor is there huge swathes of blood and gore. However, violence is a bit more on the realistic side, as players use machine guns, pistols and grenades to battle enemy soldiers and other human characters, accompanied by gunfire sounds, large explosions and small blood-splatter effects. Stealth and melee attacks can also be used to take down enemies, in the form of fist fights and snapping necks, accompanied by sound effects. Some scenes show corpses or wounded characters with torn and blood-stained clothing.

In terms of bad language, the words sh*t and a*shole crop up from time to time in the dialogue.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4