Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (PS4)
By: Sony
NAUGHTY Dog have come a long way since the antipodean antics of Crash Bandicoot. But before they changed cinematic gaming forever with The Last of Us, the Santa Monica outfit crafted a threesome of PS3 finery that's yet to be bettered.
Ever since Nathan Drake's Indiana Jones-esque debut in 2007 he's become the closest thing Sony has to a mascot, and now all three PS3-era action juggernauts – some of the best of the generation – land on the PS4 with tarted-up frame rates and effects.
On top of gussied-up visuals, the hoary old original has been tweaked into line with the more elegant control system of its successors while a hellish Brutal difficulty will test the mettle of masochists.
With setpieces galore, The Nathan Drake Collection is a whistle-stop tour of seat-edge delights. With around 30 thrill-soaked hours given the shiny HD treatment and shoehorned on to one disc, it'll sate your appetite for derring-do until Uncharted 4 lands next March.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Multi)
By: Activision
WHEN Black Ops 2 made $500 million on its first day of sales, a sequel was inevitable. As a series lambasted for regular servings of the same old shooter slops, the third in the blasting juggernaut predictably plays it safe with plenty of familiar bang for your buck.
Robo-soldiers are the order of the day in this 2060s-set cyberpunk thriller, our philosophy-spouting grunts clad in the latest military tech. After becoming literally legless at the hands of a battle droid, our hero (or, for the first time, heroine) becomes a cybernetically enhanced super squaddie who can run up walls, control drones and view battles with enhanced peepers.
Behind the tech you're still playing a multi-million-pound blockbuster coconut shy, taking pot-shots at the noggins of baddies as they pop up from cover. The main campaign, long neglected in the series, has been beefed up no end – a mammoth thriller which, on completion, yields an additional Nightmares bonus mode that throws in extra zombies.
The solo effort, however, isn't available on last-gen versions of the game, so pauperish 360 and PS3 owners must make do with online-only shooty-shooty while the rest of us enjoy the 12-hour ride, our controls pads stained with caviar and pheasant.
But online is where CoD is at, and here a plethora of familiar modes return, including Kill Confirmed, Hardpoint, Uplink, and Gun Game, all offering the well-oiled, polished experience CoD is famed for, and with some of the tightest gunplay around.
The new maps, though, feel a little meh, and many are gimped to encourage the new wall running mechanic. Further disc stuffing comes in the form of the fully-featured Zombies mode, where a quartet of survivors (vocal cords pinched from Heather Graham, Ron Perlman and Jeff Goldblum) endure an undead apocalypse in a Bioshock-esque, art-deco nightmare.
They're preaching to the choir here, and even wrinkly old cynics like me who find CoD's online shenanigans the most depressing thing about modern gaming can't deny that the series hasn't been this polished or feature-stuffed in years.
