Sony today announced that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will be released for PlayStation 4 on March 18th, 2016. It will be the first game in the series with single-player add-on content and there's a bevy of collector's editions to choose from should you be so inclined.
Regardless, there's no better time than the present to look back at the best moments in the preceeding games which you'll be able to relive if you pick up the Nathan Drake Collection later this year or still have your old copies of Drake's Fortune, Among Thieves, and Drake's Deception.
Hotel vs. Chopper – Uncharted 2
The opening moments of Uncharted 2 was enough to cement the game as one of the jewels of the last generation but this section later on was just as wonderfully exhilarating.
Nate and Chloe need to scale the Nepalese city's tallest building, a hotel, to find the location of a temple. Of course, the guards have other ideas and there's plenty of combat (plus a great one-liner about zombies) before you reach the roof. Once you're there a moment of calm follows as Naughty Dog shows you exactly what it can do. Then all hell breaks loose, because of course it does.
The level of destruction is truly impressive.
German U-boat – Uncharted
The U-boat scene in the original Uncharted was one of the PlayStation 3's very first raw power demonstrations, with Naughty Dog revealing a stunning location and the submarine at its centre helped put everything into perspective.
Nate and Sully encounter a raging waterfall in the jungle, which somehow has a Second World War German U-boat teetering on the edge of a dangerous cliff. Since nothing is ever easy, Nate must navigate inside the vessel to search for clues. The scale of the submarine and the dazzling jungle below remains breathtaking.
Plane Chase – Uncharted 3
If you saw Mission Impossible Rogue Nation in cinemas over the summer, the movie's plane chase scene may have looked familiar to you and that's likely because it was inspired by the one in Drake's Deception. In the game, Nate fights with some bad guys before tumbling from the back of a cargo plane and is forced to cling to a tarpaulin or fall to an early grave. The sound of gunfire is replaced with howling wind followed by an eerie quiet as Nate manages to full the ripcord on his parachute and descend to the desert below, hundreds of kilometers from civilizations.
You know he'll be fine, but this is still one of the most powerful moments in the game.
The Village – Uncharted 2
This is one of the most touching scenes in the entire series even though not much happens. That's part of the beauty of it all.
Nate finds a moment of calm to explore the mountain village following his rescue by sherpa Tenzin. You can interact with the animals and watch kids play football or even kick it around yourself if you want to – the kids back off sheepishly if you do. There are no bombs, no bullets, no ancient evils to content with, just people going about their lives.
The visuals still impress after all these years but of course, it wouldn't be Uncharted if things didn't go to hell in a handcart and this peaceful village is soon invaded by an army of goons with a tank.
Opening Tutorial – Uncharted 2
It's not often that a game's tutorial can be counted as not only that game's best, but perhaps the entire series' as well, but Naughty Dog managed it with Among Thieves' opening.
Rather than a slow and steady introduction, you're thrown off a cliff at the very beginning and forced to climb back up, wondering all the while how Nate got there and how he's going to pull himself out of this situation. Almost everything about this portion of the game is flawless and it perfectly sets the tone for what's to come.
This remains one of the most dramatic openings in gaming and there are few developers out there who could hope to top it, save perhaps for Naughty Dog itself in Uncharted 4.
