Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

If you own a PlayStation console, I think you just owe it to yourself to experience what sometimes feels like Sony’s last really great bonafide blockbusters: the Uncharted series. Unfortunately, the Nathan Drake Collection doesn’t include every game to star the eponymous rogue, but it does boast the trio that was released on the PS3. The first game is a little wonky, seeing as how it was Naughty Dog’s first foray into a full-blown third-person shooter (relax, I love the Jak games but those do not count) and a debut title for the PS3, but eventually the team got really good at these. In fact, they immediately got much better, as Uncharted 2 was widely heralded as the de facto game of the year upon release in 2009. It’s wild to consider how a linear third-person shooter that you can wrap in about 10-15 hours was considered the peak of gaming when it now eschews everything that the industry currently values.

Uncharted is just Indiana Jones if it were modernized and made into a game before Bethesda and MachineGames went ahead and actually did that. The series is constantly escalating the action and stakes with increasingly impressive setpieces, such as an escape from a derailed train hanging off the side of a mountain, a classic level on top of a moving train, and a gunfight in the ballroom of a capsizing cruise ship. Nathan is a hot smart mouth who gets all the girls, and even has a rotating series of trusty sidekicks/allies. His adventures take him all over the world in the pursuit of treasure, and every now and then he even uncovers places and people of legend. It’s a good time, and you can get the Nathan Drake Collection for just $10.