Feature: 7 Improvements That Make Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Feel Fresh on PS4

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is a remaster worth treasuring, as our first impressions explained in more detail last week. But while the presentation and overall package is worthy of acclaim, developer Bluepoint Games has gone the extra mile with this lovingly compiled collection. Indeed, there are a handful of new features for you to dig your dirty nails into, as well as some across-the-board improvements that increase the quality of each included game. With our review still a few days away, we figured that we'd share a brief bit of intel about all of the additions that make this long awaited re-release great.

Explorer mode unlocks the series to everyone

There are two new difficulties available in every game in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection: Explorer and Brutal. The first of these may not sound all that interesting to the hardcore among you, but is a smart addition. Naughty Dog's series has always been lauded for its story presentation, and it's a game that many of your family members have probably enjoyed watching you play in the past. But with Explorer – an extremely easy difficulty setting where the challenges of combat are significantly reduced – all three titles suddenly become much more manageable. Beginners will still have difficulty getting to grips with the dual-analogue controls, but at least they won't be killed over and over while they acclimatise to the scheme.

How fast can you go?

One of the really cool additions in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is the speed run mode. This is a simple feature – it essentially slaps a clock in the top-right corner of the screen – but we imagine that it's going to add a lot of fun for fans of the franchise. Your entire playthrough is clocked, in addition to your progress through individual chapters. And you can go back and try and beat your best times, with the interface showing your records at all times. The only disappointment for us thus far is that we can't find a leaderboards option, but we may well be overlooking it. And if there really isn't a scoreboard, we can only hope that it gets patched in.

Brutal mode brings a new challenge for series fans

One of the reasons that we're not running our Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection review today is because we haven't unlocked Brutal mode in any of the games yet. This is the new, uber-challenging difficulty tier that's been added to the title, and it requires you to complete Crushing to unlock it. The good news is that Crushing is available from the outset, so you won't have to play through each entry several times to unlock the top tier – just once. We're informed that this mode offers the "ultimate challenge", but Bluepoint Games has rebalanced pretty much every instalment – bullet sponges are much less prevalent for starters – so we're hopeful that it won't simply be punishing for punishing's sake.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is now, y'know, finished

Remember when Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception released and you haplessly poked around its menus looking for the bonus costumes and other extra content that's been a mainstay in the series since the very beginning? We thought that we were missing something at first, but it turns out it just wasn't there in the first place. Naughty Dog's made many excuses for this, but the conclusion that many have come to is that the release was simply rushed. Fortunately, features such as Mirror Mode and Next-Gen visual filter have been added into the title for its Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection release, as have about 100 different selectable character models. Talk about going the extra mile...

The aiming's more consistent across the board

There will be people who will tell you that Uncharted has never been a good third-person shooter, and we can maybe understand where they're coming from. Drake is a much looser, more mobile protagonist, which means his arsenal can feel like it's employing potato ammo at points. But whatever your opinion of the gunplay, it's hard to deny that something felt 'off' in the launch version of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. That's now been fixed, as Bluepoint Games has incorporated a kind of control megamix, which takes the best animations and input algorithms from all three titles, and pastes it across the board. This means that the 'baseball' grenade throw has been added into Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, while it no longer feels like you're aiming through treacle in the third game. It's still no Vanquish or Binary Domain, but it's pretty darn good.

There's a proper photo mode

Ah, photo mode: the almost accidental inFAMOUS: Second Son addition that's become a necessity in almost all new-gen games. The functionality in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is good, allowing you to push the down button at almost any point in order to frame the frozen on-screen action as you like. You can change the focus, apply filters, and much, much more. And as of today, once you push that share button, you can now save it in the superior PNG format, so no horrible compression. Bonus!

Dynamic leaderboards chart your progress

This is a nifty little feature: as you play the game, leaderboards will pop up on the screen comparing your progress to friends. It may, for example, show you how many stealth kills you've performed, or how many baddies you've maniacally murdered using explosives. Alright, this isn't game changing in the slightest, but it's a fun way of seeing how your progress stacks up compared to your friends. It's just a shame that, as with the speed run option, we can't find a way to view all of the information on a standalone scoreboard.

Which of these new additions do you think sound best? Are you looking forward to taking Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection on an adventure next week? Climb into the comments section below.