Gaming: Uncharted collection free on PS4; Henry Cavill geeks out for Warhammer & more

Ah, the silver linings of being stuck indoors … and being a Nathan Drake fan. Recognizing a great opportunity to get players up to speed on the swashbuckling Uncharted franchise while enticing people to stay home and stay safe, Sony is offering all three games in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection bundle for free.

From now through early May, the PS4-remastered versions of Nathan and Sully’s original PS3 game trilogy are up for grabs for the lovely price of zero dollars, thanks to Sony’s new Play At Home initiative. As Sony explains at the official PlayStation blog, it’s a way to reward people for doing their part to manage the coronavirus pandemic by following public health stay-at-home guidelines … and it’s also a great way to bone up on your treasure-hunting bona fides as we await Tom Holland’s take on Drake in the upcoming Uncharted movie.

“We are deeply grateful to everyone practicing physical distancing and take our responsibility as a home entertainment platform seriously, so we are asking our community to continue supporting the safe choice and the need to Play At Home,” Sony explained. “…We can’t imagine a better time for globe-trotting adventures with Nathan Drake, an iconic cast of characters, and thrilling treasure-hunting action gameplay.”

Also free as part of the offer is Journey, the meditative PS3 adventure game that turned heads in 2012 with its distinctive art style and beguiling solo exploration. Best of all, both the Nathan Drake Collection and Journey are “yours to keep” once you’ve downloaded them, according to Sony.

Sony’s also launching a $10 million fund aimed at supporting independent game developers as part of Play At Home, in an effort to help alleviate the “hardships and financial struggles” it recognizes that small-scale creators may be facing during the pandemic. So whether you’re a player, a creator, or both, check out the blog for details — and be sure to snag Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for free from now through May 5 for PlayStation 4.

Hey, even Geralt of Rivia is staying indoors these days…and thankfully, he’s not hurting for things to do. While Henry Cavill rides out the pandemic from home, he’s using the extra time to put the finishing touches on his (evidently robust) collection of plastic Warhammer miniatures.

In an Easter message to Instagram followers, Cavill showed off his tiny paintbrush skills with a photo of his latest masterpiece: a Warhammer helmet miniature (aka “plastic crack,” as Cavill confesses), just the latest piece in his collection to get the hand-painted treatment from Superman himself.

“Considering we are, both, going through the Easter period, and going through The Lockdown, I figured it a good time to put a silver lining onto the cloud that is some of the darker moments during this time,” Cavill wrote. “So I've decided to polish some old skills and try my hand at some new ones! It is a time of rebirth after all.”

Cavill went on to admit a long-running Warhammer fascination as one of his “almost life long hobbies,” adding that he’s always nerded out over the miniature creations that Warhammer 40,000 maker Games Workshop has turned out over the years. “Genuinely can't get enough of the lore they have built over the decades. They have been some of my most enthused reads!” he wrote. “If you were in denial about me being a geek before, you can't hide from it now.”

We know better than to hide from Cavill’s gaming geekiness. Between Superman’s X-ray vision and Geralt’s Witcher tracking senses, there’s really no place he can’t follow…paintbrush in hand, of course.

Finally, horror is returning to haunt the growing lore-verse that developer Supermassive Games is laying down with its Dark Pictures gaming series. Along with a new trailer, the studio has just revealed a release date for Little Hope, the second game in its expanding anthology of shudder-inducing survival horror tales.

A thematically-tied standalone successor to last year’s Man of Medan (which boarded a ghost ship to horrifically great effect), Little Hope is all about the supernatural mystery at the heart of a deep dive into 17th-Century witchcraft, and features some well-cast voice acting from Midsommar’s Will Poulter. Set to arrive for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, look for The Dark Pictures: Little Hope to cast its spell sometime this summer.