If I'd never played an Uncharted game before then I'm sure I'd love it...
Some cracking moments and genuine excitement... but meh, it wasn't all that terrific IMO. I think they need to retire the character, which I'm sure they will. Uncharted 2 was by far and away the best.
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This game was mainly climbing, walking around beautiful areas with nothing but pointless extra treasure, pushing crates, and playing uninspired combat. I absolutely loved the second uncharted and quite enjoyed uncharted 3 when I first played them. This fourth one had a fantastic ending and an enjoyable boss fight. My favorite chapters were a normal life and epilogue. Those were really special. Too bad the action/setpieces were lackluster
shareAnd the mud/scree slopes.
And the rappel hooks.
And the "historical" letters that looked like they'd been googled by Dan Brown.
"Less is more" might have applied, here.
It's definitely playable. The landscape art really is gorgeous and there are some smokin' set pieces. But too much of the action reads as "filler", and the actual story really is kind of flat. Even with the introduction of a long lost brother and a few marital issues, the writing really just carries the action and manages to connect the fights.
It's definitely not "epic". I'm not saying it's a fail - because it is playable (so was Golden Abyss) - but I wasn't dazzled, and I was counting on being dazzled.
I think Nate and Co. deserve a better send-off.
In my dreams, ND brings the original writers back and gives it another shot. Not that easy, since A Thief's End "capped the well", as it were, with a kid and a dog. Not easy, but not impossible. I would think it well worth the investment of cash, time, and sweat.
I would love another uncharted.
I absolutely abhorred the pointless letters. At least with the last of us, when you looked around you were rewarded with upgrades
The Last of Us did have all sorts of perks and neat tricks up its sleeve. The user could make Joel crouch or stand up, walk or run, pick up bricks or bottles from his environment and lob them to either attack or distract adversaries. Joel could gather different weapons and accessories from his environment and modify them until he'd accumulated quite a bundle. He could mend his own wounds and acquire and enhance skills.
And what Uncharted actually got from The Last of Us was the really annoying letters. Mind you, I wouldn't have found them quite so annoying if it weren't for the absence of those other TLOU features that should have been included, and if it weren't for the fact that the 17c documents were written in a 20c style script, with a generic style of expression, spelling, and punctuation that just didn't really work. The result made me cringe and simply catapulted me out of the game's universe over and over again.
The earlier games were never perfect, but they did put in some effort (Nathan Drake learned his Latin from the nuns in a Catholic orphanage, so he when he reads out loud, he uses "church" pronunciation). There's a saying, "God is in the detail". It means real excellence lies in the attention we pay to the small stuff.
But people also say "the devil's in the details", because inattention and neglect really show if you don't bother getting the tiny stuff right.
Try as I might, I just cannot unsee the freaking letters. Did the Uncharted 4 team think users were just too dumb to struggle through a more "old-timey" authentic-seeming artifact? Descending s/f, capitalized nouns, weird contractions? Isn't that fancy script the first thing Americans notice about the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights?
Or was the Uncharted 4 team just lazy or maybe even arrogant. Coz I think I'm leaning toward that explanation.
And don't let me get started on the cartoony snapshots.
I'm playing it again. I have been so starved for a new Uncharted adventure, and I don't want to keep heaping negative criticism on this product. There is a lot of simply lovely work in there. But I have the impression that the authors of this game were so intent on wowing us all that they were too preoccupied with the big, grand flourishes to pay attention to the crucial details.
I think they cared more about impressing us than they did about respecting the franchise. Yep. That is what I think.
The graphics and the environments were impressive but other than that, the game suffers from anything fun. The letters were just pure laziness, the crates, ladders.... The puzzles were okay and not as annoying as 3 thankfully. I'm still annoyed and disappointed nearly 2 months after the release. After my first play through I already felt like I was forcing myself to like it, thinking that all the wait was worth it. I feel short changed gameplay wise. Bravo on the visuals and motion capture acting.
shareThis is actually the only Uncharted game I've loved from the very start, all the way through to the end.
Don't get me wrong, I love the other games as well. But for some reason, I've always felt the first 2-3 chapters (excluding the very first chapter of each game) feels kind of dull. This was not the case however, with this one. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Loved every second of this one. Though I'm not reading the letters on my second play through. I've played the original trilogy at least 5 times each (probably played 1 and 2 a little more than that) and I gotta say 3 is the most annoying and the worst plot. I'm pretty sure I'll never play 3 again. I
shareMy wife and I enjoyed it. We never, ever read anything that we find (letters, notes, whatever) and we don't examine anything close up. We just climb and shoot and hope the next cinematic is a short one so that we can keep climbing and shooting.
We don't care about finding treasures or artifacts or reading stuff or whatever.
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Shooting has started on my latest movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5531336/
Ha, ha. Problem solved. But personally I am curious and always check for stuff, so I do miss some rewards for that in Uncharted.
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