The main problem with Uncharted 4 compared to Uncharted 2 is that UC4 doesn't do 'urban' as well and, given that it decided to largely go the whole hog in the second half and reimagine Drake's Fortune's jungle setting, it doesn't quite use its setting to its fullest.
By urban I mean the city feel of Uncharted 2, the London Underground and building parkour scenes of Uncharted 3. Now, the London Underground might not necessarily be a part of Uncharted 3 that many mention. Some might feel that it should have no part in UC3 at all. But that map was brilliant in the multiplayer and, in the single player game, it has the effect of giving a stark contrast to the bright desert scenes. Plus you could argue there's a metaphor there anyway- it's an abandoned, Victorian mock Tudor station (like St Pancras), just like any treasure that Drake looks for and some of the locations he visits have been abandoned.
So its auction house, for instance, was never going to be so quirky a choice of location as a London Undergound station. Stealth in open air places isn't going to set the world alight. Character interactions are beautiful in Uncharted 4 but, after a while, you want game and it's here that UC4 is uneven. The first few chapters are all either a bit slow or a bit 'cliched prison break action hero' (all deliberate I know but, as a result, the final half of the game has to be really great) - the orphanage level doesn't even have particularly great graphics - solid but as an introduction to stealth it's a bit old school- deliberate I know but enough to give some people a bad taste.
So the final half, the reimagining of Drake's Fortune in effect (which the whole game has the general form of as it starts with you in a boat), which does contain some great setpieces in places, could have done with more inventive uses of the grapple rope, of the fact that you CONSTANTLY have water around or below you yet rarely get to use it in any distinctive way. I would have brought back the jetskis for Shoreline encounters - to storm the beach you're on and you fight them and make off on 2 of their jetskis making a quip about how overresponsive the steering is and how you're glad you didn't have to shoot people whilst steering. I'd have cut some of the dubious entries in the game such as the overlong obsessions with showing bad weather - it isn't even tonally fitting with the game which is nowhere near as dark as the start implies. Naughty Dog could have done with more time- there's a bit I accessed an off the beaten path where there were more pirate skeletons hanging in cages - but that was all there was - no treasure, no exit. It felt unfinished, - if it wasn't that it was too subtle an in-joke at the player's expense (like 'not everywhere has to have something unusual worth looking for') to be certain of being one.
They could have done with a bit more pacing editing, a big on-foot parkour chase, and some big urban statements in the midst of it all! I think it needed more indoor combat - in Scotland did it really all have to be ruins? But the multiplayer is perfect, apart from bugs. They just backed themselves in to a corner with what appears to me to be a choice to reimagine Drake's Fortune, so nearly every level had to happen by the sea or by riverbeds.
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