Naughty Dog has been going through quite a bit of controversy lately. They announced the development of The Last of Us: Part 2 back in 2016 at PAX, and ever since then the hype kept building up. They had to delay the game several times and even after four years of development fans of The Last of Us are still patient. You can see why they would have to delay it. Trying to make a sequel to one of the greatest games of all time is pretty damn hard. You have to find a way to continue the story people grew to love, innovate on the gameplay, and try to outmatch the original. Naughty Dog is trying to put as much love and attention as they can into each project they release and you can see the passion coming off them, so that's what everyone thought.
In the past few months, employees at Naughty Dog have been complaining about the workspace and how they have been mistreated. They spend countless hours working on Part 2, and they don’t get paid enough for all their effort. Some employees straight up left the company, and others just went to social media to reveal the harsh truth. This eventually led to a writer on Part 2 leaking all the major story moments online. This pissed off many fans of The Last of Us, and while Naughty Dog tried to handle the issue the problem just got worse. I haven’t read any of the spoilers to Part 2, but from what I can tell people aren’t pleased with where the story is going. People now aren’t going to buy the game and they are canceling their pre-orders left and right, which will drastically affect how well the game sells at launch. However, Sony and Naughty Dog recently announced that it wasn’t one of their workers that sent out the leaks, rather a hacker of some type. This makes the controversy sound worse, because now it sounds like you aren’t protective of your project and personal info. What happens when employee information is released and you can't do anything to stop it? The Last of Us: Part 2 seems to be going downhill as far as I can tell, but let’s take a step back. Back towards simpler times when Naughty Dog released fantastic games.
Their last game was Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End released in 2016, which was also the same year they announced The Last of Us: Part 2. This long running franchise they've maintained since the Playstation 3 era. Uncharted is one of the most legendary series among gaming, but seeing how this was the fourth installment in the series gamers weren’t expecting much. The series should have ended with Uncharted 3 due to how it left off on a good note, but when Uncharted 4 came out it exceeded expectations. The environments were more fleshed out than previous games, there was more variety to combat and traversal, animation and detailing was stellar, and the story was by far the best the series had seen. Uncharted 4 was not only a technical achievement for the Playstation 4, but a storytelling achievement for gaming. Proving that single player narrative driven experiences still had a place in the video game market, and we could tell memorable stories when we put the effort into the writing.
Uncharted 4 was considered by many to be one of the greatest games of 2016, and currently it sits with a ninety-three on Metacritic making it one of the highest rated games in the market. To this day it holds up incredibly well. Two years ago I played through Uncharted 4 and liked it well enough, but didn't take the time to appreciate what the game was presenting to me. I was more focused on gameplay focused experiences like Bloodborne and the Dishonored series. Decided to take the time and replay recently to see what I wasn't able to understand before. Replaying it I’ve come to appreciate it more than I originally had. Seeing how there aren’t that many new interesting releases to review at the moment, I decided it would be a good time to replay some classics. Man, this game is a masterpiece. It's not the best game I ever played and some areas need critiquing, but this is possibly one of the best narrative-driven experiences in the market besides God of War. We get a lot of linear shooters, but we don't get one quite as marvelous as Uncharted 4. So today we'll be talking about why I love Uncharted 4, and why it deserves your attention. So pull out a big old map, mark your destination, and set sail for uncharted lands. We're drifters till the end!
Story
It’s been several years since Nathan Drake’s last bombastic adventure. He is no longer the legendary treasure hunter he used to be, but now retired and lives an ordinary life. Married to a fellow journalist named Elena, who has accompanied him on several of his adventures, and now works for a salvage company, Nathan Drake is now your typical ordinary man. However, he still reflects on the adventures the vast world can bring. Specifically on one he’s dreamt of since childhood when he was left alone.
When Nathan was young he lived in a christian orphanage. His mother died from an accident, and his father abandoned him and his older brother. Nathan was always getting into trouble at the orphanage, but it was for good reasons. That night a boy was harassing Nate and saying his mother was burning in hell for her actions. He got into a fight and the nuns witnessed him beating the other kids. One night, his older brother Sam contacts him and informs Nathan that he has tracked down their dead mother’s belongings. Together they run away from the orphanage in search of what is left of their family. We cut several years later, at least a few years before the first game. Nathan, Sam, and their partner Rafe have broken themselves into prison to look for clues on the whereabouts of Henry Avery’s treasure. Avery was a legendary pirate during the late 1600s, known for plundering ships and holding a surmount of $400 million dollars worth of gold. With the help of the warden Nathan and his friends tracks down a clue leading to Avery’s treasure, but at the cost of giving the warden 25% of the treasure. Rafe shoots the warden for scamming them, and together all three of them try to escape. Sam is shot dead by one of the guards, and Nathan is forced to leave him behind. Never to see him again, and the guilt of leaving family without a proper burial.
Back in the present day, Nathan is filing through paperwork while reminiscing over his brother again. He's not as sad as before, but misses those days. When it was just the two of them on the hunt for treasure. How his brother was the one that drove him to achieve miraculous things. Mysteriously someone comes knocking on his office door, and it just so happens to be Sam who is alive and spent the last fifthteen years in prison. Nathan is shocked and wants to catch Sam up on all his adventures. Tell him the money he earned has purchased him a normal stable life, but Sam comes to him with a plee. A few months ago Sam broke out of prison with the help of a drug lord named Hector Alcazar. In exchange for saving Sam’s life, Alcazar wants Sam to hunt down Avery’s treasure and give him at least half the amount. If Sam tries to run away or contact authority, Alcazar will send his men after him and any family or friends he has.
Nathan, wanting to help his brother get his life back, decides to call up his old friend Sully and tell him that they are embarking on another adventure across the globe. Nathan doesn't tell his wife Elena, because he knows she will be devastated if she hears he is going on another dangerous life risking adventure. Nathan, Sully, and Sam sneak their way into an auction in Italy where they steal a valuable item containing the next clue. They also encounter Rafe, who is after Avery’s treasure as well and is now aided by Nadine Ross, leader of a private mercenary group named Shoreline. Rafe is alerted that Nathan and friends are hunting the treasure too, and the adventure becomes a race against the clock. With an entire army on their tail, Nathan and Sam must venture across the world to find more clues and seek the whereabouts of the treasure. Even learn what tragedies awaited Avery and his entire crew.
Gameplay
Uncharted 4 can be considered many types of games. It can be considered an action adventure, a third person shooter, a puzzle game, a platformer, and even a stealth game. You progress through each area doing a variety of these things, and one topic never out balances another because it’s an even mix between all of them. Navigating your way around obstacles requires a bit of platforming. Leaping across gaps, climbing onto certain surfaces, and once in a while using the newly added grappling hook to swing across large pits. Traversal is more varied unlike previous entries, and it not only provides fun set pieces but more challenging ways the player is forced to navigate. There are going to be puzzles every so often, and usually they come in various forms. Sometimes they are simple like pushing a box into a certain place to climb higher, and other times they require thinking or using clues that you gather.
The combat is where Uncharted 4 truly evolved in, possibly the best in the series. Rather than shoot your way through waves of enemies like any ordinary third person shooter, you now have multiple solutions. You can sneak your way through areas and stealthily take down enemies without being noticed. Hiding in tall grass, behind cover, over ledges, your basic stealth stuff. Enemies can notice you, but there are two levels of awareness. The first is being cautious, where they will search the area for you. The second is where they fully notice you and all the enemies in the area start heading towards your location to gun you down. Uncharted 4 provides a lovely selection of weapons to defend yourself, but you can only carry two weapons at a time, usually a handgun and rifle. There are pistols, assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, revolvers, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, you name it. Anything that shoots an enemy dead.
From here it plays out like any ordinary cover shooter, but you can use your environment to get the advantage during combat. Shooting explosives to make structures collapse, swinging with your grappling hook so enemies have a harder time shooting you, whatever helps you. If you die you spawn at a previous checkpoint, but the game is pretty courteous when offering them to you. Especially on the higher difficulties where enemy attack power is much higher, you're forced to make quick decisions, and make the most of stealth before a chaotic battle begins.
There are also journal entries and treasure you can collect if you explore each nook and cranny. They don’t affect the main experience, but they reward the player for going off the beaten path. There's even these fun interactions you can with characters if you are at the right place at the right time. So Uncharted 4 has the best gameplay in the series. I could be wrong because I haven’t played the other three games, but from the looks of it their gameplay was pretty simplistic. Uncharted 4 also has a multiplayer aspect that I could talk about, but I haven’t played any of it. Plus nobody really talks about it. I heard it’s really good but compared to other big budget multiplayer shooters it doesn't stand out. The Last of Us also has multiplayer, and nobody talks about it either. Naugthy Dog made a decently well designed game. it doesn't do anything innovative, but what is there is done well. Hopefully you can find Avery's treasure and save Sam.
Thoughts
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is an amazing game and it’s an experience I can recommend to anybody who owns a Playstation 4. I’m not really a fan of narrative experiences because they usually focus on being blockbuster films that drag the player by the hand rather than being actual engaging games, but Uncharted 4 proved me wrong and may have even changed my mind. The story is one of the best I've seen presented by a Triple A game. Nathan going through emotional stress as he tries to manage the relationship he has between those who care about him and his drive for adventure. His long lost brother Sam, his mentor Sully, and his wife Elena all begin to doubt his goal as he struggles to connect with them. The twists and reveals keep the player interested and the Indiana Jones-like vibes constantly keep the player pushing forward to see where the characters will end up next. To see what lies at the end.
Graphically and technically this game is just stunning. The environments are detailed and teeming with color, physics of certain objects are life like, animation for each character is done naturally without robotic substancing, and each location is believable. You’ll end up in the busy streets of Kings Bay, the snowy cliffs of the Scottish Highlands, the deserted city located within a tropical forest named Libertalia, you’ll end up in a lot of beautiful places. It's aged well and is still a landmark for what the PS4 can handle.
Combat is satisfying and with the addition of the grappling hook, destructible pieces of the environment, better close range fighting thanks to The Last of Us, and better stealth mechanics you open up multiple ways to approach situations. You can be swinging across the air, firing bullets at the enemies below you, and jump off to sucker punch the last standing guy in the face. One thing I have to say Uncharted 4 handles right are the multiple difficulty settings. On lower difficulties you can run into a gunfight and have an action packed time, but on the higher difficulties you have to rely more on stealth and try to take down as many enemies as you can before the real fight happens. I like how the difficulty changes the way you play the game.
Uncharted 4 is an outstanding game and I honestly want to say that I like it more than The Last of Us which we previously covered, but I do have a few problems. They aren’t problems that drag down the overall experience, but they are problems that prevent me from calling Uncharted 4 a perfect game. Your companion AI is one of the few problems. They know how to fight and help out during puzzles, but during combat they are not really useful. Their aim is all over the place, they run out into the open, and they fire & reload weapons very slowly. I can forgive Naughty Dog for this since it would take a lot of time to program direct commands for your companions. The last few missions, while jam-packed full of action and help hype up the climax, are very grindy and push the player to their utmost limit. On the higher difficulties these missions can end up being frustrating and a downright nightmare to push through. The final fight, while I believe to be a perfect end to Uncharted 4 does suffer from an unnecessary difficulty spike as well. I don’t want to spoil it, but the game doesn’t do a good job preparing you for it or teaching you how it mechanically works. Final complaint is a common one among other critics. Ludo-narrative dissonance. The tug and pull between gameplay and storytelling. The writing depicts Nathan as a kind wise talking dude, but the gameplay shows him running around murdering people and they never bring it up. It makes the writing of Uncharted feel unclever and desensitized, but at the same time every video game now has ludo-narrative dissonance so why am I complaining?
In the end Uncharted 4 is a great game. It doesn’t do anything innovative and this is nothing new for Naughty Dog, but it set a gold standard for Triple A storytelling and presentation. There is quite a bit of replay value thanks to different difficulty options that change how you play, multiple collectibles scattered throughout each level, and a wide arsenal of tools to experiment with during combat. It’s a jampack swashbuckling adventure that engages you from beginning to end, and it brings a lovely end to a series we thought should have been over already. An absolutely well written masterpiece that kept on running even when it tripped over and took a few scratches. So in the end I give Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
Even though Naughty Dog is receiving a lot of slack right now for all the controversy surrounding The Last of Us: Part 2 that doesn't mean we have to hate everything the company does. They have published a lot of great games over the years, expanding on each idea they had. I hope whatever project they're working on now can hold up to the greatness they brought with past famous titles, and live up to the quality and love put into Uncharted 4. They're not a perfect team of developers and may have influenced a few annoying choices in Triple A design, but they deserve credit for what they do.
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