What can I say that hasn’t already been said about this gorgeous Video game. My love for this franchise has always held up due to Naughty dog’s unique and amazing story telling game, after game. Now Naughty Dog says this will be the last uncharted game, and the last appearance of our hero Nathan Drake. I personally don’t believe it to be the end, but if it is the end… They sure went out with a BANG!
Naughty Dog left behind a visual spectacle that rivals any game in beauty and animation. They are known for making extremely polished games with a sense of purpose and entertainment that few games can accomplish. Uncharted 4 has pushed the bar so far up that I’m not sure how other developers are going to keep up.
Sam Drake and Nathan Drake
We begin our final hurrah near the middle of the story, A action packed boat chase immersing you immediately into the gameplay Before sending you into a flash back where Nathan’s elder brother Sam is introduced. After showing their lives as children, And a jail break gone bad, It shows how they parted ways before Nate’s adventures as we know them in Uncharted thru Uncharted3. Then – In a elegant reveal- we find Nathan Retired and married to his journalist badass wife, Elena Fisher. By this time I was so sucked into the story that I couldn’t put down my controller. Sam Nathan’s brother reappears after 15 years with news on a Notorious pirate Henry Avery and his fortune. Nathan has sworn off the fortune-hunting life, but Sam’s life is at stake, so Nate has no choice but to join him on an escapade that leads from an Italian auction heist to a ruined Scottish cathedral, and then to the volcanic plains, bustling ports and craggy islands of Madagascar.
Nathan and wife Elena
It’s another globe-trotting race, then, against another ruthless rival: Rafe Adler, a rich American adventurer with a private South African army. But you can already see how much more cleanly the plot’s been constructed. For once, Drake has a clear motivation to stay in the game after things inevitably go south, and a clearly defined conflict – brotherly love versus a promise to his wife, his thirst for adventure versus his nagging good sense. Uncharted 3 unwisely drove the character towards brooding obsession, but A Thief’s End pulls back from that – and from a general tendency in the series towards overcooked, last-act lunges into the absurd. It would be a spoiler to reveal where things wind up, but let’s just say that Straley and Druckmann are more interested in morality than mysticism.
You expect cutting-edge technology from Naughty Dog, and in the studio’s first full-blown PlayStation 4 release, you certainly get it. A Thief’s End is an impossibly good-looking game, with lavish rendering and art budgets spent on every location from windswept cliffs to domestic interiors. This is premium game-making that takes Naughty Dog’s heavily cinematic aesthetic to the next level. Once again, the camera obeys your whim and yet is somehow always drawn to the most suggestive or alluring angle, the most breathtaking vista. Beauty is everything in this studio’s games, an ethos best expressed in the gorgeous, hazy lighting that would make any cinematographer weep as it edges every surface in ochre, azure or gold.
The charge laid against the Uncharted games is that all they have is surface. In terms of gameplay, that remains a fair complaint. Uncharted 4 is as uncomplicated as it is smoothly linear and easy to enjoy, combining serviceable cover-shooter combat with fiddle-free climbing and exploration, and puzzles that are more about feeling clever, as you decode their clues and operate their clacking machinery, than actually using your brain. It is the last word in unchallenging, mass-market gaming.
Uncharted 4 Multiplayer
That said, Naughty Dog has gone to some lengths let the game breathe a little this time. The developers clearly want to avoid the suffocating hand of scripting that marred Uncharted 3 in particular – leading to those moments when the game and its movie ambitions didn’t seem to be moving in step – and to even out the slower pacing of the action that bogged down the latter stretches of the first two games. They’re successful.
Many areas have multiple routes through them now; some of the carefully demarcated climbing paths lead nowhere, and you actually need to study the rock and think about where to head next. (One of the game’s most satisfying touches is the way you can use fine stick movements to guide Drake’s reaching arm to precisely the handhold you want.) It’s not much, but it does feel a little more like an adventure, a little less like a fairground ride. One of Uncharted 4’s best moments is an open jeep ride through rugged Madagascan scenery which leaves you at some liberty to ramble, hopping out of the car to explore points of interest, enjoying the off-roading and playing with your 4×4’s exciting winch attachment. (Shut up, it is exciting.) You could call it faux open-world gameplay – or, arguably, open-world gameplay without the bland filler – and it’s very enjoyable stuff. As well as the usual well-hidden treasures, there are additional journal entries and conversation options for completionists to hunt out.
Nathan drake caught up in a Chase, hanging on for dear life
The biggest changes come to the combat. Many enemy encounters now take place in large open areas filled with complex architecture that allows for stealth. Drake is able to thin out the ranks of goons by hiding in long grass, sneaking and using his climbing skills to outflank and surprise his enemies with silent takedowns – or even leave them unmolested. It’s no Metal Gear Solid, but with its freedom of approach, stealth is a good deal more satisfying than the blunt shootouts. The guns are fun but the enemy designs are as dim-witted and uninteresting as ever, and once stealth is broken, encounters lean aggressively towards tactics-free attrition, piling on ever more heavily armed and armored mercs. There’s a lot of this as the game’s climax approaches, though it’s been pruned further than the interminable stretches of blasting that the earlier games suffered from.
And that end? As the conclusion to a series known for its exuberantly over-the-top action it is, perhaps, a little anticlimactic. But I prefer that to the hysterical over-reaching of Uncharted 3, or Uncharted 2’s sudden swerve into credibility-defying, moony nonsense. And you have to admire Naughty Dog for leaving themselves with no way back. Sony may well find a way to make more games under the Uncharted name in future – I’m sure it will – but Naughty Dog is definitely done, and it has gone quite far out of its way to make sure it would be very difficult for Drake to return, too. As much as the studio must be eager to move on to other things, it can’t be easy to close the door as firmly as this.
Now in retrospect , As unbelievably good as Uncharted 4 is, It will never have the impact that Uncharted 4 had. Even though i believe it is better then the previous Uncharted games. It still does show that Naughty Dog is at the top of their game and leaves me wanting more. I guess i will have to look forward and pray that The last of us 2 will do the same. Undoubtedly with Naughty Dogs track record…. we are in for quite a treat.
