Pierre Balbin

Reading these reviews and agreeing with the praise for story, characters, and attention to detail, it’s wild that Naughty Dog has been able to maintain this brand of gaming for two console generations. Unfortunately, the puzzles are annoying, the scaling is mashing X a bunch of times, and the gunplay is weak. I stopped playing games as much since I started college a while back, but my favorite puzzles in a game came from Half-Life and Dead Space 2. I don’t feel rewarded when I figure out the puzzles in an Uncharted game. I’m on one of the last chapters right now, and if I see another random crate, I’m going to lose my gatdang mind. I thought the scaling was going to be as cool as people made it out to be, but not really. It’s pretty mindless. The knife they give you to stab a wall was introduced waaaay too late. The enemies are faceless and boring. And your guns suck; they feel like they have no weight or impact when you fire them. There are also too many of them. The reticles are also too big and makes shooting without using auto-aim a hassle. The automatic weapons are especially annoying. Handgun, burst-fire handgun, heavy handgun, shotgun, rifle, grenades, mines, a cool melee or throwing weapon would have been fine. I don’t want to shoot a human enemy several times, and they just get back up. They’re human, not the Locust Horde, monsters, or some undead entity. I also don’t like how, now that you can use a rope to change the flow of combat (which was awesome), there isn’t at least one type of enemy that can do the same and catch you off guard. There are your common grunts who have handguns, SMGs, or assault rifles. There’s the sniper who hangs back and aims their laser sight at you. There’s the armored brute who approaches you with a shotgun or an LMG. But there’s not anything dynamic. Why not have enemies that fight you in the scaling sections? Not shoot at you while you’re scaling, but fighting you face-to-face on a wall. What about an enemy that lays down flashing traps to caution you from mindlessly running around the map during a gunfight? Why are the armored truck appearances structured as set pieces? Wouldn’t it be cool to have to take them out every so often? What I did like about the combat was that it was nearly impossible to shoot behind cover the whole time. I really like how effective the AI are at keeping you pinned if you stay in one place for too long. The boss battle with Rafe is also awesome, but why couldn’t we have sword fighting in standard combat? That would have been crazy. Large set pieces were cool in the early 2010s, but so many gaming studios have copied Naughty Dog for so long, it feels like an old trick here. I was excited to play Uncharted 4, but I don’t understand the magic here. I think a lot of has to do with the nostalgia gamers have had with it for the last decade or so. Last of Us 2 is the game where Naughty Dog finally cracked gold. The exploration, world building, dialogue, atmosphere, and combat are insane, and feel rewarding. I have no doubts about any future games the studio will go on to make. Uncharted 4 is the perfect game for dads (or people who just want to come home and unwind without handling the pressure of a challenging game while enjoying the thought and care the developers have invested in its overall presentation.)