We’d like to apologise to Naughty Dog for a massive mistake we published last month.
On September 30 we published an article titled “Is Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End too formulaic?” based on what we thought was a hands-on session with Uncharted 4 at the Tokyo Game Show.
We didn’t realise it at the time; what we’d played wasn’t Uncharted 4, but the remastered Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, from the recently released Uncharted Collection. We were not aware of this until after the article went live.
As soon as Sony notified us of our mistake we immediately unpublished the article as it was clearly based on one massive error on our part. TGS is busy and obviously the majority of signage isn’t in English, but none of that excuses the fact that we seriously fucked up.
It’s cute to say it’s testament to the skill and beautiful artwork of the Naughty Dog team that we mistook a remastered PS3 game for Uncharted 4. But none of that changes the fact that we have massively misrepresented a game to our readers, fans of the Uncharted series and the industry who read VG247.
The buck stops with the editor of the site, so I’m the one apologising. I should have done it sooner. I am genuinely sorry for this mistake, the misrepresentation of the game and the upset this has caused the development team.
Matt Martin
Editor, VG247
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wow..
edit: I found a markup of the original story here.
Is Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End too formulaic?
Uncharted 4 is the first PS4 entry in a series that has traditionally pushed boundaries. Why does it feel so familiar?
I played Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End at Tokyo Game Show this year and it was a tremendous relief to get back to third-person shoot-and-quip after running the gauntlet of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters and Dark Souls 3.
Even playing in Japanese (the voice acting isn’t as good as Nolan North’s) it all felt very familiar. There’s a moment in the demo where you reach the end of a street blocked by a burning vehicle, and Drake mumbles something about not getting through that way. No guidance is offered on where you’re supposed to go next, but the Uncharted veteran in me immediately shimmied a sign post and leapt through a hole in a nearby wall.
In one encounter, knocking out a few enemies with stealth gave me a chance to scout the arena, finding cover, choke points and groups of baddies and allowing for a strategic approach or quick tactical response. This is what I most enjoyed during the entire demo, and although I must admit it’s been a while since I played an Uncharted game, to me it felt like this aspect of combat was more prominent than in past titles. It felt like Naughty Dog tooksome lessons from The Last of Us, which was certainly much less of a shooting gallery than some sequences in the Uncharted series.
And yes, the full game will have Nolan North and a story, too, and judging by Naughty Dog’s track history they’ll probably be excellent. All that will help distract you from the fact that you’re playing yet another third-person action adventure and maybe you’re a bit fatigued by them. I am. The spectacle left me unmoved, and despite my confidence that the complete package will overcome that fatigue, I must confess to a little disappointment in the first PS4 Uncharted for not blowing me away when it had the chance.
It blew Pat away, so perhaps I just don’t have the eye to see what makes Uncharted 4 so tremendous graphics-wise. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by playing so many terrific games already this generation. Maybe it’sjust that I’ve forgotten what PlayStation 3 games looked like, so the jump to PS4 no longer impresses me.
But graphics don’t make the game, and even if Uncharted 4 is the most beautiful thing ever to have happened in the history of video games, it’s not – it’s not new. This is a complaint that has been levelled a lot this generation, I think, that games are just shinier rather than more interesting, and Uncharted may be in for the same critique. Where the first Uncharted games felt like they were blowing the bar sky high, this one just felt like more of the same.
This morning when I threw open the door to greet the dawn I found a courier had wedged the edge of a packet into the hinges yesterday; it was my copy of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. “Do I really want to do all this again,” I wondered, “Even if it is incredibly beautiful?”
edit 2: i found a pic someone posted from TGS 2015. I guess i can see now how the mistake was made with the banner being in japanese and all...
