Uncharted 4
Bought it day one back in 2016 and to this day still can't tell how I feel about it. The narrative they went for had a lot of potential but it felt like they couldn't find a balance between wanting to make it more serious but knowing they had to still keep the fun action romp elements Uncharted was known for, to the point where some decisions seemed like they were in place just to add more drama to the story. Nate has literally been on tons of adventures with Elena at this point but suddenly it's "she won't understand" just so we can get to the scene where she finds out. Sam and Nate spend half the fucking game looking for the goddamn island after solving so many puzzles but THEN Nate is suddenly like "oh man what if this isn't real though and we need a real way to save you". The introduction of Sam Drake ruined the franchise imo, not only is he a lame ass character to begin with but it also felt like the game was constantly beating you over the head with "and did we mention Nate has a brother!!" every fucking 30 minutes as a result of his inclusion.
The gameplay, while still fun and entertaining imo, was also beginning to grow stale by this point: explore and climb some shit, fight enemy encounter, solve a puzzle, have an occasional big setpiece, repeat and the ways they tried to change it up just didn't feel like enough. Introducing a grappling hook was a cool concept but I don't think did enough to make it feel different (and also leads to the question of why didn't he use this in the previous games if this was something he knew how to use the entire time, but I don't hold that against them as that's basically impossible to take into account), introduce those bigger areas to explore and drive around in like Madagascar which were ultimately the same exact thing but just in a bigger environment: drive around, do a puzzle, fight the enemies when they show up, repeat and if anything feel like they were there just to stretch it out even more. Then they even had some useless shit like the dialogue "options" in cutscenes which just felt like they were searching for anything new to add.
I haven't played the game in a hot minute so this is all just what I can think of off the top of my head, but if I wanted to I could write an entire thing about my conflicting feelings with this game. I basically liked the game up until it hit the Scotland segment, and from then on it's just downhill. Graphics were excellent obviously, music was also still just as great, and the multiplayer is one of my favorites, but the singleplayer was disappointing as hell. I did like Nadine tho. I still love Uncharted as a franchise, but Uncharted 2 is still the peak, and having played The Lost Legacy a few months ago which was even more bland I really think it just needs a long break at this point.
Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 27 December 2020
