After extensive research, I am ready to admit that I may not be the first person to do the Uncharted Series for your attention. However, it seems that everyone else has let me down by not letting me know how wonderful climbing is in game four.
The least I could have hoped would be a great gaming site specifically reviewing that one aspect of Naughty Dog’s epic adventure, but nooooooooo, nobody could be disturbed. So it stays with me about five years later. ((Yes, at least this article has made you feel miserably old, the way you realize it was like that five goddamn years since The end of a thief was published. A game I only played last week for no good reason.)
I have to admit the whole thing Uncharted Series passed me by completely. Originally published exclusively on a console that didn’t belong to me, in a year I co-started a PC-specific website, I couldn’t get on the Drake train and then never catch up with it. I gave the original a quick try last year, but in 14 years it’s pretty much out of date so only third-person action games can do that, and I didn’t stick with it. Then last week, after taking my first break since Christmas, I figured I’d run the latest one and see what it was. It turns out: large!
Not all great, certainly. At this point I have completely lost track of whether Tomb Raider rips off Uncharted or vice versa, but Naughty Dog clearly stood out too much from Lara’s toolbox in the beginning. Goodness gracious, like everyone Tomb Raider Always play it doesn’t need to shoot. Each shooting section is an ordeal to overcome, to the point where I began to see how much I could get away with without going along.
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It turns out a surprising amount at the beginning! I survived Sam’s escape from prison without firing a single shot, letting the NPC and enemy AI do the drunken bullet madness take care of everything for me. I had to be innovative at some points, realizing that I could choreograph the action a bit by hiding, and directing the arbitrary garden hose approach to battle until all of them accidentally died at some point every body else. But my hands were clean of gun scraps. Unfortunately, this becomes less possible later on, until I finally come to terms with the deeply contradicting mass murder of strangers in order to get to the next piece that I would enjoy. That is, climbing.
The last time a game like this was completely split in two for me was Prince Of Persia: The Two Thronesthat is so dramatic between their polar opposites of Sands of Time Time wonderful balletic plateau and Warriors inside stupid fierce fight. Uncharted 4 Mercurial nature feels very similar, albeit a bit more elegantly mixed. “I’m a bit of everyone and I hope, despite all odds, to find treasure by connecting with my long lost brother! Oh, sorry, wait a minute, I have to murder these seventeen people, three of them, by snapping their soft necks between my hands. “
But the climbing! I’ve played so many games like this where the world is made up of a series of white-striped ledges that I can’t possibly dangle on. I know the deal, point the analog stick at the nearest rock, then press X to jump on it. I’ve shuffled down so many window sills as the next man before leaning against a protruding flagpole and acrobatically leaping off to catch the three-millimeter handle on the other side of this gorge. But I can’t remember any other time when I reached for these things.
I can’t believe the difference this achievement makes! When Nathan’s arms reach for the nearest comb or windowsill, it magically goes from incomprehensible unrealistic to just plain stupid. It feels fluid, achievable, possible. It is not. At all. It is ridiculous impossible. As a very poor and very occasional hobby climber, I am at least vaguely aware of what is actually possible for a person, and it is definitely not to fall twenty meters at an angle and then get caught on a three-fingered ledge. But when he first arrives it seems like maybe it could be ?!
It is best if you can find yourself up the side of a building and his arms can reach the next ledge or drain pipe and you begin to weave a natural, flowing development, with his arms exploring and finding their destination. When it comes together like that, it’s almost poetry! It just feels so damned Well. It makes me happy in my stomach.
Sure, everything will be ruined shortly thereafter by senselessly killing a large group of men who presumably only accepted this mercenary job for lack of work in the country and had no idea they would face genocide that Spider Man that afternoon. But as long as it takes, my goodness, the climbing is for the best. Why on earth hasn’t it shamelessly ripped off every game since then?
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