shagger says Shagger Says: Uncharted 4 (WARNING; This may not be a popular opinion...)

[Shagger]

Disclaimer

Welcome VGR to the second Shagger says review I ever wrote. As I stated in the Rise of the Tomb Raider review, this goes back to a time before VGR ad I just wanted to have all of these reviews up on this site. It is just a repost here exactly as it was only with some new banners So, enjoy!

 

Review

 

The last time I did one of these big, written reviews was on what is considered to be one of this games biggest rivals, Rise of the Tomb Raider, but having now played this game, I find it actually has at least as much in common with something else...

 

 

...Given that these two games were made buy the same people, I shouldn't really be surprised, nor should anyone be pessimistic because a blend of Rise of The Tomb Raider and The Last of Us sounds great right! Aaahhhhhhh..... this is the part I'm gonna piss someone off. Better get ready...

 

                                                          

                                                                                                                           

 

Oh, that's snug!

 

It doesn't matter whether you compare this to The Last of Us or Rise of the Tomb Raider, this is NOT as good as either of those games! I'm sorry, it just isn't!

 

Now don't get wrong, Uncharted 4 is a great game and I enjoyed it immensely, no game than can glue me to the sofa for 18 hours over two days isn't great, but as much as I like liked this game, it lacks in certain important areas that I think a lot of people either don't notice or ignore. Still, to calm down the people already sharpening their pitchforks, lets start with the good stuff.

 

 

When I reviewed Rise of the Tomb Raider I thought that game was stunning, and it is, but this next gen effort from Naughty Dog make Rise' look it's being played on a broken ass 70's TV smeared with KY jelly! This is by a country mile the best looking game I've ever played. I barely even know where to start. It's like every single pixel in this game had someone spend several minutes contemplating whether that was the right placement and color for it. It's actually a little disappointing that the game isn't as open as some other games so you can check out more of the amazing environments and locations you see.

 

The game is rightfully proud of the environments and setting, they're gorgeous, enhanced by great draw distances with very sharp textures from both far away and close up. There's also a great deal of life and non-player related actions going on with little animals scurrying about in the corner of your eye, the grass and leaves and other aspects of the world moving around naturally. The best part is the fantastic photo mode is back from The Last of Us: Remastered so one can capture these amazing places in a fun and creative way.  

 

The character models and animations are so realistic and natural looking, no doubt due to the same kind of capture animation work we saw in The Last of Us. It's not overly cinematic though, this still feels like a game throughout, it's just and incredibly detailed, almost photo-realistic one. Allot is borrowed from The Last Of Us in other ways too with basically the same dynamic, usually hidden UI and a natural view of documents and Drake's Journal. This is important in what is a very story-focused game to break tandem as little as humanly possible and Naughty Dog have proven yet again they are the kings.

 

The game also runs like a dream. No FPS problems, crashes or glitches to report, it's just beautifully crafted.

 

I mean fuck it! in this regard, this game deserves the Spinal Tap treatment!

 

11/10

 

 

Now, I'm not gonna spend to much time on this for two reasons. One, it'll be very hard to go into any detail at all without leaving spoilers and two, being from the same people that brought you The Last of Us, you know what to expect.

 

Think National Treasure except longer, better, not stupid and without Nicolas Cage (Although I have to admit that I'm not sure if that last one is a positive or a negative.) and that's basically the idea. The good thing is that one doesn't need to know anything about the previous Uncharted games to follow this story, but there is plenty of fan service for those that have played them.

 

Nathan Drake now retired from, well, being Nathan Drake, is drawn back into seeking a long lost pirate treasure to pay off a dept left buy his brother Sam... and that's about all I can say without spoiling anything, so I'll just move on. The story isn't that groundbreaking, but like in The Last of Us it's told in such a believable way with very character driven, natural writing and superb voice acting is what makes the game so addicting, you simply don't want to put it down and wait 'till tomorrow to see what happens next.

 

I don't find the lure in this as interesting as The Last of Us, and I wouldn't say the story is actually better than Rise of the Tomb Raider either, just better told with more focus and better developed characters, it's just an undeniably engrossing storytelling experience that rivals just about any game, movie or TV show I've seen and is actually my favorite part of the game. This is what you're paying for with this game and it's where most of the value comes from.

 

9/10

 

Wait, let check something first...

 

                                                                               

                                                                                                                           

 

Yep, still fits.

 

You know how I said this game isn't as good as Rise of the Tomb Raider? Yes, of course you do, you're still sharpening your pitchfork. Well, I say that because despite Uncharted 4 being better in looks and story, it is inferior where it's most important, the actual gameplay. Now, this is a good game to play, don't get me wrong, but my problems are not so much with what's here and more with what isn't. Think about it;

 

Levelling Mechanics

The Last of Us:

 Use herbs in the world as a kind of currency to upgrade stat's and abilities.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Earn XP from story missions, side activities, collectibles and enemy kills to acquire skill points to purchase new skills from 3 different skill trees. Between Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Last of Us, this is the superior system.

 

Uncharted 4:

 Nothing.

 

Upgrade/Crafting Mechanics

The Last of Us:

Gather parts and salvage from the world to improve your weapons in a number ways. One can also create other items that share common ingredients and given resources are limited, so you have to decide what upgrades matter most. Objects found in the world can be actively modified and used as weapons.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Hunt and scavenge to find materials, components, salvage, animal pelts another resources that, like in The Last of Us, share common purposes so you have to choose what weapons and craft items are the most valuable to you. Again like The Last of Us you can make weapons out of objects lying around. There is more variety to the crafting and upgrade mechanics overall in Rise of the Tomb Raider compared to The Last of Us, so this is again the superior system.

 

Uncharted 4:

Nothing

 

I'm not saying that every game has to have these kinds of mechanics, I'm just making a point that when The Last of Us, a game that clearly provides allot of the DNA for Uncharted 4 has these ideas and it's big (timed) exclusive rival on Xbox, Rise of the Tomb Raider also has such mechanics and takes them even further improving on it's predecessor significantly, it really bugs me that there is actually so little here.

 

Uncharted 4 is way more linear than Rise' so offers way less room to explore it's undeniably beautiful world, so it feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity. I know some of you may be thinking "Why does it have to be like Tomb Raider anyway? You don't to explore in every game of this type" and you know, I'd agree with you, if it wasn't for this;

 

 

Why does it have a crappier version of the same treasure collection and inspection mechanic as Tomb Raider? Besides, none of these objects are interesting. There's no good description of what they are or where they came from, they don't tie into the game story nor the environment in which you find them and whilst you can roll them around and look at them you can't learn anything additional about them like you can with some of the relics in Tomb Raider. Worst of all, because there's no levelling mechanic for this system to tie into, there's no meaningful incentive to even bother collecting them in the first place. This is a half-assed, tacked on, copy-cat mechanic that serves no purpose. Do yourselves a favour, if you play Uncharted 4 and see something blinking on the ground, ignore it, it's just there to waste your time.

 

Both Tomb Raider and Uncharted 4 use similar 3rd person platforming and climbing mechanics and whilst these are superb in both games, Uncharted I just don't find as fun because the controls are slower and feel more fussy and there is less options for movement. In Rise', one can use climbing axes on walls and ice, swing and climb on ropes, rope slide, use climbing arrows along with the usual normal run, climb and jump stuff. In Uncharted, there's a rope you can hook onto things to climb and swing from and a spike you push into a wall that's basically a slower, more cumbersome version of the climbing axes from Tomb Raider, and that's about it. You can't even sprint for God sake! That's becoming a pet peeve of mine. Why do so many games not have this? Even The Last of Us had a sprint button! Why use The Last of Us engine as backbone for this when you take out so much of the good stuff?  You drive a car and a boat at times in the game, but there isn't much to say other than an acknowledgement that they are well executed. The car especially is allot of fun being a 4x4 and you can winch things and I wish there was more of that.

 

Combat is a similar story. Again, there's nothing really wrong with it in Uncharted 4, it's fantastic in fact, but there's just less to it. You can hold two weapons at a time and swap them for guns you pick up, so in this regard it plays like a typical modern 3rd or 1st person shooter. The shooting mechanics are great, the guns have punch and you can feel the variety in them thanks partly to some superb sound design and realistic visual recoil. The enemy AI is well programmed and even on the stranded difficulty the game is decent challenge, so a point there against Rise' where you have to play "Seasoned Raider" for it to be the same level. Despite that, I prefer Rise' because there's a better variety of enemies, especially if you count the hunting mechanics, a choice of four class of weapons you can switch to at any time including stealth weapons, something Uncharted 4 doesn't have outside of multiplayer.

 

Speaking of stealth, everything is perfectly fine in Uncharted. Nothing we haven't seen before in other games so I'm not gonna go to far into it, but compare to The Last of Us it's a downgrade as stealth was such a huge part in that game and compared to Rise' there's less incentive to use it as you so often sneak past a group of enemies, find you target zone is choke point where it's impossible not to be spotted, so you have to battle all the enemies you just snuck past from a corner. No, that happened to me all time, so it can't be a coincidence.

 

Another thing that happened to me at least 3 or 4 times is enemies spawning behind me at checkpoints. Like most games, the sections of the game have automatic checkpoints you go back to when you die to replay that section. The combat and platforming sections in Uncharted 4 are pretty long, and that's fine, and thus have checkpoints within them. The thing is though during some of the combat sections I start a checkpoint somewhere in the middle of the combat section and I find the enemies that I killed to get there have re-spawned behind me! One point in particular after dying I found myself under attack from RPG's and Assault rifles ahead of me with 3 guys behind attracting with guns in a pincer! So, because I died the first time trying to take on the RPG group that was hard enough, I then have to fight that group plus the group I took out to get their in the first place while unfairly out flanked. So as you my have guessed, I had to re-play this section over and over in haze of frustration.

 

I was really impressed by the melee combat at first with all the double take downs I was pulling off in the prison fight and all that but my joy was short lived as I began to realize the games superb animations are cover for how scripted the melee combat really is. The Last of Us, again, was better in this regard in my opinion, it's just felt more real. Rise of the Tomb Raider's melee combat isn't great, in fact it's worse, but at least I felt I had control over it and that game doesn't focus on melee that much.

 

The combat is broken up buy a number of puzzle sections. Now, there isn't much to say here either, they're relatively easy and aside from story tie-ins, not that memorable. The Tombs In Tomb Raider I prefer because it's a similar level of problem solving along with a dynamic test of reflexes and ability to negotiate platforms as well.

 

The game does claw back points with the multiplayer. Here, the game feels faster and more fluent with good verticality and movement. The games fine gun combat serves well here to and employs a kind of MOBA style in match purchasing mechanic to obtain more powerful weapons and abilities for a short time. This looks very promising to me at the moment, but I've not played that much of it yet, so I'll have to play a bit with it and update this part of the review. If anyone want's to give their input on the multiplayer let me know because I think having others input is helpful to cover the bases. It is better the Rise of The Tomb Raider here given the fact Rise of the Tomb Raiser has no multiplayer... so yeah.

 

Multiplayer aside, my thoughts on the gameplay are this. They did what was adequate and said, "That'll do". It's a very enjoyable game, but I was just expecting so much more for a hyped, modern, big budget adventure from a developer that I know can do much better than this. Good gameplay mechanics, but half in quantity of what you'd want from a game like this, really only one way to score the game in this regard.

 

5/10

 

Final Verdict

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by Shagger