While the puzzle chambers are fun and impressive as moments of spectacle, they rely heavily on extremely similar, repeated motifs involving the correct placement of pirate symbols they’re not as ingenious or wryly playful as the traps and tricks in the previous title. It is dizzying and sometimes frustrating and it divorces you from the sense that these are locations rather than fairground ghost rides. Naughty Dog has this habit of creating levels that twist around on each other like vast spiral staircases, so that you lose all sense of place and direction.
There were times, even amid the most astonishing scenery, when you may inwardly groan at the sight of yet another cliff face to creep along, or another adventure playground of tumbling wooden buildings, rope swings and walkways.Īstonishing scenery is plentiful. The spaces look explorable, but they funnel you along narrow walkways of interactivity, blithely breaking the established rules of Nathan’s capabilities whenever they need to restrict your access. Although Nathan carries a handy rope and grappling hook with him at all times, the opportunities to use it are so strictly defined, it can shatter your sense of immersion. There is a lot of climbing, a lot of jumping, a hell of a lot of lifting great big logs out of the way so you can crawl through narrow entrances.
Everything you do in this game is extraordinarily familiar to series fans. Indeed, as far as romantic relationships go, this love affair is perhaps the most nuanced and authentic that mainstream games have offered so far.īut this is all about the narrative and where Uncharted 4 feels weaker it is in the moment-to-moment gameplay. The moments they spend together are among the most beautiful, authentically human cinematic sequences in the series. Elena is here too, though woefully underused as Nathan’s narrative restraining bolt – desperate for him to be safe yet certain she will lose him if he feels she is holding back. Throughout the action, we get the wonderful verbal interplay between Nathan, Sam and Sully – the three guys wisecracking, scuffling, arguing, throwing around one-liners that are sometimes laugh out loud funny. And there are heart-jolting set-pieces including an astonishing car chase through the streets of a Madagascan town, the epic destruction of a beautiful belltower and a race through a cliffside pirate city as it splinters into the raging ocean.Ī huge puzzle chamber hidden away beneath an abandoned church – familiar territory for Nathan Drake Photograph: Sony There are gigantic puzzle rooms where whirring cogs and sliding symbols must be turned, tweaked and interpreted so that monstrous clockwork machines jolt into motion, opening doors and exposing hidden chambers. The duo, aided by Sully, gatecrash an auction in a beautiful Italian mansion, race to a frosty, mountainous Scotland, then fly out to Madagascar, following cryptic clues offered up by relics, hidden maps and secret messages. Then he turns up 15 years later, with a price on his head, and a desperate need to track down Libertalia and discover the massive treasure haul rumoured to be stored there. Nathan escapes, but Sam apparently dies in the dramatic getaway sequence. For the first eight chapters, we’re very much in backstory territory as we learn about Nathan’s childhood with his rebellious brother Sam, and about their first attempt to track down Avery’s treasure, which ends with them incarcerated in a South American jail. This is a story about hubris, obsession and self-denial, and gradually, throughout the game, we discover that these are personality quirks shared between Nathan and Henry, as well as generations of other adventurers who set out to find Avery’s haul and died in the trying.īut this is also a tale that Naughty Dog takes its time to tell. We soon begin to realise that Nathan’s quest to discover Libertalia, the fabled anarchist utopia set up by pirate Henry Avery, is symbolic of his whole career as a treasure hunter. In Uncharted 4 he gets the conclusion he and his fans deserve – a rollicking, globe-trotting adventure that manages to be funny and exciting, yet also touched with sadness. Nathan is a character you care for and want to protect, even when he makes awful decisions that will hurt the people he loves. Exuding charm and determination, strength and vulnerability, he is the sort of male lead great Hollywood screenwriters aspire to create, but that video games have tended to bypass in favour of gritty, cynical sociopaths on mindless quests for retribution.
T here have been very few video game characters as well conceived as Nathan Drake.