UNCHARTED?!? MORE LIKE UN-SHARTED!!!
Ahem. Always wanted to say that at least once.
As far as I can tell, Uncharted is the origin of Sony's current recipe for success: a third-person, over-the-shoulder, linear, cinematic adventure game. And in my honest opinion, I don't get the appeal.
The game looks beautiful, but I feel like that beauty is constantly diminished by how often you retread areas, and also by how frequently you get into firefights. It seriously distracts me how all these ancient ruins have crumbled in the perfect way to provide cover from incoming fire. The game is structured in a way where it's just combat room->combat room->kinda janky platforming->combat room->mildly interesting puzzle->combat room. It's so mind-numbing after a while. This game also has like, three quick-time events in it. Just three. They're there, apparently.
I'm honestly not sure I liked a single character in this game. Our heroes are all cocky jerks to each other, and I struggle to root for a crowd like that. The moment I stop to think about Drake and his friends' motives, I realize that it's because they want treasure. The villains are ridiculously one-dimensional as well. When the main villain role was usurped by another guy at the very end, I wish I could say I was more shocked, but I barely knew either of them!
Honestly, my favorite part of this game was the art galleries you unlock as you progress through the game, particularly the very last one, which shows several photos of the development team having a grand old time, from fun around the workplace, straight down to funny screenshots of things breaking in debug builds. This game also has honest-to-goodness cheats in it, unlocked by playing the game to completion and on harder difficulties. One of them is a "next-gen" camera filter that turns the screen piss yellow, which gave me a good laugh.
I wish I had a better way to end this review, but I'm ashamed to admit that I wasted the only joke I could think of as my opener. Maybe I could use more "un-" words, but I should probably save those for the other games. Yep, I plan on playing 2 and 3, at the very least. Got the trilogy for free during Sony's covid promotion. This is still "pre-The Last of Us" Naughty Dog, so I do have faith that they'll improve.
Ahem. Always wanted to say that at least once.
As far as I can tell, Uncharted is the origin of Sony's current recipe for success: a third-person, over-the-shoulder, linear, cinematic adventure game. And in my honest opinion, I don't get the appeal.
The game looks beautiful, but I feel like that beauty is constantly diminished by how often you retread areas, and also by how frequently you get into firefights. It seriously distracts me how all these ancient ruins have crumbled in the perfect way to provide cover from incoming fire. The game is structured in a way where it's just combat room->combat room->kinda janky platforming->combat room->mildly interesting puzzle->combat room. It's so mind-numbing after a while. This game also has like, three quick-time events in it. Just three. They're there, apparently.
I'm honestly not sure I liked a single character in this game. Our heroes are all cocky jerks to each other, and I struggle to root for a crowd like that. The moment I stop to think about Drake and his friends' motives, I realize that it's because they want treasure. The villains are ridiculously one-dimensional as well. When the main villain role was usurped by another guy at the very end, I wish I could say I was more shocked, but I barely knew either of them!
Honestly, my favorite part of this game was the art galleries you unlock as you progress through the game, particularly the very last one, which shows several photos of the development team having a grand old time, from fun around the workplace, straight down to funny screenshots of things breaking in debug builds. This game also has honest-to-goodness cheats in it, unlocked by playing the game to completion and on harder difficulties. One of them is a "next-gen" camera filter that turns the screen piss yellow, which gave me a good laugh.
I wish I had a better way to end this review, but I'm ashamed to admit that I wasted the only joke I could think of as my opener. Maybe I could use more "un-" words, but I should probably save those for the other games. Yep, I plan on playing 2 and 3, at the very least. Got the trilogy for free during Sony's covid promotion. This is still "pre-The Last of Us" Naughty Dog, so I do have faith that they'll improve.
2 Comments
@Weatherby Games of this style kinda blur together into a big soup in my mind, so I'm really bad at discerning the minute details between titles. Kinda wild though that ND essentially trailblazed a genre that Sony is officially running into the ground. I'm sure this was really damn impressive on the PS3 with no games in 2007, but on the PS4 in 2023? Marginally less impressive.
Weatherby
1 year ago