Gotta admit, I dunno how I feel about this one. To start, I definitely think it’s the weakest cinematic naughty dog game I’ve played so far. As what I’ve been doing for the previous Naughty Dog games + The Last of Us, I played the game on Crushing and Survivor. Even with having to really strategize and plan out how I approached certain challenges, I was very bored for the first half of the game. Certain chapters like the Madagascar one try to be huge open areas but they barely have anything of interest within them. Plus they tend to be really long, which causes a whole lot of moments that are just flat out boring. While the core gameplay is arguably the best in the series, the level design is by far the most important part, and I think the first half pales in comparison to nearly all of what the first 3 games has to offer.

HOWEVER, everything from chapter 14 is great. Like, really, REALLY great. Some of the most difficult fights in the series occur and I found nearly every moment enjoyable in some way, even if it can get pretty frustrating with how much I died. Gotta hand it to Naughty Dog, they sure did go all out with the difficulty this time on crushing. I know a lot of people that think Uncharted 1 is pretty unfair and has aged poorly (which arguably, it has) but there were a lot of moments that I found fun just because of how stressful and exhilarating everything was and the second half of Uncharted 4 gave me a lot of the same feelings. Also, the ending is pretty great and a nice send off for Nate and the gang’s story.

As for some more minor, specific things: the voice acting is still great and adds a lot of charm, the graphics are gorgeous, and the music (while not really memorable) sounds nice and adds a lot to the experience.

Overall, I think Uncharted 4, while a great finale for the series, ends up being a little disappointing because of the pretty mediocre first half. It had the chance to probably be the best in the series and I’m a bit sad that it didn’t live up to that. I’ve grown to love this series within the last year and Uncharted 2 specifically has become one of my favorite games of all time. I know naughty dog gets a lot of flak nowadays alongside other Sony studios for making nothing but “movie games,” but I genuinely think they’re a talented studio that is capable of making amazing experiences (even if the work environment is pretty terrible as seen with TLOU 2’s development). I was hoping Uncharted 4 lived up to their previous works in my eyes, but at the moment, I can’t say it did. Maybe Lost Legacy will give me the same feeling that their previous games have…