I didn't think it would be possibly to make UC3 feel like a good game but somehow they found a way. I still have to play the spin off with the ladies of the series and see where that falls.
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LTTP: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End... and thank goodness it's over
- Thread starter Aurc
- Start date
Not this thread again. Personally I thought this one was much better paced than any of the previous games.
Yep, it's pretty gutting. Especially because it would fit with the theme of "aging Drake".
Imagine even the boat/islands level and how different it would be if we had to manage climbing/swinging.
THEN imagine the knock-out arrival at Libertalia with a very, very weak Drake, and how extra hard and dramatic that sequence would have been with limited stamina.
I did enjoy U4. But it wasn't better than 2 or 3. I can't speak on Lost Legacy yet cause it's in my backlog, but from all the feedback, most are saying that's the best of the series.
It would be cool if you added an edit to the OP stating you've learned about this and feel differently/ambivalent.
The more people understand the realities of game development, the better.
Agree with the pacing OP and to this day I have no clue how Elena find Nate, Sully and Sam in that hotel room. Someone can tell me a logical explanation.
And lost legacy is the best uncharted. Hope next installments are with those characters.
And lost legacy is the best uncharted. Hope next installments are with those characters.
Completely disagreed with just about every point, OP. I loved the game and would rank it right next to UC2.
Track his phone? Call nearby hotels and ask if someone have checked in with their names? There's a lot of different ways she could've found out about it.
I thought it would be too short but it turned into the perfect 8 hour adventure. Not too short or too long.
OP
OP
3 was still pretty good in its own right, so I have to at least give The Lost Legacy a chance. I wanna see what Chloe gets up to. Her omission from 4 was glaring.
Funny you say that about the TLoU influence. I'd agree, actually. It can even be seen in the multiplayer to an extent, wherein players are now downed instead of simply dying when their health reaches 0. Downs don't work well for the type of fun, fast-paced MP Uncharted used to represent.
I really enjoyed U2's shootouts. Not only are they fairly well-designed encounters (for their time + Uncharted 2 essentially being the pioneer of the "cinematic game"), but some of them even have a dire, emotional weight to them, like when you finally catch up to the game's prologue and have a shootout in the blizzard as mercenaries converge on you. Also, it's one of the only games that makes fighting a helicopter fun, of all things, so I appreciated that too.
That's fair, I can appreciate your points. I'll do another thread for TLL once I'm finished with it.
I wasn't clear: I don't want Uncharted as a whole to be over, I was just glad to be done with this one, particular entry in the series.
Is it a plot hole with UC3 if its an obvious retcon? Not UC3s fault is what I'm trying to say lol
ohhh but that is never address in the game. Isn't a plot hole, but lazy writing in that part?
Based on what we know from the initial trailers, Sam was going to be the villain in her version. I don't really see that being more compelling than what we got.
Nah the important part is Elena being there, not how she got there.
The chapter itself was fine. What's not fine is that you play a chapter that never happened just to get a cheap twist out of their poorly written story.
If they went with Amy Hennig's version the exact same chapter would exist and it would have actually mattered, in a cohesive way without just saying "whoops, guess what you played there for half an hour was not actually a thing".
I don't see why I should ignore the fact it never actually happend lol. You have shit like that as a told story in game by a character, not as an actual gameplay part.
I think you'll enjoy Lost Legacy a lot more. Uncharted 4 had development difficulties and it shows. Sam would have really made more sense as a villain, given the backstory in Uncharted 3.
I was a little underwhelmed when the credits rolled because that big setpiece never happened, but I still enjoyed various moments in the game. I understand a vocal minority on this site disliked the game but it won consensus GoTY in 2016, and GAFs GoTY as well for a reason lol. It has its issues for sure, but it's still a solid experience.
OP
OP
Yeah, that'd have been good, no doubt. Come to think of it, both U2 and U3 did stuff like this, and did it well: U2 had Drake bleeding from that gunshot wound in the blizzard, and U3 had him hallucinating in the desert. I know U4 briefly dabbled in that with Drake in the rainstorm after the boat crash, but it didn't quite have that same impact.
Done.
I guess we'll just have to diverge on this, since I just viewed it as the game getting into Sam's head and giving us control to play out his rehearsed story (not inherently a bad thing). I do see your point on how that could be cheap, though.
lol if you stick with this site for all your gaming gossip, you'll believe UC4 is a heavily flawed game that got a negative critical and commercial reception. But we all know that's not true, for some reason it has a negative perception on Era. It's not perfect by any means but it's still one of this generations best games imo.
OP explained everything. I can't believe the notes on this game. In my opinion, it worked emotionally for the players but objectively, the pacing, the gunfight, the exploration, etc., are lower than the previous one.
If Nate was a little smart, a google search on Alcazar would have ruined his brother's whole story... it's the first thing I would have done personally.
Especially since in this episode, we spend a lot of time on the Elena/Nate relationship, but it becomes ridiculous to see Nate in such bad mood when he just killed his 800th man in combat. The problem is that the cutscenes are so long, and it often speaks for nothing, and it contrasts with the gameplay phases (in the previous ones, at least the pacing made us forget it).
It's still fun to play. Overall it's a road trip, a Call of Duty campaign. You play, explosions everywhere, and then... meh.
If Nate was a little smart, a google search on Alcazar would have ruined his brother's whole story... it's the first thing I would have done personally.
Especially since in this episode, we spend a lot of time on the Elena/Nate relationship, but it becomes ridiculous to see Nate in such bad mood when he just killed his 800th man in combat. The problem is that the cutscenes are so long, and it often speaks for nothing, and it contrasts with the gameplay phases (in the previous ones, at least the pacing made us forget it).
It's still fun to play. Overall it's a road trip, a Call of Duty campaign. You play, explosions everywhere, and then... meh.
I literally just played through the game again for the third time just before Christmas. I agree that the pacing was too sombre and slow for its own good, mostly because there was too much climbing and downtime, and too few combat scenarios, but I personally love it none-the-less. In my opinion there isn't really a better historic pirate based narrative out there in any moving medium (film or gaming), and the next best thing is probably something like The Goonies.
Story and sense of adventure.
I love the way the story builds up, takes you all over the world, and also keeps delving deeper and deeper in to the mystery of Avery's treasure. What should have been a simple loot hunt, ends up turning into some massive pirate tale that is full of twists, turns, grandiose tests, puzzles, trials, tribulations, partnerships, societies, cities, betrayals, civil wars, back stabbing, murder and all the rest.
Then the way it intertwines with the characters in the game and takes you globe trotting, is awesome too. One minute you're in some Panamanian prison, the next some Mission Impossible style heist in Italy, then sliding and swinging around historic ruins in Scotland, then driving around the muddy plains of Madagascar, swimming and exploring a paridisical tropical island, making your way through a rich historic secret city, seeing a huge spooky pirate ship and so on. There's just so many cool moments, locations, areas, layers and elements to it.
Also Nate and Elena are charming, Nadine bad ass, Rafe a cool villain, Sully awesome as ever, and Sam a decent addition. The ending as well, is really beautiful.
I personally didn't really see the issues with Sam that you did, mostly because I felt Drake himself allowed himself to get caught in to the lie mostly because he himself was not content with his own life, and was secretly looking for an excuse to get back in to the game. The story of Alcazar being far fetched was sort of besides the point. It was the excuse that gave Nate a way back in.
Combat and encounter design
The other thing I really enjoyed about the game is that the actual combat gameplay itself is exceptional. The best it's ever been and some of the most fluid, dynamic and rewarding in any third person shooter out there. Whilst imo there are too few combat encounters and set pieces in the game, what there is, is generally really well done.
To go into some of the things I think makes the combat so rewading.
1). Greater emphasis or reward factor to precision shooting and less bullet spongeyness, dependant on player skill and aiming competency. In UC4 essentially every weapon in the game can take out the vast majority of enemies with a single well timed bullet to the head (this is also true of previous Uncharted games), no matter what weapon it is. This headshot multiplier gives the combat an added skill ceiling, and greatly rewards players who are more precise and methodical with their aim and recoil management, and to reiterate, not just with certain specific weapons, but every weapon in the game.
2). Hit detection, hit reactions and fluidity of animations are class leading in UC4. Whilst it might not have the visual element of extreme gore, blood splatter etc, it compensates by having insanely good hit reactions and animations, that give a super accomplished sense of feedback and response to the combat, making every bullet, grenade etc super impactful.
3). Fluidity and precision of controls in the game are also top notch. Everything just feels super polished and good to play. The contextual animations, melee, cover system, obstacle detection and movesets, responsiveness to shooting, climbing, jumping and all the rest. There's a fluidity to combat and gunplay that makes everything feel better.
4). The weapons in the game pack a punch and sound both realistic and fantastic, especially with a good pair of headphones. This is one aspect the game really improved on from previous titles.
The following points are less specifically about gunplay and more about the combat in general.
5). The mobility, dynamism, fluidity of combat and freedom of approach options in the game are simply put, top tier. The different mechanics, systems, tools etc in place allow for players to seamlessly and effortlessly switch between gunplay, stealth, melee etc, and constantly dynamically traverse environments mid-combat, in a quick and responsive way.
You're never going to get this sort of mobility, verticality and dynamism from most if any other third person shooter.
6). UC4's arena / level and encounter design is some of the best in the business. Several of the combat encounters or arenas in the game are orders of magnitude more layered, dense, open-ended and broad, with considerably more approach options and verticality than most third-person shooters.
Not only are there a huge number of different levels of height, but the way they are interconnected is genius, plus you have the lasso rope swinging, swimming, ledge shimmying, climbing, jumping, grass and all sorts mixing up how you can traverse or manage the space.
Anyway, thought I'd offer a more comprehensive answer, so there you go.
Story and sense of adventure.
I love the way the story builds up, takes you all over the world, and also keeps delving deeper and deeper in to the mystery of Avery's treasure. What should have been a simple loot hunt, ends up turning into some massive pirate tale that is full of twists, turns, grandiose tests, puzzles, trials, tribulations, partnerships, societies, cities, betrayals, civil wars, back stabbing, murder and all the rest.
Then the way it intertwines with the characters in the game and takes you globe trotting, is awesome too. One minute you're in some Panamanian prison, the next some Mission Impossible style heist in Italy, then sliding and swinging around historic ruins in Scotland, then driving around the muddy plains of Madagascar, swimming and exploring a paridisical tropical island, making your way through a rich historic secret city, seeing a huge spooky pirate ship and so on. There's just so many cool moments, locations, areas, layers and elements to it.
Also Nate and Elena are charming, Nadine bad ass, Rafe a cool villain, Sully awesome as ever, and Sam a decent addition. The ending as well, is really beautiful.
I personally didn't really see the issues with Sam that you did, mostly because I felt Drake himself allowed himself to get caught in to the lie mostly because he himself was not content with his own life, and was secretly looking for an excuse to get back in to the game. The story of Alcazar being far fetched was sort of besides the point. It was the excuse that gave Nate a way back in.
Combat and encounter design
The other thing I really enjoyed about the game is that the actual combat gameplay itself is exceptional. The best it's ever been and some of the most fluid, dynamic and rewarding in any third person shooter out there. Whilst imo there are too few combat encounters and set pieces in the game, what there is, is generally really well done.
To go into some of the things I think makes the combat so rewading.
1). Greater emphasis or reward factor to precision shooting and less bullet spongeyness, dependant on player skill and aiming competency. In UC4 essentially every weapon in the game can take out the vast majority of enemies with a single well timed bullet to the head (this is also true of previous Uncharted games), no matter what weapon it is. This headshot multiplier gives the combat an added skill ceiling, and greatly rewards players who are more precise and methodical with their aim and recoil management, and to reiterate, not just with certain specific weapons, but every weapon in the game.
2). Hit detection, hit reactions and fluidity of animations are class leading in UC4. Whilst it might not have the visual element of extreme gore, blood splatter etc, it compensates by having insanely good hit reactions and animations, that give a super accomplished sense of feedback and response to the combat, making every bullet, grenade etc super impactful.
3). Fluidity and precision of controls in the game are also top notch. Everything just feels super polished and good to play. The contextual animations, melee, cover system, obstacle detection and movesets, responsiveness to shooting, climbing, jumping and all the rest. There's a fluidity to combat and gunplay that makes everything feel better.
4). The weapons in the game pack a punch and sound both realistic and fantastic, especially with a good pair of headphones. This is one aspect the game really improved on from previous titles.
The following points are less specifically about gunplay and more about the combat in general.
5). The mobility, dynamism, fluidity of combat and freedom of approach options in the game are simply put, top tier. The different mechanics, systems, tools etc in place allow for players to seamlessly and effortlessly switch between gunplay, stealth, melee etc, and constantly dynamically traverse environments mid-combat, in a quick and responsive way.
You're never going to get this sort of mobility, verticality and dynamism from most if any other third person shooter.
6). UC4's arena / level and encounter design is some of the best in the business. Several of the combat encounters or arenas in the game are orders of magnitude more layered, dense, open-ended and broad, with considerably more approach options and verticality than most third-person shooters.
Not only are there a huge number of different levels of height, but the way they are interconnected is genius, plus you have the lasso rope swinging, swimming, ledge shimmying, climbing, jumping, grass and all sorts mixing up how you can traverse or manage the space.
Anyway, thought I'd offer a more comprehensive answer, so there you go.
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Sometimes I wanna perch on the edge of my seat,controller gripped hard in my hand and struggle/battle my way through a game(Bloodborne,Dark Souls etc).
Sometimes I wanna sit back,relax and go on an outrageous,over the top adventure through beautiful landscapes......Uncharted 4 etc.........I had a huge grin on my face the whole time,great game!
Sometimes I wanna sit back,relax and go on an outrageous,over the top adventure through beautiful landscapes......Uncharted 4 etc.........I had a huge grin on my face the whole time,great game!
I don't think it's lazy. I certainly didn't ask myself how Elena found him considering how resourceful she's always been.
And why's that? The flashback is effective because you play it, you don't expect the twist because of it.
I think it's great, more games should play around with the narrative using gameplay.
It's pretty much the Unreliable narrator trope(?) put into gameplay.
OP
OP
nib95, I read your entire post, and thank you for that. There's a lot of truth to what you're saying: when things get dynamic and fluid, Uncharted 4 flows super well. The core issue is that the encounter prevalence is so low, the engagements are so few and far-between, that it feels like they're all over in the blink of an eye. The headshots being an instant kill actually contributes to that a bit: if you aim well, you'll clear the entire arena of enemies within a minute or two, and then it's onto the next 30 minutes of walking and climbing.
Again, though, a lot of what you've said on the game is fair and accurate.
Again, though, a lot of what you've said on the game is fair and accurate.
I wasn't into the original Amy Hennig pitch of Sam being some sinister grudgeful brother and the main villain either but honestly, I feel the main reason why Sam is so flavorless is because of the lack of Hennig and how whenever there isn't a preset personality to write from Neil and Scherr failed to imbue the characters with the energy and personality of Amy's writing style. I would've prefered to have the game be divisive but still be Amy's swan song for the series than what ended up happening. As it is I like Uncharted 3 a lot more than this game and that's a game I even objected to at the time for its inconsistencies and inferiority to Uncharted 2. Uncharted 4 was very polished but god was it a flat experience too.
I personally loved Uncharted 4. It was fun. I enjoyed the flashback sequences mixed in with the gunplay. The pirate element was cool and made for some cool sets.
I usually give good games a 2nd play through and great games multiple playthroughs.
Uncharted 4 was the first Uncharted game that I gave it only one play through and then shelved it.
Maybe i grew out of the series but I am done and done
Uncharted 4 was the first Uncharted game that I gave it only one play through and then shelved it.
Maybe i grew out of the series but I am done and done
Did you play Lost Legacy? Significantly better and easier to replay.
I just beat it for the first time like a week ago.
I thought it was less memorable than 2 or 3, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. At the end it was like "yep, that was an Uncharted game."
I thought it was less memorable than 2 or 3, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. At the end it was like "yep, that was an Uncharted game."
OP
OP
Cool avatar btw. I almost played Night in the Woods instead of Uncharted 4 as my next game. I'll get to it either this month, or the next.
Kind of an ironic read for me seeing as DAI and UC4 handily remain my 2014 and 2016 GOTYs, but I won't deny there's been come-around movements on them both.
Awful game. People seem to think good writing, amazing graphics and a predicable yet serviceable story makes it great.
When you Control Nate the game is incredible boring. The climbing isn't fun it's legit repetitive and boring. How many ledges particle collapse only for nate to last grasp cling on lmao.
80% climbing and barely any gunfights that take advantage of the amazing controls and gunplay.
When you Control Nate the game is incredible boring. The climbing isn't fun it's legit repetitive and boring. How many ledges particle collapse only for nate to last grasp cling on lmao.
80% climbing and barely any gunfights that take advantage of the amazing controls and gunplay.
