Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

I went into Uncharted: The Lost Legacy expecting a brief, action-packed campaign. I walked away from it surprised that I had played yet another nearly full length Uncharted title. I don't know how Naughty Dog was able to churn out an adventure of this quality a year after Uncharted 4 was released, but I must confess that I'm impressed. Chloe Frazer's Indian expedition is a beautiful experience—something that only for this series could be considered "par for the course"—and returns the carefree attitude absent from A Thief's End. The villain is nasty, the player character is quippy, and there's a bunch of explosions and crumbling ruins and trains—Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is Uncharted to its very core. Which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you feel.

The bad thing about it, is that the game doesn't bring a lot of new ideas to the table. Sure, you've got the unlikely duo of Chloe (Nate's fiery ex) and Nadine (Uncharted 4's no-nonsense antagonist), but Chloe fills Nate's role very easily and Nadine is... well, Nadine's seriousness is actually fairly entertaining. But the friction between the two can feel a bit forced at times, especially when the biggest point of contention revolves around a decision that occurred offscreen. The banter and acting are enjoyable, but if you've played any of the other games in the series, there's nothing really remarkable about the heroines' interactions, even if the story wants you to get hyped for girl power.

The Lost Legacy is still great though. The Uncharted formula isn't something that invigorates me nearly as much as, say Dark Souls, but I can recognize that what's here is close to the cream of the crop. There's a really cool section of the game that's a miniature open world segment, letting you tackle its three "towers" in any order you wish. There's both optional side battles and observation puzzles, which gives you more of a reason to pay attention to your surroundings. It almost feels like a prototype for a new Uncharted game, but it's refined enough that you won't notice that while playing. And while you can spot some load times masked by muddy hills that are hard to climb, it speaks to Naughty Dog's professionalism that the entire zone is seamless and smooth (or at least was for my playthrough).

Before sitting down to write this entry, I wasn't sure about whether or not I preferred The Lost Legacy to Uncharted 4, but one big factor definitely tipped it over the edge for me: the combat. Nate's final adventure had him fighting in some unique but mazelike locales, whereas The Lost Legacy returns to predictable, flat settings. While buildings may have multiple stories to scope out and the open world section lets you tackle its encounters from any direction, the layouts are accessible and the enemies never exceeded double digits (not in the sandbox scuffles, at least). The biggest sign that I was gelling with the combat was being able to complete an encounter without getting spotted, which would've been an impossible task for me back in Uncharted 4. I may have adjusted to the new gunplay, or slowed my pace because I hadn't played the game before, but either way the fighting definitely clicked with me.

I have to admit that I did receive a smidgen of aid via the generous checkpoint system. And by generous, I mean really generous, as occasionally it would checkpoint me after I had died, whether from a mistimed jump or enemy reinforcements gunning me down. Being able to start ahead of my death saved me a bit of frustration, but it's a shame I wasn't given another chance to prove myself. The only other oddity The Last Legacy has is that the game has two final acts. You'll reach a point where it feels like the story is ready to wrap up... but then it keeps going... and ends on what I can only call a "retread." I guess the final act rug pull is a small subversion of the previous titles, but all it really does is take two very Uncharted-y events and swap their places.

Uncharted: The Last Legacy grants a much needed break from Nathan Drake & co. in favor of tracking a lost treasure through India with two fun gals. If you look under the hood, it's unfortunately not that different from the games that came prior, even with the bold new leads. But if you like carefree adventures, stunning visuals, and colossal architecture, The Last Legacy easily stands toe-to-toe with A Thief's End. Throw in a big fun free-form exploration segment, and you arguably have yourself the best Uncharted experience the PS4 has to offer—as long as you don't mind it being on the shorter side.
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Title image obtained from: geekireland.com

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - Thoughts

Uncharted has never been a particularly complex or inventive franchise—but it sure as heck has been pretty. Jumping from the PS3 to the PS4, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End flexes Naughty Dog's "new tech" prowess like a professional body builder at a local gym. I thought I would get tired of announcing "wow this is a gorgeous vista!" four entries into the series, but Nathan Drake's final adventure kept me coming back for one more round. While the flabbergast-inducing eye candy is the premier feature of A Thief's End, the game also—surprisingly—diverts its attention away from non-stop gunfights towards more moments that reflect on Nathan Drake's achievements, mistakes, and regrets.

Which sounds cool... except that the narrative fails to capitalize on it.

I felt so disappointed by Uncharted 4's story on the first go-around that I dedicated a whole entry to it. Long story short: I felt A Thief's End was narratively dissonant, building itself (cleverly) towards one ending before closing out on its exact inverse. For this second playthrough, knowing what to expect helped me to focus on smaller bits that I had missed while on my search for the bigger picture. Uncharted 4 has a lot more slower, minor moments where the characters aren't bringing their quippy A-game to the table. That's not to say that they've stopped obsessing with being funny—just that there are a lot more breaths between ideas, as if they're actually thinking through what they're going to say in their head.

Thematically I still think the game is bunk, but I appreciate its narrative more than I used to, especially because A Thief's End could've played it safe like Drake's Deception did. There's a maturity to the series that hasn't been expressed before, something that likely couldn't have been expressed until Naughty Dog went and made The Last of Us. Nathan Drake is older, more conscious of his reckless adventuring lifestyle, and there's a bit more poison to his lies. Not enough, mind you, to turn the series into a fascinating critique on its plucky, mercenary-murdering attitude, but you'll still watch the story unfold with awe, captivated by its firm cinematography and believable acting. It's an engaging tale—but it's also one that lacks any sort of punch.

This ties directly into the blog entry I've already written, but slowing the story down to put Nate's mundane life on display doesn't really amount to anything. Don't get me wrong—it's really cool to see and I appreciate it—but there's no trenchant discoveries unearthed here. The plot twists and shocking reveals serve only as naked tools for drama (like Sully's """betrayal""" in the first game), unable or unwilling to dive any deeper than that. And I get that Uncharted is a lot less serious than The Last of Us, so diving into trauma may be a step too far, but then... why take adventuring so seriously? Why strip away bits of whimsy that the series previously exhibited, just to put more of an emphasis on realism and consequences? The old games may have tried to be too funny at times, but A Thief's End drives itself in the opposite direction, becoming so sober and understated that sometimes you come off of conversations simply feeling nothing.

I'm definitely being a bit too hard on Uncharted 4, but it's largely because I wanted big things from it in a post-The Last of Us world. The only aspect that I wasn't let down by were the visuals: water is gorgeous, character models are immaculately designed, Madagascar is downright breathtaking, the creeping foliage in the latter half of the game is dazzling, etc. etc. It's a lot of fun to stumble around and hop across rocks while paying attention to Nate's animation sequences, and almost every chapter has a great piece of eye candy to look at, whether it's thin seaweed shifting in a trench or a massive clock tower clinking away. The puzzles are also pretty good too, sometimes demanding quite a bit from your spatial reasoning, though they're few and far between.

Combat on the other hand... is not my favorite. If I was to rank the action in the series, I'd probably say 2 > 4 > 3 > 1, but there's a wide gulf between 2 and 4, and a grenade-shaped asterisk between 4 and 3. Besides me not liking the weapons as much and cursing the damage-based recoil, A Thief's End also botches most of its sandbox fights. The open areas you're allowed to fight in are gorgeous, vertical, asymmetrical zones with a lot of nooks and crannies... which all make it hard to keep track of foes without getting detected. And when you inevitably get spotted, you'll run around and shoot manically for a couple of minutes, just to have a shotgun guy to hop down from some unseen ledge and fill your ass with lead. Uncharted 4's wild and nonlinear sandboxes made it impossible to think up a strategy after I had failed them a few times, something that the older games—even if they were more frustrating—would at least allow. Even if the combat in Uncharted 4 is secretly good and I'm stubbornly not understanding it, the gunplay being shelved for the sake of the story meant I hardly had a chance to warm up to what little was there.

Nathan Drake's swansong is a fitting one for the series. I may bemoan a lot of aspects about it here, but Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a remarkably polished game that delivers entertainment, at the very least. The problem, of course, is that while polish may obscure the blemishes, it can't hide them forever. A Thief's End doesn't feel vestigial like Uncharted 3 does, but its proud ambition doesn't lead anywhere—well, anywhere truly praiseworthy. It's a good game that'll leave you exhausted. It's a beautiful title that frequently loiters about. It's a fitting end for a franchise that always played it safe.
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Title image obtained from: ResetEra.com

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

In many ways, there's not much that separates Uncharted 2: Among Thieves from Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. The third entry in the series is very similar in style, tone, and pacing to its older sibling, and likewise blows Drake's Fortune out of the water in terms of quality. Perhaps the most noticeable difference is that while Among Thieves leans into cooler climates for its latter half, Drake's Deception steers toward an arid desert in its final act. But if you play the games back to back, climate isn't the only thing that separates these two—you'll inevitably notice that combat has gotten more... explosive.

Thematically, Drake's Deception remains very familiar and frankly unambitious. A lot of old story beats get plucked from the other games, including mythical lost cities, fake-out deaths, Nate reconnecting with Elena, and a dull villain guarded by a detestable henchman. It's all entertaining, mind you; the playful banter between the main cast (as well as the stellar mocap) is on point as always, carrying the player through the plot even if the road feels well-trodden. Likewise the set pieces and spectacle are what you'd expect: loads of deteriorating architecture, extended chase sequences peppered with gunfire, and a really elaborate (and cool) vehicle sequence that leaves Nate exhausted and alone.

But there's not really anything that sets Drake's Deception above Among Thieves. By sticking so close to the Uncharted formula, the game struggles to etch out its own identity, especially since the villain—and by extension the story—is so flat. Cutter is a delightful addition to the Uncharted crew, but he spends more time out of the game than in it. The only narrative curve balls thrown at the player are the dizzying drug trips and desert scene, the former always managing to overstay its welcome. But admittedly, the desert scene is probably one of the highlights of the game: it allows the game to take a break from Nate's intrepid lifestyle to torture him over his misfortune, all while keeping the player wondering what will happen next. It's a very un-Uncharted-y experience that I wish the game had tried to flirt with more, rather than playing it so "safe" for the most part (or perhaps "conventional" is a better word, since Nate is no stranger to "unsafe" environments.)

You know what's really unsafe though? Trying to remain behind cover in Drake's Deception. The game's new tool for removing entrenched players is grenade spam, which gets fairly ridiculous the deeper into the story one gets. The player can now retaliate by chucking grenades back to their owner, but it can be a risky move as missing the throw window will get you blown to smithereens. This motivates the player to be even more mobile than before, which just doesn't work when the game only throws scant pieces of cover at you. The really laborious instances are few and far between, but when they pop up it can feel like you're grappling with raw RNG instead of engaging in a complex combat system.

For the most part, I was lukewarm on most of the gameplay, as it really felt like I had been there, done that. The one exception was the ship graveyard: that particular set piece has held up exceptionally well, as it is the best part of the game. The whole concept is gnarly and novel, giving the player a handful of rusted sandbox environments to hunt their foes in. The player can dip beneath the waters to avoid detection, and the constantly undulating environment interferes with your scouting, presenting you with a unique challenge (can this enemy see me? Wait was that a guy over there?) It's just a shame that the entire section is a pointless, wild goose chase that has no bearing on the plot; it felt like a tech demo that Naughty Dog really wanted to showcase, but had no idea where to slot into the story.

The last bit I want to mention is that the puzzles are a lot better. They're still somewhat rudimentary, but they're considerably more elaborate than those in Among Thieves (the chateau crypt and metallic shadows being my favorites), and they thankfully don't rely as heavily on checking your notebook as before. If anything, playing Drake's Deception reminded me of how disappointing the puzzles were in 2; enigmatic mechanisms and secret rooms are nearly as important to the concept of exploration as climbing up the face of a crumbling temple is.

There are undoubtedly times when Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is the most impressive and unique entry in the series—but for the most part, it can't escape from being the grenade-obsessed little brother of a more successful title. Among Thieves is definitely a good game to emulate, but I can't emphasize enough how much the familiar story beats drag the game down. The better puzzles don't negate the more volatile combat, and the warmer settings aren't necessarily more intriguing or jaw-dropping than what the player's already seen in the snowy mountains. The phenomenal ship graveyard section encapsulates Drake's Deception well: is it fun and exciting? Sure! Does it feel necessary to the overall Uncharted experience? Uh, no, not really.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Thoughts

[contains spoilers]

I spent a lot of time grousing over Uncharted: Drake's Fortune's missteps. I thought the story was lacking, the game wasn't adventurous enough, and that the combat frequently became an uncompromising chore. I considered that perhaps my criticisms were too scathing, but after finishing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, I feel that my grievances were well placed; the second Uncharted outing is everything I wanted from the first. And it is a beeeaaauuuutiful game. Like, good lord.

Almost every aspect of the game has been improved, the most notable of which being the combat and locales. And honestly, those two are really all Uncharted needed; allowing the player to engage in exciting gunplay throughout diverse and gorgeous settings is what makes this game a joy from start to finish. For the most part, Among Thieves does everything in its power to make sure the player is having fun. It offers many short, exploratory breaths between its more action-packed sequences, and whenever one setting starts to drag, the weather will drastically change or the scenery will wipe from a jungle to a ruined Nepali city. Though Uncharted 2 cannot boast about its puzzles (positioning the hands of the statue was the only thing "aha!" worthy), the lack of head-scratchers is permissible because the adventure does its damnedest to stay compelling over the 10 hour journey.

This is because Uncharted 2 realized what it is Nathan Drake excels at. The game starts by thrusting you into a tense, unbelievable train-crash scenario and then slings you through space and time, weaving a tale of heroism tinged by revenge. The plot is... nothing I'd actually write home about—honestly most of the Uncharted narratives blur together into this "isn't adventuring fun?"-sorta haze—but what Among Thieves offers over Drake's Fortune is characters other than Elena to get invested in. Flynn is fun (for the most part—his servile attitude feels contradictory), Chloe is captivating, and Lazarevic proves it's better to be campy than forgettable. I mean seriously, who was the old man in the first game again?

Since the adventure is a decent chunk longer than its predecessor, moments where the player can chill out and absorb their surroundings are more plentiful. The "look for the right path to traverse" sections have a bit more meat to them, breaking up a lot of the monotonous combat that plagued Drake's Fortune. And even when there are long stints of drawn-out combat, you're often inserted into these fantastic open arenas that allow you to be fairly mobile, where you can conquer your enemies with whatever weapons you prefer. Sadly, as the game goes on it relies more on narrow hallway encounters, with the train chapters being among the worst offenders (it sure is a jaw-dropping set piece though).

I think now is a good time to acknowledge that I don't... really... care for Uncharted's combat. I think it's fine: it feels fluid, is rife with cool animations, and is rewarding when you bring your A-game. But when you're suffering death after death due to a hot start (or you're staring one too many times down the barrel of a heavily-armored soldier), the recurring thought that's likely to bubble up is "god damn these guys have a lot of health". And I get that enemy tankiness is a design by necessity—an Uncharted where foes fall in one shot is bound to be disappointingly short—but it doesn't change the fact that I don't look forward to combat due to how much of a grind it can be. When I started the series, I tried my best to go for strategic headshots, but by the end of Uncharted 3 I was just pumping magazine after magazine into the granite chests of my enemies. The gunplay plays well, but isn't immensely gratifying (for me).

I bring this up because a mainstay of Uncharted 2 is its combat. I enjoyed blasting fools and participating in scripted sequences, but wasn't something I actively looked forward to; my heart was captivated by puzzles and alluring locales and secret treasures tucked away—things that reasonably dwindle as the game got closer and closer to its rambunctious climax. Therefore it's kind of weird to look back on Uncharted 2, as I can acknowledge its greatness and technical prowess, but the final taste it leaves me with is a "I'm glad that's over". Not in a Hitman: Codename 47 way where I'm pleading to be released from torment, but in a more subdued, grateful way... like reaching the very cusp of concluding that the game is too long and repetitive for its own good.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is still an impressive title nearly a decade later. It knows first and foremost how to entertain, keeping your eyes and hands delighted throughout its colorful campaign. It's an astonishing improvement over the first in almost every way: mo-cap, scenery, combat, story—you name it. I may not be a big fan of the series, but I can appreciate the level of effort Naughty Dog has poured into building one of gaming's premier action platformers. It's hard not to stand in awe of Among Thieves.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - Thoughts

[contains spoilers]

"Greatness, from small beginnings" is the Latin phrased etched onto the ring that Nathan Drake keeps tied around his neck, and it's kind of amazing how fitting the adage is for the Uncharted series. Granted, Naughty Dog was far from being considered "small" in 2007, but Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is most definitely a humble outing compared to the ambitious heights its younger siblings would reach. It's also a... much worse game too. Yet there are glimmers of good ideas shining through the bedrock—it's just that you have to shoot like a bazillion guys to get to it.

Of the good ideas, two that Drake's Fortune possesses immediately spring to mind: technical verisimilitude and cinematic cutscenes. Both of these have been handily outdone by a sundry of contemporary titles, but I remember being fairly impressed with Drake's Fortune back in the day, particularly with the lush and dense greenery of Chapter 2. Likewise the dialogue, voice acting, and mocap has a very natural and cinematic feel to it. Sure, it's a bit jittery and exaggerated (no doubt due to Naughty Dog coming off fresh from the Jak series), but it doesn't take away from the simple fact that the game is nice to look at.

Unfortunately, "nice to look at" is where my plaudits end, as Drake's Fortune is hamstrung by how utterly restrictive the game is. Occasionally the game will attempt to mask it's linear nature, but the disguise is paper thin; most of the time you'll wander through corridor after corridor, shooting wave after wave of faceless baddies. There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of structure—Vanquish is my favorite TPS and that game is corridor city—but Uncharted is at its strongest when it's adventurous like Indiana Jones, not oppressively violent like Rambo.

And the sense of adventure in Drake's Fortune is... fairly tame. It boasts a total of two similar islands for the player to explore, alternating between verdant exteriors and drab interiors. There's actually a wide range of settings the player gets to explore (monastery, city, cavern, nazi facility), but the restrained color palette and similarities between areas gives the impression that the player really isn't journeying all that much. I always feel that it's a bit unfair to compare entries in a series to those that come later, but it's impossible not to come out of Drake's Fortune underwhelmed after experiencing the world-hopping travelogue of... well, any of game in the franchise.

The combat stinks to high hell too. Enemies robotically pour into an area and can perform impossible maneuvers, like firing at you as they simultaneously move from cover away from you. There were multiple instances where I thought I had the drop on a foe, just for them to spin around like a sentry turret and 1-shot me with a shotgun or pistol. The variability in enemy accuracy and damage was all over the place on Hard, especially in encounters where you start by taking damage before you can even get into cover (like the aggravating final Chapter). I rarely felt I had any agency in turning the tide of battle; I was often pinned to a single piece of cover, tasked with dispatching a foe quickly or consuming a hail of bullets. There was no advanced planning or skillful flanking involved—if I lived I lived, if I died I died, and there wasn't really much I could do to tilt fate other than firing faster. And since combat takes up most of the game, Drake's Fortune can drag on and on.

The last thing I want to mention is that although I appreciate how the player is dropped into the game without narration, there are a number of story beats that fall flat because you haven't had time to invest yourself into the characters. Namely, the way Drake's Fortune plays around with Sully as a potential turncoat is... strange, because we've only traveled with him for a handful of chapters—there's no sense of betrayal if we barely know the guy! Likewise, all three of the villains feel as though they've manifested themselves out of thin air, and any betrayal and bickering that emerges elicits less of a "holy cow!" and more of an "... alright." Really, the only thing that still held up story-wise was Elena: she's confident, sassy, and fun to hang out with. Oh, and the line delivery on some of the jokes is fantastic too.

Throughout my revisit of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, only one section tickled my fancy: the labyrinthine vault with its myriad of false pathways. While running around and looking for ledges to grab onto, it struck me how infrequently the game lets you soak in a locale without the fear of getting murdered. There's like, the opening bit with Sully and... that's it? Most of the time you're just running to and fro, doing some mild platforming as a bridge between exhausting, drawn-out combat scenarios. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is by no means a bad game, but the journey is a lot more rocky than it initially lets on.