Uncharted 4 came out almost a month ago. The game closes out the series following the adventures of the gun-toting, climbing pro treasure hunter Nathan Drake. Being that it’s the final entry in the series many things are different but I’ll get into that later and stop right here to let all readers know that mild to massive spoilers are going to be present from this point on so: SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!! The game starts off in the thick of it, on a boat during a storm and no clue what is happening or (for those who didn’t watch the trailers) who this strange man named Sam is yelling at us to keep going straight. Continuing the theme of confusion, after you’ve been tossed from your boat, we’re thrust into a prison fight, a search through the prison for Henry Avery’s treasure and ultimately a prison break, which happens to be 15 years in the past. After finding out that Sam is our brother during the prison break (and him subsequently getting shot and assumed dead as we’re on the precipice of freedom), we’re thrown back into the present where we find Drake doing (legal) work at a marine recovery company. He’s out of the treasure hunting game and living a normal life free of the dangers of treasure hunting… until his (not so dead) brother Sam comes back into Nathan’s life to ask him to help him find the Avery treasure so that Sam can pay off a mob boss in exchange for his life, to which Nate agrees but lies to his wife Elena about the job he’s doing.
Leaning away from the story as you should play this yourself as Uncharted 4 definitely ties up any loose ends the series has left in previous games such as Marlowe’s reveal that Nathan’s real last name isn’t Drake in Uncharted 3. The game also features a small glimpse into Naughty Dog’s past as there are two chances to play Crash Bandicoot. But let’s get into the real meat of the situation, besides having a great story and nostalgic minigames, I didn’t like the combat system as much as I did for 2 and 3’s fighting systems. There are no longer a parry option when fighting and the triangle button is now relegated to escaping enemy grabs. If you wish to dodge a punch you simply roll out of the way. The inability to throw back grenades didn’t help my gameplay experience and while I didn’t necessarily dislike the lack of supernatural creatures in this game I was hoping there could be one, but as Reddit user “a_stray_bullet” pointed out “The story was not about finding a treasure, it was about realizing what treasures you have already. Bringing in a supernatural theme would have drastically taken away from that.” What I did like that was in this game was the final boss fight. In typical pirate fashion players are forced to defeat the antagonist with their swashbuckling skills which is topped only by the boss fight in Uncharted 2 where we run around the Tree of Life being chased by Lazarevic. Uncharted 4 had some of the better puzzles in the series and the introduction of the grappling hook made traversal that much more fun.
Completing the campaign took me 12 hours and 40 minutes accounting for deaths and difficulty with puzzles, but the game has a decent replayabilty factor as beating the game once unlocks the “crushing” difficulty which at minimum is a minor gimmick but for a completionist it’s the perfect challenge, apart from finishing the game in under 6 hours.
Overall Uncharted 4 and the series as a whole has been a PlayStation staple since 2007 and while I’ll dearly miss it the Epilogue made everything I’ve worked towards during the series absolutely worth every hour I’ve invested into it because unlike the title implies, we don't witness Drake's death.
