So, I just finished my first playthrough of Uncharted 4, and man, it absolutely blew me away. The writing, sound, level design, visuals, and story were all the best of the series, IMO. The UI design was also a massive improvement. Definitely a lot of these were taken from The Last of Us and I'm not complaining about that at all. Beautiful send off to a genre-defining, platform-defining series. (Though based on the epilogue, even if this is the end of Nate's story, I suspect we may see more Uncharted games in the future.)
Has anyone else been playing this game? Thoughts, comments, etc.?
One thing I really like about it is the extra content -- the alternate character skins, visual overlays, and game modifiers are really cool, and even more so the Photo Mode. It baffles me why more console games don't include something like this. Here's an album of some of my favorite shots, mostly spoiler free other than a few mid/late game set pieces:
UC4 Photo Mode Album - Possible Minor Spoilers
Anyone else have shots to share, stories, theories, etc.?
As someone who reviewed Uncharted 4 (amateur), I loved the experience of playing it—the climbing, the graphics and everything—but I was really underwhelmed by the story. It's so clearly The Last of Us in its tone and structure, but its cast can't support the same level of character drama. The Last of Us had Joel, the grouchy, grieving old man, and Ellie, the sarcastic, 'with it' heart of the story: There was a contrast there.
With Uncharted 4 we get Nate, the SNES era mascot platformer archetype with a whole lotta quips, and (mostly) Sam, who, while he's not exactly Joel, is basically just Joel (voice actor and all). I really couldn't get behind this character dynamic, which lasted through the majority of the game. I just really don't think the tone works. Uncharted's snarky ravine-jumping guns-blazing pulp romp was not the place to examine mortality, mid life, and marriage.
But it's still a must-play game for everything else. The story is enjoyable if not notable.