kind of a mess? the first few chapters were quite promising yet it dies off with a second act that behaves more as a franchise retread than anything. and the last third is the most frustrating - it has all the brightest ideas yet production was clearly rushed, leading to an abundance of clunky set pieces marred with some truly awful combat.
speaking of combat, the levels are constructed very poorly. as per usual with this trilogy, the core gameplay loop involves these massive settings with row after row of enemies to fight that just drag on for far too long - and even with smoother shooting controls it just doesn't quite work. the opponents are like cardboard, and the hand-to-hand combat emphasized in this installment doesn't really work. for example: it's very easy to get locked into fisticuffs when an enemy approaches you, and as such the dodge mechanics don't work in a wider setting, so you can easily get sniped. the brute enemies are really annoying as well, as was the final boss - really just a glorified qte. and for a cover-based shooter, the actual cover mechanics were awfully unreliable. little things like that or the poorly developed stealth controls make the gameplay loop rather irritating.
as far as these grand set pieces go, the absurd maximalism makes this less of an adventure movie homage than a pastiche of modern hollywood. and it's a lot of fun at times! but the ideas never synthesize well with each other - the poorly constructed story has us moving from place to place, shooting gallery to puzzle to shooting gallery to big set piece with some utterly awful chase scenes and zero cohesion. it just doesn't work. a game of this length has no reason to be so repetitive. there's a lot of dedication to the game's influences here, yet the passion and tension is lost in indulgence after a while. i can only watch so many structures collapse in one game, everyone.
the story is disappointing too, finally offering some sort of commentary on drake and his impact on those around him only to abandon that development in favour of a happy ending. very little changes for these characters, it's almost a total retread of uncharted 2 without the ingenuity that makes uncharted 2 decent. there are some cool narrative strokes though - one of the principal villains deciding that the best way to combat drake is to have him trip on some unexplained hallucinogenic is hilarious. i just did not care for a single thing that was occurring otherwise.
with all that being said, there were some things here i quite liked. the trek through the desert is quite good, as is the preceding plane sequence (although thats the one thing in the game that shouldve been longer!). there are other good environments that simply aren't developed in an interesting way, with most introduced mechanics not being enough to stop each shootout from feeling exactly like the last. i do harbour a weird nostalgia for these games as they were the first i bought for my playstation, but i'm glad to get this one out of my backlog lol. here's hoping for uncharted 4 to be an improvement when i inevitably forget my frustrations with this franchise 🙏
speaking of combat, the levels are constructed very poorly. as per usual with this trilogy, the core gameplay loop involves these massive settings with row after row of enemies to fight that just drag on for far too long - and even with smoother shooting controls it just doesn't quite work. the opponents are like cardboard, and the hand-to-hand combat emphasized in this installment doesn't really work. for example: it's very easy to get locked into fisticuffs when an enemy approaches you, and as such the dodge mechanics don't work in a wider setting, so you can easily get sniped. the brute enemies are really annoying as well, as was the final boss - really just a glorified qte. and for a cover-based shooter, the actual cover mechanics were awfully unreliable. little things like that or the poorly developed stealth controls make the gameplay loop rather irritating.
as far as these grand set pieces go, the absurd maximalism makes this less of an adventure movie homage than a pastiche of modern hollywood. and it's a lot of fun at times! but the ideas never synthesize well with each other - the poorly constructed story has us moving from place to place, shooting gallery to puzzle to shooting gallery to big set piece with some utterly awful chase scenes and zero cohesion. it just doesn't work. a game of this length has no reason to be so repetitive. there's a lot of dedication to the game's influences here, yet the passion and tension is lost in indulgence after a while. i can only watch so many structures collapse in one game, everyone.
the story is disappointing too, finally offering some sort of commentary on drake and his impact on those around him only to abandon that development in favour of a happy ending. very little changes for these characters, it's almost a total retread of uncharted 2 without the ingenuity that makes uncharted 2 decent. there are some cool narrative strokes though - one of the principal villains deciding that the best way to combat drake is to have him trip on some unexplained hallucinogenic is hilarious. i just did not care for a single thing that was occurring otherwise.
with all that being said, there were some things here i quite liked. the trek through the desert is quite good, as is the preceding plane sequence (although thats the one thing in the game that shouldve been longer!). there are other good environments that simply aren't developed in an interesting way, with most introduced mechanics not being enough to stop each shootout from feeling exactly like the last. i do harbour a weird nostalgia for these games as they were the first i bought for my playstation, but i'm glad to get this one out of my backlog lol. here's hoping for uncharted 4 to be an improvement when i inevitably forget my frustrations with this franchise 🙏
2 Comments
Glad to hear it, the odd bit of gameplay footage I've seen has me really hyped for it
rundeer
1 month ago