You can essentially lob grenades or dynamite from a bush all day, take down a guy when his friend is a foot away and looking at him, have a mile high pile of bodies sitting around, and never get noticed. The AI can be a little silly sometimes though.
Another new addition to the gameplay is the ability to stealth entire enemy encounters, no longer having every enemy on the map instantly notice you with x-ray vision. This really shines through in the multiplayer too, and you’ll likely grin like an idiot whenever you manage to snag a kill while swinging around like a middle-aged Spider Man. The grappling hook adds a lot of fun and depth to both the platforming and combat, allowing you to do crazy stuff like blowing up an entire combat squadron by swinging by them from a nearby branch and skillfully aiming at a nearby propane tank. Crash Bandicoot.Īfter these segments though, you get the grappling hook, and your first taste of actual combat gameplay, and honestly, it’s a blast. Not much happens at all, and while they’re meant to help the player identify with Nathan’s now-boring normal life (which, from a story standpoint is interesting), the most exciting and engaging part of these chapters is when you play the first level of Crash Bandicoot, which, is admittedly a pretty neat callback to Naughty Dog’s history. In this vein, it’s also important to bring up that the first three or so chapters of the game are markedly boring to replay if you plan on repeating the game on a higher difficulty after beating it once.
The previous games in the series had many, many segments where Nathan was on his own, requiring Naughty Dog to fill those sections with engaging gameplay and setpieces to keep the player interested (These segments are still arguably the best ones in the fourth one), whereas A Thief’s End relies far too heavily on dialogue and not much else in certain segments, especially the graveyard in Scotland.
does help make these sections a little more bearable, but as you progress in the game, they genuine do start to grate on you a little. The often witty chit-chat between Nathan and co. Uncharted 4 has an awful habit of filling long sections with absolutely nothing to do besides just moving forward with little adversity while banter ensues. The dialogue and constant banter between Nathan and whoever he’s dragged into the current chapter with him is usually entertaining and great, and provides some great background noise whether you’re in the middle of a firefight, or carrying a bucket through a pirate cave, but unfortunately, it can become a little tedious. Uncharted 4, in this regard, tries to do much of the same, except far more often, to… mixed results.
The shooting mechanics and multiplayer are usually rock solid, and a lot of the dialogue is given between characters while they walk around, solve puzzles, and explore, making the game feel far more organic than a cutscene-filled exposition dump.
After posting my article about cinematic gaming, I find it kind of funny to be reviewing Uncharted 4, but out of all the games that claimed to be cinematic, I never understood the complaints about Uncharted.