Uncharted 4 is free on PS+ starting sometime today. I've been playing through the earlier games and they are fun in small doses.
I changed my mind lol. These games suck.
LOL! Can't help but wonder what changed your mind? Accidentally take a large dose?
Maybe! I was really enjoying Uncharted 3 up until about halfway through. The games just aren稚 for me. They seem to drag on and on. I知 finding the story and combat tedious and frustrating (are those the same thing?). Beautiful games, great animation and voice acting, but they should be 4 hours long, tops.
OK so I know I must sound like the biggest hypocrite, but I played the first 4 or 5 chapters of Uncharted 4 late last night and I absolutely adore it so far.
Relative to the other games in the series, all the pieces of this one seem to fit together in a much more harmonious way. It's strange, but I really really love how the UI (e.g., prompts and hints) has been redesigned to be subtle and subdued, which really matches the pace and tone of the narrative. I love that I've only had to use guns maybe twice in 3 or 4 hours. And when I do, enemies actually react when they get shot and 2 or 3 bullets actually kill them (I am playing on the easiest mode with all the assists turned on--sue me). I was frequently frustrated by the way enemies soaked up bullets in the other games without ever breaking stride.
I love that (so far) the gameplay sheds many of the Uncharted cliches (break into a hidden temple, solve an elaborate non-sensical puzzle that no one could have ever created, find a thing, realize the bad guys had been following me the whole time, hand over the thing at gun point (despite having been shot 100 times already), rinse and repeat ad nauseam). This game actually seems to playfully poke fun at some of the cliches. For example, I got really tired of the thing where, when climbing, a piece of the geometry would break and Drake would almost fall but always recover. I guess it was neat at first, but it became super annoying because there was no actual consequence besides making my climb take longer. But last night, a piece of the wall I was climbing broke and I did fall (it was part of the narrative as a cutscene was triggered). I was like...fucking finally!
And I like that I haven't visited any temples or mystical ruins yet. Save that shit for the finale so that 1) it actually has weight and 2) doesn't detract from and clash with the otherwise very grounded world that's been built. And I've been so impressed by the visuals and environments and characters. My only complaints so far are that the brawling is a little too video game-y (I shouldn't have to wail on a dude a half dozen times for him to go down and shouldn't be clearing a room of 10+ dudes) and I guess that the scuba diving was kinda unrealistic. I'm worried things are going to change on a dime and the game is going to revert to "video games must have non-stop action and shooting and elaborate puzzles" but so far I am loving how restrained and carefully crafted this game is.
I actually looked up the directors of all the games and it seems like some of the key people on Uncharted 1 - 3 were not on 4, which probably helps to explain the changes. The main guy on 4 seems to have left the company unfortunately, but I'm excited to try his other recent game The Last of Us, which I've had download for like 2 years but never booted up.