Uncharted 4 is slickly ridiculous action gaming at its best

Nearly nine years ago, the first Uncharted game stood out as the ultimate fulfillment of a long-promised melding between interactive games and cinematic movie-making. Our own review drew instant comparisons to the Indiana Jones film series, marveling at how the game transitioned seamlessly from well-animated climb-and-gun action to expertly produced, pre-rendered cut scenes.

All these years later, Uncharted 4 adds a few welcome refinements to that formula. It also adds a welcome PlayStation 4-powered coat of gloss to the finish. Still, as Nathan Drake’s story comes to a conclusion, the series’ effortlessly cinematic storytelling ends up feeling a little thin and dated. The Uncharted series has been surpassed by some of the games it helped inspire at this point. And though Uncharted 4 is an action-packed tale that’s well told, it’s not necessarily one worth telling.

A family affair

Uncharted 4 begins with a very different view of the action-loving Nathan Drake we know and love. The former adventurer is now safely ensconced in a low-key diving salvage job, lifting wrecks off the seafloor in locations that feature a distinct and noticeable lack of people shooting at him. Outside of work, Nathan shares a calm and quiet suburban-style existence with his globetrotting wife Elena, playing video games to pass the time he used to spend starring in them. He’s happy enough, but it’s clear he’s not content as he looks over relics of his past that have been relegated to the attic.

To lift Nate out of this dull domesticated bliss comes a reveal that feels like it could have come right out of a daytime soap opera. Sam Drake—the long lost brother that Nathan thought died in a botched heist 15 years prior—suddenly shows up on our protagonist’s doorstep. Sam urges Nate to run away from his boring existence to hunt for the big treasure they’ve always dreamed of finding: the lost city of Libertalia. That hidden paradise is where the world’s most notorious pirate captains supposedly gathered their riches to live in liberty and promotion of the common good (and the avoidance of international navies). Oh, and did Sam mention he has three months to find the treasure before a notorious drug dealer demands his cut or has him killed?

To its credit, the game is somewhat self-aware about the operational ridiculousness of bloodthirsty pirates abandoning life on the high seas to form what amounts to a lavish hippie commune. There are offhanded discussions of the implausibility of the puzzle-filled wild goose chase Nathan and friends are embarking on. Uncharted 4 seems to wink at the intricate wood and metal machines that still work pretty well hundreds of years later.

Still, the game ties itself in knots trying to tell a story of intrigue and betrayal amid a group of pirates that we’ve never heard of and barely see in dusty drawings. The Drakes are obsessed with the pirate history they’re uncovering, but their enthusiasm about the source material utterly fails to be infectious for the player. I found myself struggling to not tune out as Nathan dove into yet another discussion of the newly discovered and internecine fighting between pirate Captain So-and-So and the competing pirate Captain Whatsisname.

Plodding plotting

The game takes some time to flesh out Sam and Nate’s back story through playable flashbacks, as well. There, a young Sam teaches his even younger brother the Catholic school-grade juvenile delinquency and ledge-climbing skills that will serve him so well later in life. Though it’s a bit interesting to see a version of Nathan Drake that’s still growing into the confident, cocksure adult we know and love, these flashbacks don’t really do much to forge an interesting familial bond between the pair.

In youth and adulthood, Sam and Nate share an easy, relaxed banter that doesn’t reflect any sort of long separation or the strain of a years-long imprisonment. They come across like two drinking buddies picking up a conversation where they left it off rather than estranged family members that should by all rights be working through an intense bout of friendly (or even bitter) sibling rivalry.

Even when a revealed secret throws a wedge between the two, they almost immediately shift back to casually risking their lives for each other as if nothing happened. The relationship is shallow and low on conflict or familial drama, and as such Sam’s surprising presence never really feels like anything but a flimsy excuse to push the action along.

The same goes for the game’s main antagonists. Rafe is a scenery-chewing trust fund baby that worked with Sam and Nate in the past, but he’s now ruthlessly competing to beat them to the Libertalia treasure. Nadine is the mercenary leader Rafe has hired to help him do just that, and she’s a steely and competent warrior who seems to derive a deep pleasure from simply doing her job well. The game makes vague gestures toward exploring the back stories that could make these two more than cartoon villains who send waves of cannon fodder mercenaries at our heroes, but in the end Nadine and Rafe just don’t come across as believable or convincing.

The only really interesting plot thread in the game is that between Nathan and Elena. Mrs. Drake quickly figures out that her husband isn’t just on an extended salvage mission to Malaysia like he said. That early lie, and the implications of Nathan’s struggle against the gentle noose of a “normal life,” get explored on-screen in the kind of probing and intimate discussions that the couple probably should have had before getting married in the first place. I won’t spoil if or how Elena and Nathan reconcile their problems, but anyone who has been in a serious relationship (or even thought about it) will probably see their own troubles reflected in the struggles of Elena and Nathan.

Nissan’s climb and drive event ends soon

Credit: Edited by Jennifer Hahn

Overall, the disparate plots never come together in a satisfying whole, nor do they even resolve themselves in a way that’s all that interesting. This isn’t a mortal sin since the plot serves mainly as a paper-thin excuse to link some well-produced, high-octane action set pieces in true Uncharted fashion. In fact, Uncharted 4 features some of the best such set pieces in the entire series, full of dramatic, sweeping camera work and inventive use of crumbling environments and high-speed vehicles. I have to say, though, the 15th time a rickety bridge or unstable handhold crumbles under Nathan’s feet or hands is a lot less exciting and unexpected than the first.

The clever, one-liner filled writing and some excellent performances also help keep the story from flying off the rails altogether. The dialogue is all natural and well-delivered, and plenty of effective character building gets done through small gestures and slight changes in inflection instead of through plodding exposition. Thus, I found myself caring about the characters themselves even as I found myself not caring about the generally predictable and uninteresting things happening around them.

Oh yeah, and there’s a game ensconced within the action movie Uncharted 4 secretly seems to wish it was. That game hasn’t changed much from the basic formula of past Uncharted titles. Nathan Drake is still a lovable Everyman adventurer blessed with fingertips of steel, able to hang on ledges for seemingly days at a time if necessary.

This time around, the endless climbing is aided by a few new additions that make the process a bit less of a linear trip between adjacent handholds. A handy rope lets you swing freely on set grapple points, searching for the right point to let go and leap to a nearby ledge. A trusty handheld piton also lets Nathan grab at arbitrary points on porous rock, crafting a somewhat looser path up certain cliffsides.

These changes open things up a bit, but moving forward is still generally a matter of finding the one right path hidden among the game’s wonderfully lush and beautifully ruinous scenery (the game will give you gentle hints through dialogue or pop up notifications if you can’t find it). Navigating your way from handhold to handhold and ledge to ledge is still a satisfyingly zen exercise in 3D pathfinding, giving players plenty of time to let the beautiful scenery wash over them. The smooth and varied animations on Nathan and the supporting cast are still a joy to just watch.

When Nathan’s not climbing, he’ll sometimes be driving around in his very own Jeep. There’s some slight sense of exploration in being able to roam the landscape more quickly and more freely in a vehicle. For the most part, though, driving is about finding the one correct path hidden among the lush scenery. Instead of finding the right handhold, now you’re just looking for that one narrow, car-sized path up the edge of a winding mountainside. Sometimes, you’ll get out to attach a winch to drag the car up an incline or pull down a worn-out pillar, but these are bouts of time-consuming busy work that feel out of place in a game that’s usually so well-paced.

Bang bang bang

Speaking of pacing, the climbing is interrupted by hordes of mercenaries with just the right frequency to avoid letting things getting too sedate. Stealth seems like a more viable option this time around, thanks in part to the ability to “mark” enemies when they step into view. This allows you to follow their movements with a handy white arrow even when they step behind an obstruction. These sentries always seem to wander just far enough away from their fellows for a patient player to make a silent and unseen takedown from a hiding place behind a barrier or from deep within some tall grass. Don’t expect Metal Gear Solid levels of emergent stealth action, though… the sneaking is pretty basic and repetitive after a while.

When the action turns to live fire (as it’s often forced to later in the game), the enemies generally do a good job of flushing Nathan out of cover by trying to flank his hiding spot or by throwing a well-placed grenade to prevent him from turtling in place. The game encourages you to use the scenery to your advantage in all three dimensions, climbing and dropping down to find new cover or attack vantage points as needed. Uncharted 4‘s mountainous ruins are perfectly designed for this, with plenty of hiding nooks and cliff-side rises to take advantage of. It’s extremely satisfying to climb above a marked enemy, find a nearby anchor to hook your rope, swing across a ledge, then jump down at precisely the right moment to take him out with a gravity-assisted fist.

These engaging and wide-open action scenes get frustratingly linear near the end of the game, though, when massive waves of heavily armored and well-equipped foes often start marching steadily toward you in a straight line, absorbing bullets and grenades at a clip. This is an unexpectedly jarring change that ends up making the last push toward the conclusion an unreasonable slog.

A Thief’s End

With the power of the PlayStation 4 behind it, Uncharted 4 feels like the action movie the team at Naughty Dog always wanted to build. Everything from facial expressions to roaring fires to crowd scenes to the light streaming in through holes in decaying wood benefits from the power of the updated hardware. Characters often go out of their way to point out the beautiful vistas, which provide some of the game’s most memorable moments in and of themselves.