Review of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

After years of playing the "Uncharted" video game series, I had a high expectation for its finale, "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End." This final edition to such an amazing game series, however, fell a great distance short of that expectation. Throughout my life, and my video game-playing career, "Uncharted" has consistently been among my favorite games to play. Unique characters, creative game play and compelling stories are a common trend within each edition, but "Uncharted 4" contains none of these traits. There are a few specific aspects that make the final edition by far the worst. Each of the first three games were made with identical combat systems, animation styles and other smaller things, such as menu layouts and fonts. With "Uncharted 4," for whatever ludicrous reason, they decided to change almost everything. Everything from aiming and shooting to even the characters themselves are drastically different. Elena Fisher, sidekick and wife of main character Nathan Drake, looks entirely different than she has in the previous games, and it's hard to see her as the same character as before. Additionally, this game was much easier to beat, which made it less entertaining to play. Previously, Drake has fought off terrifying monster like zombies and yetis, yet no such creatures take part this time around, making for a boring conclusion. For the first half of the game, it takes willpower to push yourself through the agonizingly slow chapters of the introduction, and even when you're a decent amount into the game, it doesn't get any better until the ending chapters. Despite the latter chapters providing better game play, the ending of the game seems to rush up on you, and you think, "That's it?" One huge flaw is how unrealistic almost every intense situation is. Being shot at while hanging from a cliff with one hand? No worries. Drake can use his grappling hook to latch onto a rickety pole one hundred feet away, in which he uses his supernatural upper body strength to fling himself past all of his problems. The chances of Drake surviving all that he does and finishing the game alive are unfathomably low, and it becomes comical every time he survives another blunder. The only thing that keeps this game from being a complete disgrace was its online multiplayer feature. Similar to developer Naughty Dog's last game "The Last of Us," the multiplayer kept me entertained and determined to get better. Having been a devout player of Naughty Dog's games for the majority of my life, I was significantly underwhelmed and disappointed with their latest work. I would recommend playing any other game developed by them, but this one falls short, and I can affirmatively say it was not worth buying.