Game Reviews Volume 2

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)

The thing about family is we feel we often feel like we owe them oureverything, especially to our closest loved ones. Our partners, ourchildren, our siblings if we are particularly close with them. We maypromise something to one family member and then be unable to live upto that promise because another family member needs our help. We cannever run from our past, nor truly rid ourselves of our blood. Itseems that even people as mysterious as Nathan Drake cannot outrunhis past, especially when his brother who has supposedly been deadfor 15 years comes back to find him for one last adventure.

As we know by now, Naughty Dog are masters of their craft and havecreated some of the highest praised and most influential works in thegaming industry, as well as having been instrumental in establishingthe Playstation as a brand back in the 90's with Crash Bandicoot.Uncharted 4 brings it's third Playstation series to a close, a closewe thought we had already had in 2011 with Uncharted 3, but as Imentioned just above, some things just can't stay buried.

Three years have passed since Nate found and ultimately buried thefabled Atlantis of the Sands in the Rub 'al Khali desert. He hassettled down, working for a salvage company and has remarried ElenaFisher. Being pestered by his boss to take a job in Malaysia lookingfor artefacts, Nathan refuses stating that he has retired from thatline of work.

However when a ghost from the past, Samuel Drake, rocks up lookingfor his younger brother Nathan. The two end up getting swept up on anadventure looking for the lost treasure of legendary pirate HenryAvery in the hope of sparing Sam's life from a drug lord who helpedbust him out of the prison Sam supposedly died in 15 years earlier.

Nate is reluctant, more mature, but cannot lose his brother again andso begins another adventure for Nathan Drake, whilst he hopes to keepit a secret from Elena who is led to believe that he is on a businesstrip.

Uncharted 4 has a very different tone in comparison to the previous 3Uncharted games. It's much slower paced, more mature and characterdriven than the previous entries. It also has a smaller cast than theprevious two games, with no appearances from Chloe and Cutter andSully being relegated to a background character for most of the game.For the majority of the story it's just Nate and Sam, the brothersDrake, out looking for the treasure that their mother had beenwriting about before her untimely death.

The backstory of the brothers is also explored in depth in the game,addressing many threads left loose by Katherine Marlowe in Uncharted3 such as the mothers suicide, Nate's time in an orphanage and mostimportantly that their last name isn't really Drake.

This factors add a huge amount of depth to a character we have cometo love over the past decade, as well as bringing us significantlycloser to Sam in such a short timescale.

The 'villains', if they can be called that, this time round are RafeAdler and Nadine Ross. Rafe is an old accomplice of the Drakebrothers and was around at the time that Sam was thought to havedied. Nadine is the owner of a private military company calledShoreline, which Rafe has hired to help him find the treasure ofHenry Avery. The reason why I am reluctant to call them villains isbecause although they are the antagonists, they don't have outrightvillainous intentions. Rather Rafe just wants to get one up on Nathanafter hearing about his previous adventures.

It provides a much more mature storyline that's less about glorifyingthe action and Michael Bay style set pieces and more about thecharacters, their motivations and how they interact with each other.It does appear that in many ways, Uncharted 4 has taken a leaf out ofThe Last of Us, which let's face it, is no bad thing.

That being said, Uncharted 4 is still every bit an Uncharted game inits gameplay. Fans of the previous three games will feel right athome with it's blend of platforming, puzzle solving and third personshooting. Stealth is also now a viable option in most encounters,without it being restricted to set sequences like in the previousgames. That doesn't necessarily mean it's easier to stealth your waythrough a section of the game though, the A.I in Uncharted 4 isextremely clever. In most encounters I was regularly flushed out ofcover by coordinated attacks or flanking manoeuvres made by thecomputer. It can predict your movements before you make them andrequires you to think on your feet rather than plan a particularattack strategy.