What Experts Are Saying About UNCHARTED 4 A THIEF'S END - REVIEW!!

A remarkable achievement in blockbuster storytelling and graphical beauty, but let down by an overly long third act.

 In amongst its frantic combat, slick parkour, and outrageous action choreography, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End achieves something wonderful: maturity. This is less a breezy lad’s tale revelling in fortune and glory and more a story about the lads when they’re all grown up, bolstered by an equally developed graphics engine and career-high performances from its cast. What lets it down, however, is an uninspired and overly long third act which slows down its pace considerably with curiously repetitive gameplay. Uncharted 4 consequently falls short of the greatness achieved by some of developer Naughty Dog’s leaner, more inventive predecessors.




Its 15-hour experience kicks off with focus. Uncharted 4’s story is established in a compelling handful of chapters that weave their way through different time periods with tightly directed cinematic flair. While its setup is overly familiar - Nathan Drake and Elena are attempting to retire from action-heroism and live a normal life until Nate’s presumed-dead brother turns up with an offer he can’t refuse - a strong emotional throughline is born from the characters’ struggle to reconcile their adult responsibilities with the promise of excitement they secretly crave.

Uncharted 4 does a terrific job of exploring a more world-weary group of adventurers, with their concerns and musings layered throughout its quieter moments. These incidental conversations are a marvel. It’s here that we see characters bristle and soften, brought slowly to life with considered writing and a peerless voice cast. Performances from series veterans Nolan North (Nathan Drake), Emily Rose (Elena Fisher), and Richard McGonagle (Victor Sullivan) are as big-hearted as ever, while newcomers Troy Baker (Samuel Drake), Laura Bailey (Nadine Ross), and Warren Kole (Rafe Adler) are nicely understated in more enigmatic roles. Uncharted 4’s companion characters never break the spell in more frantic or tense sections, either.

If you choose to play stealthily, they’ll crouch down in the long grass beside you (and unlike Ellie in The Last of Us, they do an excellent job of staying out of enemy sightlines). If they’re in your way while climbing, they’ll let you clamber over them. They’re competent in gun fights, helpful in traversal, and typically witty throughout. They feel vital.



This level of polish and slickness permeates Uncharted 4. During traversal you can now reach for platforms, controlling Nate like a puppet with the DualShock thumbstick, which leads to fluid, unbroken climbing. A new 4x4 controls well over tricky terrain, and Uncharted 4’s camera worships Nate’s grappling hook, lovingly zooming out as he swings off of cliff faces to bring home a magnificent vista. Steep gravel paths (a personal favourite) send Nate slipping across cliff faces like they were waterslides.

 Naughty Dog has expanded its terrain in order to make the most of these new tools. While I would have enjoyed more to do in this larger land mass - there’s disappointingly little to reward exploration of its various nooks and crannies beyond the occasional sparkling bit of treasure and a great view - I appreciated that occasionally there was more than one pathway to reach my goal. For a series defined by linearity, even the suggestion of choice is refreshing.



The same can be said for the stages of more violent action. While you’re occasionally flung into the middle of a group of mercenaries with little to do but shoot your way out, other encounters take place on elaborate adventure playgrounds allowing for more stealthy play. I appreciated the option, even if this is fairly pedestrian and routine stealth gameplay in 2016: characters can be tagged for tracking, long grass is there for silent takedowns, and enemies linger on ledges begging to be grabbed by the ankle from below or kicked off from behind.

That’s not to say it’s done poorly – it’s as polished as everything else in Uncharted 4 – it simply doesn’t do anything surprising or interesting. More, considering AI switches to a cautionary state at any sign of trouble, I was disappointed I couldn’t move bodies.



If you’re noticed, Uncharted 4’s bad guys will spring into action and distinguish themselves in combat. Open level design allows them to pull relatively intelligent moves like flanking, and they’ll rarely forget you’re there if you try to hide (while hanging off a ledge, for example, they’ll stamp on your hands). Such credible behaviour means you have to keep moving in battle; crouching behind an indestructible pillar to regain your health is no longer feasible.

While shooting in Uncharted 4 is satisfying if unremarkable, enemies are now savvy enough - and thankfully less spongy - that there’s a genuine satisfaction born from each kill. It’s fun, frantic stuff. Somehow, the visuals keep up with it all. Unlike past Uncharted games where very strict linearity allowed for very carefully orchestrated beauty between stretches of more utilitarian sections built for action, Uncharted 4 manages to be all gorgeous, all the time.

The big vistas are predictably impressive, but it’s the little details that really astound: the way snow settles on Nate’s hair, the shocking green of an underwater plant, the reflection cast off of an oil painting. The regularity of such beauty borders on ridiculous: it may be 30 frames per second, but this is the prettiest game I’ve ever played.




With such strong systems at its disposal, then, it's disappointing that Naughty Dog doesn’t build more theatrical context around them. Regarding the series’ trademark outrageously choreographed action sequences, Uncharted 4 suffers from a curious lack of imagination. There are bright spots: there’s a brilliant car chase in Madagascar and a vertigo-inducing section involving clambering up a clock tower that really stand out.

But otherwise the thrills here tend to be of a more predictable nature: lots of handholds breaking at the last minute, buildings coming down, an occasional easily solved puzzle in an opulent interior. It’s 2016, and after three Uncharteds (and two contemporary Tomb Raiders) we’ve seen it all before. This becomes a big problem in Uncharted 4’s third act, where the pacing slows down to a crawl. This jungle section is repetitive, and Nate and friends do little in it but climb and shoot, rinse and repeat.

After a while, every encounter blurred into one, an amorphous amalgamation of shootouts, cliff faces, and pushing crates off of ledges for your companion to clamber up. As it’s the longest section in Uncharted 4, it eventually became a slog. Things pick up significantly by Uncharted 4’s end. The thoughtful exploration of these characters and their relationships with each other has a subtle payoff which bucks against the typical action coda, and it’s to Naughty Dog’s credit that it’s unafraid to stay true to its characters and their motivations, even if they aren’t as explosive as one might expect.



There’s not much to do in the main campaign once you’ve finished it, bar completing your treasure collection, but there’s extended life to be had in Uncharted 4’s competent 5v5 multiplayer modes. As of now I’ve only had a chance to play the far-from-revolutionary Team Deathmatch mode (there are three more: Plunder, Command, and Ranked Team Deathmatch) but its gameplay embodies the series’ most enjoyable qualities: camaraderie (your teammates can be revived when in a downed state), sheets of bullets, and a constant sense of momentum.

On the latter point, it helps that the stages for play have been opened up from previous games thanks to the grappling hook: zipping around to high vantagepoints to get the drop on enemies lends itself to a dizzying sense of verticality. Uncharted 4’s multiplayer also revels in more outrageous abilities than its predecessors, and it sings loudest when they converge at the same time. Temporarily harnessing supernatural abilities like teleportation is a lot of fun, as is watching your AI sidekick pin an enemy down as you cock your shotgun.

These sidekicks are very handy in battle, fulfilling basic tasks like sniping, brute-force shooting and healing, and make for hilariously frantic encounters as you try to get past them to reach your target. As it stands, they’re currently the most interesting addition to Uncharted 4’s online mode. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a remarkable achievement in blockbuster storytelling and graphical beauty. Though it’s let down by a lack of imagination and some self-indulgence, especially in a third act that drags on far too long, Uncharted 4 carries on the series’ proud tradition of peerless polish and style. Most importantly, it’s a gentle sendoff to the rag-tag group of characters we’ve known for nine years. A worthy thief’s end, indeed.




 This article was orginally shared on ign.com