twiststreet:

Uncharted 4: videogames are pretty dumb, and I feel like a stonecold dumb-dumb playing them, but I just really love these Naughty Dog games.  This one, the story’s not as good as the Last of Us, by any means– it’s really kind of exactly the same story as Uncharted 2 and 3– bro realizes that his lady means more than some treasure; but just done better than they’d done those, at least to me, in dozens of small ways.  Like, there’s nothing as fun as some of the big set pieces in Uncharted 2 or 3, either, but the end of those games are all crazy stupid and get too big, whereas this felt like it picked a tone and actually stuck to it.  It’s never as “creative” on a “what the hell is this even trying to be” level like a Hideo Kojima thing, and I can think of folks who’d be bored by that, by the middlebrow of it all, the hokiness of the long-lost-family-member plot, but I just found the comparative smallness of it were kind of surprising and, I don’t know, pleasant.  It’s the most pleasant of the Uncharted games.  (Plus: Tom Bissell’s names in the credits as a writer– I always liked his work at Grantland.) (Nice Faith Erin Hicks shout-out in the game, too).  

Or I just really liked how astonishingly boring some parts of the game were– there are at least THREE levels (if not more– depends how you count them) where you just wander around a house???  I love that kind of shit, but I always figure I’m unusual that those are my favorite parts instead of, like, boss fights. I found those all kind of fascinating (especially the last one)– everything in a game has to be built for it to exist, so the fact someone built, like, 20 different kinds of dirty laundry for a house, I always just like seeing that kind of stuff.  I didn’t really like Gone Home, not much at all, but I find it interesting how much the Naughty Dog folks have tried to bring the spirit of that game into the AAA space…

The actual game part is kind of whatever– it’s an Uncharted game so there’s a lot of dying in unfair ways, and getting lost trying to figure out where to go, and wildly frustrating bits. I especially could’ve done without the bits where you drive a car. Or more of this one than the others felt like it was just about jumping around on ledges– there are a ton of ledges in this one.  But I just liked that … The hype on this game was they were ending the franchise, or their relationship with it anyways, and I like that it “ended” it in a way that was more sentimental and fond.  With Naughty Dog, I just like the choices they make more than anyone else who makes games, just with them as writers.  Or I like that they’ve built this tradition for themselves of building up beloved properties, valuable IP’s presumably, and then just walking away from them after they’ve said their fill.  Like, it’s neat that ecological niche they’ve built for themselves, of being the AAA game studio that really cares about character, and exploring character.  The way games are built, sold, marketed, etc., it’s kind of stunning that there’s any studio with that as their primary selling point, at all…