NOTE: My thoughts on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, went way beyond what I could contain in just one post. So I am only covering Uncharted 1 – 3 in this post. Uncharted 4 will be in a follow-up.

To see my special drink pairing for these games, check out the Mojito. 

Growing up, I was always a Nintendo kid. Mainly because Nintendo consoles were always the most affordable when I was growing up, which became increasingly more important after the Christmas when my parents left a note on our brand-new N64 that read: “we will no longer buy any gaming-related gifts.”

Hence, I never got a Ps3. And I never got to play the Uncharted series, arguably one of the best action-adventure games to have ever come out. I have vague memories of 2007 and seeing my roommate at the time playing the opening Uncharted levels, and being in awe of the level of detail, but never got farther than that. Ten years later, I found myself in a bar with friends (who had recently gotten into Overwatch) and on the other side of deal I made with them: buy me tequila shots, and I’ll pick up a Ps4 the next day.

I saw the Uncharted collection, which I picked up along with Bloodborne, the Last of Us, and Horizon: Zero Dawn. So you can imagine why I didn’t get to the Uncharted collection until just this last summer. I probably would have let it sit on the shelf longer had I not discovered Nolan North and Troy Baker’s Uncharted Playthrough on their Retro Replay channel. Since I love this show and watch it every chance I get (and am even watching the Altered Beast episode as I write this), I knew that if I wanted to enjoy their playthrough, I needed to get caught up on the Uncharted series right quick.

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Naughty Dog has always had a development mantra of “one game at a time, one franchise per console.” This philosophy, while unconventional, seems to allow the studio to put a large amount of detail into each one of their games. My first introduction to Naughty Dog was Jak and Daxter, which I first thought was a clone of all the “plucky duos” and character action titles flooded the market in the late 90’s and early 00’s.

Once I finished the game, I realized that it offered a large amount of detail that competitors like Ratchet and Clank and Banjo-Kazooie had seemed to lack. Environments, characters, and gameplay was all engineered to the highest quality, and I was pretty fond of the quality of the writing. The quips were tight, the story compelling, and the characters were given a surprising amount of depth and humor.

This seems to be Naughty Dog’s thing: take an existing genre, and put the “Naughty Dog” spin on it. Crash Bandicoot I guess was nicknamed “Sonic’s Ass Game” early in development, which should tell you a lot about ND’s affinity for taking an existing genre and doing their own thing with it. This makes for a neat formula. Using elements and gameplay the audience is familiar with, the studio gets creative with the spaces between those elements, making for an experience not unlike blockbuster movies. Uncharted was no different.

The Gameplay

If rumors can be believed, it sounded as if Naughty Dog wanted to move away from the platforming character action games they had become known for and try to put their own spin on the action-adventure genre. They came up with a new method of platforming called “traversal” where the player character doesn’t just jump to platforms, but can also hang off platforms while scaling cliffs, lamps, walls, and other things found naturally in a realistic world. This had been tried a few times in other games, and the one that comes to mind the most was the Zelda and God of War series, both of which had climbing “sections.” But neither of these made the traversal mechanic the main focus of the gameplay, nor had they set it in a world that could pass for our own, with the player character using lamps, dilapidated buildings, and crumbling structures to allow for the traversal.

This mechanic is fresh and combines the simplistic joy of a platformer with a more strategy-based mindset. It also meant that the game fell prey to the Jak II effect. 

Let me back up a bit. I played the shit out of Jak & Daxter, but Jak II remains one of the only games I have ever, ever, rage quit. I remember being on some side quest that reminded me a lot of a GTA side quest, and trying to get across some platform in a lake, and after an hour and a half of trying to jump to this platform and almost never being able to except in some stroke of luck, and suddenly realizing I never wanted to play the game again. I call this the Jak II effect: when some bug or mechanic is not technically game-breaking, but severely detracts from the fun so much that it tanks the immersion.

I noticed this a lot throughout the Uncharted series. Uncharted 4 did a little better, but during my Uncharted collection playthrough, I remember falling to my death because the player character didn’t grab onto the ledge, getting spotted by enemies because I rolled into cover instead of taking cover, and once again falling to my death because the character jumped away from the ledge instead of jumping to the next ledge.

I have no idea about ND’s development process, but I can say that from a gaming perspective, it’s frustrating when I use the mechanic and am only successful 50% of the time. How many times during Jak II do you use the roll-jump and completely miss the mark? How many times in Uncharted did you jump to a platform, only to fall short most of the time and only getting to the other platform by sheer luck? How many times did you jump from one hanging ledge to another, only to go careening to your death? How many times did you try to take cover by pressing the O button, only to roll in that direction and completely blow your cover?

I read the development diary for Half-Life 2, and learned that they spent a long-ass-fucking-time doing tons of iterations of the crowbar mechanic before putting it into the game. And I have to say, every time you use the crowbar, it rarely fails. It rarely goes through the enemy character model or flies out of your hand. Same with almost every aspect of that game. Rarely does the gameplay fail or falter, which can be attributed to Valve’s focus on play-testing the absolute shit out of their games and perfecting the mechanics before the game gets into development.

Naughty Dog, on the other hand, seems to put more focus on immersion and storytelling than gameplay. Not to say these are bad things, or that the gameplay is bad, but it seems that when deadlines approach and crunch happens, there is simply no time left to fix broken mechanics.

The Story

In pursuit of a high sense of realism, Naughty Dog took their already top notch writing in the Jak series and applied it to Uncharted series, primarily through compelling characters, a less formulaic story, and fully motion-captured performances to make the whole world feel more immersive. They also aimed for a high sense realism, with compelling characters, a less formulaic story, and motion capture performances to make the gameplay feel more immersive.

The character of Nate Drake is a wonderful invention. He’s a little bit of Han Solo, Rick O’Connell, Alan Grant, with a touch of youthful wonder akin to Luke Skywalker. All the adventurous people I always wanted to be rolled into one. He’s smart, adventurous, charming, brave, and if you grew up on adventure movies like I did, the kind of character that you want to go on these incredible adventures with.

Naughty Dog was also smart to fill the world around Nate with equally interesting characters. Elena and Sully being the two prime examples, but also fun villains like Lazarević, Talbot, and Marlowe, and dangerous allies like Chloe and Cutter. Each time a new character is introduced, it’s a classic Mystery Box, and made me wish each one of these characters got their own games so I could run around in their adventures.

The Experience

The Uncharted Series is big, exciting, adventurous, and above all: fun. Even though the mechanics can sometimes have that almost-at-rage-quit effect, it more than makes up for it by the huge action set pieces, the immersive environments, and the great world of characters to go on these adventures with. Whether it’s taking out pirates on some deserted island, escaping from a de-railed train in a snowbound wilderness, or looking for a lost city in a vast desert, you’ll rarely feel a moment of boredom.

And if you’ve got a nice mojito with you as you enjoy these games, all the better!