I had no luck with the ‘last gen’ consoles; the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I had 3 Xbox’s over the past 10 years suffering the well known ‘Red Ring of Death’ both occurred on launch days of 2 huge Rockstar games; first with Grand Theft Auto 4 then again with Red Dead Redemption!
You’ll never know the pain of missing that first month of GTA4, I wasn’t letting that happen with RDR and promptly went out and bought another console the same weekend. It was worth being poor for a month, I digress.
When I purchased my PlayStation 3 I was unfortunate enough to be in the less than 10% of people with a faulty one. I came home set up and popped in a copy of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and was horrified when the machine chewed the disc up!
I took it back to shop immediately, the clerk, surely just doing his job proceeded to pop another disc in for the machine to make work of it like one of ‘Cookie Monsters’ well, er, cookies…
Once I was home with my replacement I was very eager to get in to the world of Nathan Drake, male Tomb Raider (I’m not going to make that joke) after about 7 hours of fun puzzles, gorgeous vistas and somewhat janky shooting, my game crashed and kept crashing in the same spot, Google yielded no solution and I wasn’t travelling back to the store. Sadly that was the last time I ever played the series, until I played developer Naughty Dog’s other ace up their sleeve, no not the brilliant Crash Bandicoot but the even more brilliant, 'brillianter?!’ The Last of Us.
Joel and Ellie’s simply beautiful game world and mechanics had me and when mentions of Uncharted 4 reaching similar heights I knew I had to play it.
I can’t play sequels without playing their predecessors, I can’t explain why, it’s just a weird OCD of mine, so when I heard they’d remastered the original trilogy for PS4 I knew I was going to work my way through.
I’m writing this having just completed the trilogy, I have Uncharted 4 unopened, not sure what to expect but not ready to go in before unloading a
clip or two in to the originals.
First off, the games, all 3, are gorgeous, each obviously more so than the last. The mechanics are workable if not a little janky at times but no more so than when Lara Croft or any of the Assassins Creed lot when they decide to jump away from a structure to an untimely death.
The set pieces are what make the series so stand out, cargo planes, crashed trains, Saharan deserts all regularly left me in awe. The story although convoluted at times was fun and felt like I was a living a young Indiana Jones fantasy - you never hear of kids called Indiana! - it was the difficulty that left me most frustrated, the puzzles were fine, the creatures sure but mostly the normal AI and their incessant pinpoint accurate grenade throws that irked me most. As did the boss fights, the first 2 games bosses felt particularly cheap, not fun or challenging, just an unfair slog that somewhat tainted my experience. Uncharted isn’t solely to blame, nearly all third person and most first person shooters don’t know how to make a fun boss fight so they just give you someone with a ridiculous amount of health or spawn a stupid amount of enemies while limiting your own offensive resources.
I loved the snipers though; the Dragon, T-bolt and Tau Sniper were all great to shoot and were sadly underused but then again I was nigh on untouchable using them.
I’m not sure I’m proud or relieved to be done with the trilogy, I feel like I’ve been through the ups and downs with Drake and series stalwart Sully personally, hopefully the fourth and final instalment will finish on an up!
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