Why the ‘Uncharted’ series is full of mediocre games

When I was 13 years old and had not played many narrative-focused games, Uncharted and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves were both games that I thought were excellent. Their action, tight linear focus and stories were entertaining, and I found Nathan Drake, Elena and Sully to be a loveable cast of characters to watch on their adventures.

I then played the third game a while later and found it rather dull. The set-pieces didn’t live up to the ones found in Uncharted 2, and the story seemed more all-over-the-place than the story of the first game. It did nothing to particularly justify its existence either, mainly being a rehash of the first two games but getting rid of the supernatural twist that fans had become bored with.

After completing my GCSEs, I completely Uncharted 4 fairly quickly. Everyone always seemed to praise its story for focusing more on the ageing character of Drake, yet I can honestly say that there are very few moments of the story that I remember. The game is by no means bad, yet the treasure hunt was nowhere near as captivating as it had been previously and Drake couldn’t hold up a story by himself, even with a previously unmentioned brother (who hadn’t even been mentioned in the flashback sequences of Uncharted 3…) to try to help add to his character.

This change of focus notably happened due to the change in Creative Directors heading up the game, with Amy Hennig replaced by Neil Druckmann, the Creative Director of Naughty Dog’s other IP, The Last of Us (which I remember being a great experience but I wouldn’t be surprised if I lowered my opinion of it upon replaying it). While the change seemed to add nothing, the franchise was going downhill anyway with Uncharted 3.

Imagine if Chris Pratt played Indiana Jones but wasn’t as charming as he usually is and you’ve pretty much got Nathan Drake

After replaying the Uncharted games after experiencing more narrative-based games, I can honestly say that they have no reasons to exist as games. Why aren’t they films? The climbing and shooting gameplay is average with the stories just being rather simple adventure plots that could easily be retold within 2 hours. The games have always prided themselves on having ‘cinematic’ action set-pieces which doesn’t seem to be much of a sale to me. If I wanted something cinematic, I would go to the cinema.

Gaming as a medium has shown repeatedly that it can tell stories in its own unique way, making use of the fact that a player has to be active in interacting with the game. Uncharted offers no such addition to its story by being a game, yet still, people claim that Uncharted 2, 3 and 4 are some of the best games to have come out on their respective consoles. Something which I think is horribly disrespectful to gaming as an art form.

This could be because developer Naughty Dog is owned by Sony and as such, they exclusively develop games for the PlayStation consoles. Thus, people who haven’t grown out of the concept of ‘the console war’ will probably love using them as weapons in debates about which console is the best.

It could also be that people enjoy the character of Nathan Drake, as I once did. For those of you who have never played an Uncharted game, imagine if Chris Pratt played Indiana Jones but wasn’t as charming as he usually is and you’ve pretty much got Nathan Drake. Nathan is poorly characterised throughout the first three games, and that’s a problem that a brother appearing out of nowhere in the fourth game wouldn’t fix.