In today’s post we’re going to talk about Uncharted – a game that was described to me with exactly these words: “It’s like Tomb Raider, but as a man”. We’ll see what awaited me in this game and whether it is worthy of this comparison.

At first glance, there are actually a lot of similarities: it’s an action-adventure game in which we control a character in the 3rd person perspective. This moves through three-dimensional levels in which you sometimes have to fight, puzzle or do gymnastics in order to progress. The story has a partly scientific, partly mystical background and you have to stop a well-defined villain from subjugating or optionally destroying the world.

So far so good. I’ve played a few Tomb Raider games and found most of them very good, so I was positive that I would like Uncharted too. And what can I say – well. Despite the similarities mentioned above, there are some things that I didn’t like so much or that I would have liked to see solved differently. But let’s go into a bit of detail.

The stories of the three parts we played (The “Nathan Drake Trilogy”) were okay overall. Nathan Drake is (allegedly) the descendant of Sir Francis Drake, so parts one and three revolve around this notorious pirate, while part two revolves around Marco Polo. No problem in itself, but the stories are kept relatively flat. There is little background on individual characters or story elements, you are told the most necessary information (“We have to go there, because there is the next clue”) and off you go. I would have liked it to have gone into a bit more background on both the characters and the myths.

But when you jump in and want to reach the goal of a level, two things await you: mediocre controls that often don’t do what you want them to do, and opponents who couldn’t be more arbitrary but are armed to the teeth. Seriously, why does a 20-man mercenary squad bring at least as many RPGs and grenade launchers?

The former results in you often jumping in the direction you didn’t want to – mostly towards death. Very often you unintentionally leave cover and are then shot, it takes forever to get into a certain cover or you hang on a beam and can neither advance nor back – that gets frustrating relatively quickly. The latter gives you about 5-7 different enemy types per game, all of which always look the same and come in waves – unfortunately often (in my opinion) far too heavily armed, so that you have to rehearse a precise choreography of when and how to move. At some point, this frequent repetition is no longer fun.

As interchangeable as the opponents are, so are the characters. Nathan Drake is just a daredevil who just so happens to have the same name as a famous person. Sully, his partner for ages, is his mentor and just so happens to have the right contacts when you need information. Elena is a great damsel in distress when you want to stretch the level a bit and Chloe is the classic seductress, who of course changes her mind at the last moment and comes to our side. The bad guys – they’re just bad because that’s the way it is.

One last point: the puzzles. I have to say that I really liked some of them. You had to think about it a bit, but rarely felt really lost. If in doubt, you also had a notebook that you could look into and that was very helpful, sometimes even necessary, for many puzzles. I was really impressed by that and it was a big plus. This is where I had the most fun in these games.

What do I think of this game overall? It’s tough. I wouldn’t call it fundamentally bad – there are a lot of moments where we really enjoyed the stream. A game also doesn’t always have to have the deepest story to be good – but overall I would have liked more depth there and with the characters. The controls could be improved and was a source of frustration at times, but overall we got through it all.

I would recommend you to play it yourself. However, don’t expect any major improvements after the first part – if the game is already annoying you, leave it with the others. If you like the game, keep playing. I played it on PS Plus so no regrets buying it. But I won’t pay any further attention to the next parts.

What do you think? Have you played the game and do you agree with me? Or maybe you think differently about it? Let me know and discuss it on Discord!