The Uncharted series is a set of four games that tell the gripping adventures of Nathan Drake, expert treasure hunter, as he searches for ancient wonders. Its four games are visually stunning with gorgeous natural sceneries and realistic facial structuring. Music and sound design profoundly contribute to feelings of grandeur with strong orchestral accompaniment. Characters are three-dimensional and relatable, even in balancing near death drama with witty banter. From these factors, the series looks, sounds, and feels amazing. But one key factor importantly hinders the Uncharted series: its gameplay. While gameplay may not have been the series’s biggest concern (with it aiming to be more of a hybrid between video games and movies), it is ultimately a video game. And the one defining characteristic of a video game apart from other entertainment mediums is interactive gameplay. As a result, this review will critically examine the Uncharted franchise, noting its gameplay flaws. Such missteps with gameplay are important to consider to develop a more informed, yet humble appreciation of the Uncharted franchise.
Limited Gameplay
At its core, the Uncharted series has three main forms of gameplay: climbing, puzzle solving, and gun-based combat. Climbing assists the game’s theme of adventure because it discovers new treasures and locations. Puzzle solving is typically easy, and mainly utilizes large set pieces and environmental details to reach a solution. For example, Uncharted 4 has a clock tower puzzle where the player must navigate around and on moving gears to ring bells in a hinted order. Finally, combat mostly relies on cover-based shooting with fist fighting for close-range confrontations. With such core gameplay covered, its unfortunate implications can be discussed.
Because there are only three main forms of gameplay in the Uncharted series, it is easy for such gameplay to create pacing issues and predictability. To keep the player interested, a logical approach is to shift between moments of cinematic climbing, intense combat, and cerebral puzzle solving. Overextending one of these gameplay sections can bore the player due to draining repetition. Sadly, there are several moments in the series, particularly in Uncharted 1, where combat sections drag on. The player makes a few steps into a new area, but is often unable to admire it due to an unnecessary shootout. Such pacing issues could have been alleviated if the games tried to more often blend their core gameplay, such as trying to solve a puzzle in the midst of a stressful shootout. Instead, the games often keep their main gameplay mutually exclusive, thus making it easy to predict when the next form of gameplay will begin. For example, whenever an ancient tomb’s puzzle is cleared, the player quickly expects a “surprise” gunfight. As previously stated, the games try to balance moments of intense action with calm exploration by shifting between climbing, combat, and puzzle solving. But because there are only these three options, the gameplay follows a highly predictable pattern. The player often climbs to an area, completes a puzzle, and combats enemies in the escape. Because the series’s core gameplay is consistent, its pattern of arranging such gameplay becomes predictable and trite. If such gameplay were not mutually exclusive, or if the series introduced new core gameplay throughout its progression, perhaps the games would enjoy better pacing. Instead, their limited gameplay cripples player fun by expunging creative possibilities.
Reduced player input
Such core gameplay is often interrupted, however, due to the series’ constant indulgence in reducing player input. An overreliance on quick time events turns action-packed moments into spectacles that the player moreso sees, rather than engages. Quick time events are cinematic moments in games where the player has an extremely limited amount of time to press buttons that appear on the screen. The character on screen progresses when the correct button is pressed on time. Mere knee-jerk button presses, however, do not simulate the complexity and difficulty of the situations that Nathan Drake escapes. While quick time events are not inherently examples of poor design, the series utilizes them far too often in each of its games. Other game series let the player struggle through difficult gameplay moments without resorting to quick time events. Far Cry 5, for instance, features a reoccuring challenge of clearing a base of enemies in a limited amount of time. These sections do not have on-screen button presses to accomplish goals; instead, the player must accomplish the mission in his/her own way by directing the character through the gameplay. With its overreliance on quick time events, the Uncharted franchise does not allow such depth in player interactivity, thereby minimizing gameplay customizability and variety.
While quick time events allow some interactivity with simple button presses, the Uncharted series’s constantly reused animations completely prevent it. All too often, the same animations act as mini, unskippable cutscenes that needlessly elongate playtime. Examples of these reused animations include: climbing up a ledge to lower a ladder, hoisting a partner up a ledge, taking turns raising a heavy door up to crawl underneath it, jumping off a tall ledge to prevent backtravel, or a partner closing a door behind you to prevent backtravel (even though preventing escape would be illogical in many of the series’s situations). While these moments are a few seconds in length each, their abundance cumulates to hours of time spent watching the game play itself. After a dozen cutscenes that show Nathan Drake jumping for a ledge, only for it to crumble at his weight, the player desires to manage such events on his/her own through gameplay rather than through a cutscene. Interactivity is the main distinction between movies and games, but the Uncharted series often ignores such interactivity, subsequently wasting the player’s time and failing to fully utilize its interactive medium.
Gilded, but hollow
These moments of little player input would be more tolerable if the games’ core gameplay were more satisfying and unique. Unfortunately, however, the Uncharted series’s main gameplay is gilded, but hollow - meaning that it looks like a wondrous spectacle, but actually offers little creative depth. Its gun gameplay, for example, does not create a unique shooter experience. Thus, the Uncharted games fall into the boundless category of mechanically identical games labeled “typical shootings.” Several games have escaped such blandness: Splatoon’s bullets are instead ink used to cover the floor, Titanfall 2 shifts between speedy acrobatics while exposed and sturdy destructiveness while in a robot, and Superhot makes fights a slow motion puzzle to creatively solve. The Uncharted series, however, has run of the mill cover-based shooting gameplay. It is not inherently unique or riveting, which is a shame considering that shooting represents a third of the series’s gameplay.
Puzzle solving is a similar spectacle with little substance. Oftentimes, puzzles in the Uncharted series take place in wide, open rooms with giant apparatuses unlocking future progress. Such puzzle solving is big and breathtaking, yet ultimately lacking. The puzzles are exceedingly easy, which is not an issue, per se; however, their lack of difficulty results in the player spending more time moving around the expansive rooms to trigger puzzle solutions, rather than spending time actually thinking through and solving the puzzle itself. Compare puzzles in the Uncharted series to puzzles in the idie gem Into the Breach. Into the Breach features grid-based puzzles on a small, 8 x 8 board. The entire scope of puzzle permutations can all easily be seen on one screen. This digestible scope benefits the puzzles’ open-ended and difficult nature. Each move is intricate, interconnected, and thus hard to formulate, as each piece on the board operates uniquely. Into the Breach demonstrates an immense variety of puzzle permutations that command player attention, subsequently making each puzzle engaging and enjoyable. The Uncharted franchise, however, does not enjoy such depth due to its preference for scope. In other words, the Uncharted games prefer to feature visually grand, rather than mechanically rich, puzzles with simple solutions that do not engage player through critical thought. Its puzzles look remarkable, but are ultimately trivial excuses to flaunt graphics and set pieces rather than solid puzzle design.
Conclusion
Throughout this analysis, it is easy to walk away with the opinion that the Uncharted series is rather poor. After all, gameplay is the uniquely defining and primarily important component of games, and the Uncharted series features lackluster gameplay. Instead, Uncharted’s games predominantly feature solid visual design, musical design, character development, story progression, writing, and other peripheral factors. For the Uncharted series, gameplay is really just a mechanism to experience these other features. By not appreciating and cultivating its gameplay first, the Uncharted franchise ultimately fails in its most important area. Despite such shortcomings, its peripheral factors still make the series a gorgeous piece of art. It cannot go understated how much its games suffer from their shallow gameplay mechanics. By recognizing such imperfections, however, perhaps the Uncharted franchise can more accurately be understood and admired, faults and all.
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