The pacing of Uncharted 4 is just unfortunate

I will be forever sad they cut the crane setpiece. Not that it would have fixed all of Scotland's problems, but the long bout of climbing would have felt more worthwhile.

Generally, after Scotland I don't have too much trouble with the pacing, well, beyond all of the forced globe trotting.
 
I will be forever sad they cut the crane setpiece. Not that it would have fixed all of Scotland's problems, but the long bout of climbing would have felt more worthwhile.

Generally, after Scotland I don't have too much trouble with the pacing, well, beyond all of the forced globe trotting.

Yeah, Scotland is definitely the worst offender when it comes to climbing.
 
Yeah, Scotland is definitely the worst offender when it comes to climbing.

Funniest part of Scotland for me is that I actually liked it initially. I was saying to myself "omg this is like the Ice Caves in 2, except this time it's going to START a long string of hype instead of ending it. Sure the first few chapters are slow, but this is where that classic Naughty Dog run of brilliance is going to be"

Then Madagascar happens
Then the first half of Chapter 11 happens
Then Chapters 12-16 happen

The game already lost me by the time you get to 17 and the best cutscenes start coming up.
 
Funniest part of Scotland for me is that I actually liked it initially. I was saying to myself "omg this is like the Ice Caves in 2, except this time it's going to START a long string of hype instead of ending it. Sure the first few chapters are slow, but this is where that classic Naughty Dog run of brilliance is going to be"

Then Madagascar happens
Then the first half of Chapter 11 happens
Then Chapters 12-16 happen

The game had already lost me by the time you get to 17 and the best cutscenes start coming up..

Haha, I can understand where you're coming from. Thankfully for me, that didn't happen.
 
UC4 has to be one of the most boring games I've made myself complete.

It's not high art, it was a fucking cyclical snoozefest. Would have been great if it was 5 hour campaign.
 
Hold on, what? Druckman sucks as a director?

He is 98.9% better than any developer / director.

Directors could only wished they had The Last Of Us and Left Behind DLC in their resume.
 
If you guys only knew all the stuff that was cut out of the game that they had planned as well as what made it in last min hahaha.

All things taken into consideration. I enjoyed my time with it. Like any Uncharted game i was sad that they spoiled their biggest set piece with the jeep chase in trailers and videos. I don't think they have a bigger setpiece, and they spoiled ALL of it. Its too bad, it would've really blown people away had they gone into it not knowing much. Maybe that is why TLoU resonated more with me. Still, the game plays awesome, and was a fun ride.
 
I love how it's paced, never found offensive at all.

If you want combat and not story then this isn't the series for you.

First post nailed it.

I loved Uncharted 4, it felt like the game served the story and not the other way around like the previous games.

In the previous games, they kept forcing shitty gunplay down your throat every two seconds no matter how illogical it was or not.

Here they take their time, sometimes there just doesn't happen to be 5000 bad guys around you know. I loved it.

Felt like a true adventure, rather than a non stop shooting. Which is wayyyy better.
 
The shit tier forced combat sections in the first 3 are absolute atrocities. The gunplay never felt top tier TPS to begin with, combine that with bad AI and spawn nests, it was horrendous and I couldn't be more glad they did away with the worst parts of the OT. I legit wonder about people who dislike UC4 and loved the others for their combat... I mean pacing.
 
Pacing is definitely a big problem in U4. The other games had a much better feel for momentum, not dragging individual bits on for too long. There's a lot of focus on traversal in U4, but it's not engaging for long stretches. It's a particularly bad design decision to suddenly have an entire chapter dedicated to that (21) when you're deep in the finale of the game. That's one example, but there are more. I liked ch16 as a unit, but in the context of the game it was a bit poorly placed, coming right after an already slow chapter. I have no problem with less shoot-outs, but replace it with gameplay that's also engaging. The first half of the game is an even bigger offender. I actually enjoyed the second half more, which was more focused and felt like a long tribute to Drake's Fortune.

On the other hand, there's the tone of the story, which I felt was an even bigger miss. The approach closely resembled TLOU, and the mistake here was using this influence for a franchise that wasn't a perfect fit for it. TLOU had great introspective moments, but that fit the universe and the characters. The bond Ellie and Joel developed for example, was complexer and cut deeper than anything in the Uncharted universe. From the outset TLOU is way more character-driven, whereas Uncharted was kinda forced in this direction.

This is because Uncharted is -and should be- pure lighthearted pulp, with characters that weren't rounded or complex like Joel or Ellie were, which is fine. As much as I love Nate and Elena, I'm not that interested in their relationship therapy. I realized this when the optional convos in the jeep/elevator chapter didn't do much for me. Don't get me wrong, I love them trying something new, but this was the wrong way to approach it. You can't inject mechanics that worked in TLOU, and expect them to work in a different franchise.

Combine these two points, and you get a game that tries to challenge what makes an Uncharted game (which I applaud), but ultimately fails at it. It was a gamble on two sides, and they lost both times.

Uncharted 4 showed that Hennig was just better at directing this franchise. I love what Druckmann did in TLOU (which is an understatement, it's one of my all time favorite games), but the experiments ultimately didn't pan out.

I completely agree. I just hope it really is about who is a better fit for each franchise. I didn't like Left Behind nearly as much as the main game, so I'm somewhat scared that this isn't as much about Druckmann's sensibilities not being a great fit for Uncharted, as it is his preferences shifting to something that won't make me like Part II all that much either, especially with Straley not being involved. Uncharted 4 feels more like Left Behind than The Last of Us, to me.

But I actually enjoyed the first half more than the second. Maybe because I just wasn't tired of it yet, but it was starting from Madagascar that I wasn't liking it anymore. I guess it's because, as slow as it was, there was a purpose to it, there was some meaning behind the slower pacing, as opposed to two consecutive chapters of holding forward in Drake's Fortune Island (what a terrible decision to use that action bit at the beginning, leaving us with two chapters of walking when we catch up to it), or walking around Retcon Mansion.
 
UC4 honestly had the most frustrating moments for me in the entire series because of a bugged hard mode but the pacing was also kind of all over the place for sure. It also featured the oddest and easily worst segment in the series with the
underground cavern of bombs that was only made better by a tender scene at the end with Elena,

That's a great and tense sequence.
 
Please, for the love of god, give me specific examples of how things became repetitive. I have heard this narrative before and have never found any grounds for it to be accurate.

What i will say about uncharted 4 is that the pacing felt great to me the first playthrough the second playthrough though was a bit of a slog. Don't agree with people saying oh it's just climbing. There is pretty much everything in that game in terms of variation driving island hopping in a boat playing crash the variation is great. There are far far more repetitive games out there that you can reduce to a single mechanic I barely hear this about them but this somehow become a crap meme for uncharted.
 
why is the climbing boring ?

Can't speak for that poster, but for me I would've enjoyed it more if the climbable rocks/ledges weren't so obviously laid out/displayed. Not asking for Climbing Simulator 2016 and I know it probably would've negatively impacted the pacing even further , but I would have liked if it required more input and thought on the player's side.
 
I will be forever sad they cut the crane setpiece. Not that it would have fixed all of Scotland's problems, but the long bout of climbing would have felt more worthwhile.

Generally, after Scotland I don't have too much trouble with the pacing, well, beyond all of the forced globe trotting.
Scotland soured me on the game I admit. I realized I wasn't having much fun, it just kept going and the heavy dosage of Uncharted tropes (snarky banter, climbing, fake ledge falling) felt as if it was bordering on parody. The pacing was all over the place up to that point, I wasn't enjoying Sam as a character, and a few chapters later I put it down for something else and still haven't made my way back.
 
Scotland soured me on the game I admit. I realized I wasn't having much fun, it just kept going and the heavy dosage of Uncharted tropes (snarky banter, climbing, fake ledge falling) felt as if it was bordering on parody. The pacing was all over the place up to that point, I wasn't enjoying Sam as a character, and a few chapters later I put it down for something else and still haven't made my way back.
This is me too, kept waiting for it to really pick up and it never really did.
 
why is the climbing boring ?

Climbing in real life is terrifying, thrilling, heart pumping exhaustion. In Uncharted games it's none of that. There's no challenge, no risk, no thought, it's just mildly more exciting than walking - a path from A to B with some fancy animations and destructible environments. It's strains credulity that Nate can do all these ninja warrior acts with zero repercussions. At least in Zelda BotW you have limited stamina to plot your course.
 
That guy wasn't even cherry picking. The climbing simply isn't engaging and we spend more time than any other game in the series climbing, and it's even more immersion breaking here considering instead of doing what they did before with some exposed bricks and less obvious climbable geometry with subtle uses of yellow in cities to direct the player and such they went with the TR school of convenient white paint on random rock faces... And doing a cursory playthrough of all three UC games a couple weeks ago, they've actually made it more magnetic in 4. And not just that, but the other boring stuff is used to absurd degrees, i'm talking pushing crates that in various places of the world, always helping npcs up, rope swinging because instead of vines or old ropes we now carry a rope, etc. what's actually fun about these? Downtime can be engaging, exploring the village in UC2 is more engaging than literally every downtime moment in UC4.


So I shouldn't expect the final entry to be the best entry in terms of pacing, story structure, etc.?

Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

Considering how Uncharted was slammed by critics for its emphasis on shooting encounters, why is it such an unwelcome surprise that the final game takes a more meditative pace? Your (and others') go to answer always seems to be "but 2!". Yeah? What about 2? They can't just make the same game again, beat per beat. The reality is, that despite the breakneck pace of action of Uc2, the signature style of the games has always been "climb this tall structure and gawk at the view". Remember the U-boat in 1, the hotel, the museum in 2 and 3. There's tons of of moments your selective, rose-tinted memory overlooks that perfectly explain why being so offended by the pace and focus on spelunking (arguably the bread and butter of an Indiana Jones clone) is ridiculous, especially after all the moaning in the past that the games were too much shootbang and not enough exploring and puzzle solving.

U4 was the answer to the exploratory wet dreams without going open world.
 
It's weird how opinions differ so much. I personally think the controls are one of Uncharted's weakest points in the series.

It's always felt a bit clunky.

Did you actually played Uncharted 4?

Its the best controlling tps game yet. Naughty Dog tighted the gunplay mechanics pretty immensely.

On top of that, its accompanied by an array of great animations. To the surpise of no one, as that's Naughty Dog's forte.
 
Did you actually played Uncharted 4?

Its the best controlling tps game yet. Naughty Dog tighted the gunplay mechanics pretty immensely.

On top of that, its accompanied by an array of great animations. To the surpise of no one, as that's Naughty Dog's forte.

Max Payne 3 is still better.

Great gunplay and more controller over Max. Add to that the localized impact and it's a much better TPS mechanically speaking.
 
I really did love UC4 and still do; it's a fantastic game. It is a bit more difficult to play the flashback chapters on another playthrough, similar to how the flashback young Drake section in 3 was harder on replays.

It opens with a bang with the speed boat sequence, but I think for pacing purposes, that would have been very helpful on the islands chronologically. The islands were pure exploration and traversal, and punctuating it with the speed boat chase would have been excellent, plus it would have been a great way to lead into the, "Drake's lost and cold in the rain," portion. I wouldn't have minded playing it again with some stuff added to it, similar to how you replay the train climb in 2.
 
Climbing in real life is terrifying, thrilling, heart pumping exhaustion. In Uncharted games it's none of that. There's no challenge, no risk, no thought, it's just mildly more exciting than walking - a path from A to B with some fancy animations and destructible environments. It's strains credulity that Nate can do all these ninja warrior acts with zero repercussions. At least in Zelda BotW you have limited stamina to plot your course.

oh god
 
Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

Considering how Uncharted was slammed by critics for its emphasis on shooting encounters, why is it such an unwelcome surprise that the final game takes a more meditative pace? Your (and others') go to answer always seems to be "but 2!". Yeah? What about 2? They can't just make the same game again, beat per beat. The reality is, that despite the breakneck pace of action of Uc2, the signature style of the games has always been "climb this tall structure and gawk at the view". Remember the U-boat in 1, the hotel, the museum in 2 and 3. There's tons of of moments your selective, rose-tinted memory overlooks that perfectly explain why being so offended by the pace and focus on spelunking (arguably the bread and butter of an Indiana Jones clone) is ridiculous, especially after all the moaning in the past that the games were too much shootbang and not enough exploring and puzzle solving.

U4 was the answer to the exploratory wet dreams without going open world.

Yes, my rose-tinted memories of 2016. Some people play games more than once, you know. And even those who don't, not all of them played the games when they first came out on PS3.
 
The climbing is this game is so bad, it makes me never want to go back to it. I wish they had made it more fun for this entry, considering how relevant it is to the pacing of the U4.
 
Agree, great game but pacing news horrid and suffered near the end with the mindless shooting magnetic climbing. I think UC1 is a bad game, and UC4 reminded me of it near the end.

Overall the game is strong so doesn't suffer from it but isn't as replyable as UC2.

UC2 > UC4 > UC3 >>>>>>>> UC1

UC1 is one of my most unpleasant gaming experiences, just because I was promised a great game, I stuck with it and it never came, yuck.
 
I liked it a lot. It's my favorite Uncharted.
The only part I didn't dig was the last fight, but the pacing was great for my tastes. Just the right amount of shooting in between story segments.
I'm not much a fan of twitch shooters so that's where I'm coming from.
 
I did not like the story's pacing. You start playing a future sequence, then a past sequence, then in the present, then a flashback, then in the present, then in the past, then in the present…

Stop.
 
Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

Considering how Uncharted was slammed by critics for its emphasis on shooting encounters, why is it such an unwelcome surprise that the final game takes a more meditative pace? Your (and others') go to answer always seems to be "but 2!". Yeah? What about 2? They can't just make the same game again, beat per beat. The reality is, that despite the breakneck pace of action of Uc2, the signature style of the games has always been "climb this tall structure and gawk at the view". Remember the U-boat in 1, the hotel, the museum in 2 and 3. There's tons of of moments your selective, rose-tinted memory overlooks that perfectly explain why being so offended by the pace and focus on spelunking (arguably the bread and butter of an Indiana Jones clone) is ridiculous, especially after all the moaning in the past that the games were too much shootbang and not enough exploring and puzzle solving.

U4 was the answer to the exploratory wet dreams without going open world.

You're doing it again.

U4 is not an "exploratory wet dream." There are dozens and dozens of games that do that better. Doom in 1993 had better exploration. Fucking Serious Sam has more meaningful downtime. What little actual exploration there is in Uncharted 4 is basically that Killzone Shadowfall image.

You know what UC4's downtime is? QTEs. Just hold the controls tick forward and watch graphics happen around you. Except they last for thirty minutes and require even less player input.
 
Maybe I have to replay all the games to remember, but I was incredibly annoyed by one aspect in uncharted 4.


Every level started out with, "the treasure must be here!". It was really annoying but maybe the other games are like that and I simply don't remember.
 
Maybe I have to replay all the games to remember, but I was incredibly annoyed by one aspect in uncharted 4.


Every level started out with, "the treasure must be here!". It was really annoying but maybe the other games are like that and I simply don't remember.
Yeah, that was pretty weak, since Scotland + Madagascar + the island all start that way. Uncharted 2 flowed well in its globe trotting: it had Turkey to steal the lamp for the client, then Borneo because that's where Marco Polo's expedition ended, then Nepal because they knew one of the temples had the map, then the mountain where the map led.
 
Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

Considering how Uncharted was slammed by critics for its emphasis on shooting encounters, why is it such an unwelcome surprise that the final game takes a more meditative pace? Your (and others') go to answer always seems to be "but 2!". Yeah? What about 2? They can't just make the same game again, beat per beat. The reality is, that despite the breakneck pace of action of Uc2, the signature style of the games has always been "climb this tall structure and gawk at the view". Remember the U-boat in 1, the hotel, the museum in 2 and 3. There's tons of of moments your selective, rose-tinted memory overlooks that perfectly explain why being so offended by the pace and focus on spelunking (arguably the bread and butter of an Indiana Jones clone) is ridiculous, especially after all the moaning in the past that the games were too much shootbang and not enough exploring and puzzle solving.

U4 was the answer to the exploratory wet dreams without going open world.
It's not nostalgia, literally played through the ND collection a mere week ago lol. And UC2 has incredibly pacing and very good use of the player's time which excuses it's more subpar mechanics. UC4 instead, has much better mechanics and makes very little use of them. And exploring in UC4 isn't some wet dream, it's boring. If the exploring was even half as interesting as when you discover Libertalia for the first time with many optional scenes and dialogue, then yes maybe you'd have a point. But in the majority of instances, they don't even include the latter.
 
Maybe I have to replay all the games to remember, but I was incredibly annoyed by one aspect in uncharted 4.


Every level started out with, "the treasure must be here!". It was really annoying but maybe the other games are like that and I simply don't remember.

Still better than uncharted 3 honestly with having the cruise ship part that meant nothing to the story at all.
 
Yeah, and tbh, I'm pretty sure 4 has more combat, but it's a longer game, so the combat is more spread out. The last, say, 8 - 10 chapters have much more combat than the first eight.
I don't believe this at all. The formula of the previous games was combat, combat, combat with some downtime. UC4 is the opposite until the final chapters where it amps up.
 
In my opinion it has the best pacing in the series and I found the slower pace very refreshing. The best game in the series no question about it.
 
I would say that's highly debatable, if not inaccurate going by the majority's sentiment towards the game and the great success it was across the board.

Well that's just how I see it, I know most people love the game and I see why. There are segments I loved too. There are just some elements introduced that I don't see as a perfect fit for the franchise.
 
Top Bottom