You know, thinking about it. I kinda want to get this out of my system first. So Ill be talking a bit about Uncharted 4. And the ways that its poorly designed in parts, but somehow manage to deliver an extremely compelling experience for me personally.
Uncharted 4 is my 3rd favourite game this year. As a whole, I would rank the game an 8/10, personally.
However. I would not consider it a masterclass in terms of game design. It's not even great. Its far weaker than TLoU in many regards.
If I were to break down the game with my game design cap on, then Uncharted 4s various scores in random aspects of game design would look something like this for me:
- Gunplay: 7/10
- Level design: 7/10
- Traversal design: 6/10
- Enemy design: 6/10
- Puzzle design: 5/10
- Exploration design: 6/10
- Narrative-exploration design: 6/10
- Narrative-story/character beat: 8/10
- Set-piece design: 7/10 - 10/10
- Combat encounter design: 6/10 - 8/10
Uncharted 4, from a technical design perspective imo, is far weaker than games like DOOM, Overwatch, Titanfall 2 and anecdotally Dishonored 2 ( since I never played it). I can throw a ton of shade and criticisms on Uncharted 4 super easily without even thinking deeply about it.
Its puzzles are mediocre, repetitive and break some sense of immersion. A lot of the wheel block puzzles dont blend it well and are poorly implemented in the moment-to-moment. Major puzzles are fun, but few and far between. And still too simple.
Its traversal mechanics arent engaging and too simple.
Even if above reason is due to the fact that it cannot be too complex as it would significantly affect the games traversal gunplay, its still a reality that the combat traversal requirement for it to be simple weakens the games exploration segments from a gameplay perspective.
Gunplay range from serviceable to really good. The problem is the inconsistency since the good parts come from the gimmicks of UC4s traversal gunplay, not so much its core gunplay.
Uncharted 4s gunplay design suffers from the fact that the game doesnt do a very good job at funneling you to a sense of gameplay that makes use of its full tool set. The best of Uncharteds gunplay reveals itself when you are constantly moving around, being shot at, shooting while swinging, punching, beating, shooting and employing a mixture of all that. At its best, Uncharted 4 has a loose gunplay thats really fun to engage in.
The weakness is that the game design does a poor job of communicating or seamlessly fooling you into doing so, and at higher difficulties, prevents you from doing so since you die getting shot to death while swinging.
Not enough encounters and combat moments. Even when its there, the sense of moment-to-moment shootouts arent paced very well to deliver a sense of escalation in the same way Uncharted 2 did it. Pacing of delivering the gunplays sense of fun was weak.
Exploration & narrative exploration design (aka walking sim moments) are best that the franchise has been, but its just serviceable and only on-par with your average walking sim games. Given that there are parts of the game that are clearly better designed and more fun (puzzle, set-piece, gunplay, encounters), even if the walking sim portions of UC4 are fine, they will feel like an inferior aspect of the game that pulls down the experience. It lacks the elements and ingenuity of added design shown in Firewatch or Oxenfree that improves on the interactivity during exploration and dialogue. Being fine is not good enough when other parts of the game are better than just fine.
Set-pieces range from good to great. Encounter design range from good to great. Theres really nothing much to talk about here other than theyre not enough of them, or the weaker ones could be better had the game done the funneling of design smarter than their current implementation.
Given that from a design perspective, the game has so much 6/7s on me, and all my criticisms why was it somehow an aggregate final ranking of 8/10 and my 3rd favourite game over many other superior designed games?
Because for all of my intellectual ability to assess games from that angle, I play games to find the emotional resonance and connection to it. Uncharted 4, for me, was a game that is far and above the sum of its parts. It was able to make me connect and feel the emotional highs and lows of Nathan Drake better than every other Uncharted game to date.
Ive said it on other places before, but my favourite chapter in the entirety of Uncharted 4 is Chapter 12: At Sea.
From a purely mechanical design perspective? Arguably one of the worst designed levels in the game. Plenty of exploration that leads to dead ends, extremely uncompelling narrative during exploration periods (dead ends, people who die along the way, etc), weak traversal, mediocre puzzles and a lot of time spent on moments that dont reward the player, but just frustrate them.
But coming off Chapter 10/11 that does a spectacular job of giving you really powerful highs that got instantly deflated by Elenas burn, Drakes frustration felt very very palpable to me. I was immersed in the games sense of frustration in a way few entertainment mediums can get to me feel frustrated, not about the game, but the experience.
If I was a game designer, I would consider Chapter 12 to be fucking crazy because it tries its best to be un-fun for the sake of a chance that you, the player, would be in the same headspace of annoyance and frustration that Drake feels. I would never, ever design a game like that.
But ND did. And it worked on me. And that is just one of the few moments throughout Uncharted 4 where the sum of its parts are why this game is my 3rd favourite game this year, above games I would give higher academic design scores.
