Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is Naughty Dogs swan song to the franchise. It is easily the best in the series, improving upon almost everything that made the original trilogy so successful. While a slightly drawn out story keeps it from being perfect, it gets damn close. For anyone who hasn’t played any Uncharted games, let me humour you with the premise. Imagine an Indiana Jones film. Then imagine if that was a game, but instead of Indiana Jones your name is Nathan Drake. You are now caught up and ready to read this review.

It has been 5 long years (or just regularly timed years I guess, I’m still wrapping my head around how time progresses) since Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Since it’s announcement in 2013 it has been plagued with changes in creative team, acting talent, rewrites and delays. So many delays. It’s like they didn’t pay attention to my letters at all. It seemed that poor Nathan was destined to have just as much bad luck off (green)screen as he had on (green)screen. However all these changes turned out to be for the better, as the script, acting, gameplay and visuals are the best they have ever been in this universe. Seriously, I know people are saying this more and more nowadays, but shit this game looks good. The number of slow pans I did during my play through, you would have thought I passed out on an analogue stick. Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley (the creative directors behind The Last of Us) are largely to thank for the story and acting talent in this game. Nolan North and Troy Baker deliver career-best performances, while the supporting cast – as always – deliver the humour, urgency and emotion players have come to expect. This time round, the gang are on the hunt for Henry Avery’s long lost treasure, which he amassed over a successful career of piracy. The most notable addition to the gang is Nathan’s never-talked-about-and-conveniently-appeared-for-this-game brother, Sam. The story focuses on the relationship of the Drake boys, both through flashbacks and how their lives are changing and for the most part it really works. However any conflict that arose, be it between Nate and Sam, or Nate and Elena, or Nate and Sully (fuck Nate, time to get your shit together) always got brushed under the rug. It was strange to see these tense moments play out and then every character seemingly get over them with almost no words spoken.

Everyone knows Uncharted isn’t about words though, it is all about the hunt for treasure and the exploration that goes with it hand in hand. This is the best exploration has ever been in the series, and it is a shame that this is the last game for Nathan Drake (supposedly). Every area is open, with multiple paths to take to get to your destination. The map has also opened up a lot more vertically as well, largely due to the introduction of a grappling hook. Seriously, he’s a fedora away from being a straight Indiana Jones knock off. For the majority of the game, the grappling hook worked well, outside of the odd ‘I can make that jump no problSHIT SHIT SHIT IVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE’ moments. This applies to both the on foot areas and the vehicle areas. Oh, did I forget to mention? Yeah you can totally drive stuff in this game, jeeps, boats, jeeps, you name it. If it’s one of those two vehicles, you can drive it. You can also drive jeeps, pretty cool stuff. Driving the four-wheel drive around Madagascar was one of those highlights in gaming that doesn’t come along very often, but it was incredible. Again – and I will say this once more later – it’s a shame the series didn’t do this before, because it works so well. The last big new addition to the game is stealth. Enemies now have a detection meter like every stealth game ever, and gives you the ability to tackle most open areas in a variety of ways. It handles well, enemies are relatively smart and most of all it is fun to do. Remember when I said I would raise that point again? Well you didn’t have to wait long. It sucks we didn’t see this more fleshed out earlier, because it looks like it is just beginning to hit its stride.

The only thing holding this game back from being a masterpiece is the pacing of its final act. It’s not that it is a long game, if anything I wanted it to keep going. Rather, the final act spends a lot of time going over the same plot points and not introducing anyone or anything new. It begins to feel like the game is just going on for the sake of it, which goes against everything the game did so well in the first two acts of the game. Even the multiplayer is fun in its own right. While it pales in comparison to the campaign, it is still fun running and gunning your way around new maps based on locations in the game. While I was playing, I did experience the occasional crash mid game which was frustrating, but it is still early days. Unfortunately, the multiplayer part suffers from the cancer that is in-app transactions. I’ve always hated the idea of everyone paying the same price for a game, then having to pay more to unlock certain characters, skins or in-game advantages over people who don’t want to pay extra. They are literally the worst. If you can get past that, there are enough modes and unique ideas to give you an extra couple of hours of fun after finishing the game.

Like I said, Uncharted 4 is Naughty Dog’s swan song. This also means that you will get the most out of it if you have played the other games in the series before. Now before you freak out, the original games are all remastered on PS4 so you can easily get a hold of them and play them, which I would recommend to any Playstation owner anyway. For fans of the series, Uncharted 4 culminates in an excellent end to the franchise that starts with one of the best tutorials I have played through and ends with an epilogue that warmed my stone cold heart. Despite a few hours towards the end, the 12 hour campaign kicks ass in every sense of the phrase and will sit alongside The Last of Us as one of the greats that Playstation has to offer. Regardless of it being a bit drawn out, it did not affect the quality of the overall game. Please please please, you have to play this game.