Nathan Drake’s long-awaited PS4 debut is still number one with a bullet – and a lot of bangs…
Bruce Straley breaks videogames. He just can’t help himself. Naughty Dog’s go-to director has crashed two Uncharted 4 demos on the spin; the first at last December’s PlayStation Experience, then at Sony’s (otherwise incredible) E3 presentation. Minutes after finishing up with a typically breathless, real-time rollercoaster of Nate adventuring, Straley tweeted: “I just lost about 38 years of my life from that demo.” Well, that’s what happens when you make Drake stall at a bustling Madagascan market for a seeming eternity.
Conference crashes be damned, though! This is still Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. This is still the single most exciting game coming to PS4. This is still the reason you bought your beloved Sony box in the first place. Last time we checked in on Nathan, he was happily snapping necks on one of the African nation’s sweltering isles. Now, he’s headed straight for more misadventure in what community strategist Eric Monacelli describes as a “meticulously crafted, fictional, Madagascan city.”
DRIVE ANGRY
He’s not alone, either. Sully is back by his protege’s side; all magnificently moustached quips and not-so-helpful bouts of backseat driving. Oh yes: driving. For the first time, you can control a variety of vehicles. There’s a whole lot of power-sliding thrills in this latest glimpse, and it all looks splendid. Actually, it looks bloody terrifying – a compulsive, dizzying blend of frantic steering, dodging around pedestrians and skidding through winding streets while haphazardly avoiding a minigun-mounted truck. If the sun-drenched colour palette that provides the background for the scrambled city chase screams Uncharted 3, the actual nuts-and-bolts steering is entirely new.
What makes the demo’s headline pursuit so exciting is control. Namely, how much is offered up to you. Naughty Dog provides a guiding hand for players more authoritatively or expertly than any other developer on PlayStation. Whether purposely pushing you through a château that’s rapidly being barbecued or offering a gentle assist as a desperate teenager hunts a grazing deer, the Santa Monica-based studio is the all-conquering master of directing set-piece flair. But with the power of PS4 at its disposal, is the studio willing to ease up on the reins a little to allow us to be more directly in control of Drake’s destiny?
In Uncharted 4, yes it is. Naughty Dog has dabbled with vehicle sections in the past – the original’s jeep chase or the horseback convoy assault in Drake’s Deception – but never like this. “It’s like a maze,” cries Drake, as he embarks on a chase in which you’ve got split-path routes through a city. Smashing through back gardens. Rocketing over hanging laundry on clotheslines, some poor sod’s sheets sadly sticking to your back wheels. Sending scaffolding flying during a particularly hairy handbrake turn. All this in the space of 40 or so seconds, with you in firm control at every point.
CHASE OF SPADES
And that’s merely the halfway mark of a pursuit so impressive, it’d have Jason Bourne wheelie-ing his Mini down Parisian steps in approval. As an enemy truck ups its attempts to run Drake off the road, Uncharted 4 gets to show off even more destructive scenery. Not that everyone approves. “You know, you don’t have to hit every fence,” Sully scolds. Sod that: we’ve got Nate’s mysterious older brother to catch. Let the chase continue!
Obliterating the stalls of a side-alley street market. Mowing down patches of colourful shrubbery in the middle of a town square. Launching over stone stairs, then hurtling down grassy ravines. Skidding over the roofs of banged-up motors in a used car lot. “I got this! I go this… I DON’T (sic) GOT THIS!”
Hell, there’s even a bit where Drake slams on the brakes so he can precariously steer around a cherry picker on the slopes of a freshly excavated building site, mud flying everywhere as the jeep positively crawls round the hole.
Why exactly are Nate and Sully bombing through this steeply cut city, though? There’s the obvious impending threat of ‘minigun rounds to the face’ to void, true. Yet the real driving force (sorry) for this megaton setpiece is Sam Drake. Our hero’s older bro seems to have got himself into some what of a pickle; an explosion from a seaside tower highlighting your sibling’s presence and kicking off the madcap jeep escapades.
SUMMER OF SAM
Once Nate and Sully reach said tower, proceedings are swiftly tossed straight from the toastiest of pans into a white hot fire. Sam is at least alive, but your mysterious sibling looks to be in a perilous state as he leads a convoy of enemy trucks on a merry chase while riding a vintage-looking motorcycle. Predictably, this sight prompts Drake into a typically Uncharted ‘break out the suicidal heroics now, think later’ response.
Rolling over a series of glistening mudflats – we’ll never get tired of seeing Naughty Dog do PS4 water – the chase climaxes with the fortune hunter passing the wheel to his mentor, as Nathan quickly breaks out his grappling hook to catapult into the side of a bridge. Oh dear…
That’s where Sony’s E3 press conference leaves matters, but in a private demo at the show we get to see what happens next. And what happens next is easily the best thing ever showcased on PS4.
In a scene to rival Uncharted 2’s train climb or Uncharted 3’s cargo plane, the second half of the demo is a set-piece of epic proportions. Because all the stuff you saw at Sony’s conference? That wasn’t a set-piece. Not really. That was bog-standard gameplay. (Uncharted-standard, natch.)
There isn’t space to fully do it justice this issue, so we’ll follow up with a full preview next month, but know that the demo continues with a scene that combines the most awesome bits of Hollywood’s best car chases. During an elongated sequence that sees Nathan get dragged though mud, climb aboard trucks, leap between vehicles and even survive a crunching crash, it becomes all too clear that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is going to be the ultimate ride of your gaming life.