As I said, there's really no question that the game forges a linear path. The entire franchise has largely been about moving the player from one set piece to another. What's interesting to me is that this felt highly repetitive in Uncharted 2, but it feels completely different in Uncharted 4. I think there are a few reasons for that - perhaps the main reason is the variety of the environments (where I felt that the second game was really an endless jungle).

That said, this isn't some kind of on-rails experience from a moment to moment gameplay perspective. Such a suggestion is an exaggeration, clearly - I mean, I've played the entire game all the way through, I absolutely know what it contained and how it felt. At the same time, the latest game definitely isn't about detailed environmental puzzles or anything like that - it's almost more akin to a platformer, in the sense that it's about the physical feeling of traversing the environment, the timing, and the way the narrative dovetails with the action.

I can see why people wouldn't like the franchise, especially if that formula isn't your thing. I'm not interested in convincing anyone to like what they don't. That would be rather silly.

@jumpaction: On your second point there about exploration - I personally agree with that. If I'm looking for a game with deeper exploration, then something like Deus Ex or Zelda would be my go-to ahead of something like Uncharted.

But you know, that kind of feels like a red-herring as well. I mean, while we're at it, we might as well talk about how the driving experience in Forza is more engaging than driving the Jeep in Uncharted 4. You know? :-)

I think if people are looking for Zelda, they should play Zelda. Going after Uncharted for being Uncharted just strikes me as a little odd.

It's one thing to say you don't like something (fine), but to suggest that something is objectively awful because you don't like it is more than a little silly. That's basically what I was calling out in my response to the OP originally.

I'm not talking about linearity. You can go down a single path and still explore that path.

The implication here, at times, is that traversing the environment is some unthinking action involving pressing a single button when that isn't the case at all. There are many sequences where you must actually explore the environment to figure out how to move from point A to point B successfully.

You can, of course, argue that those two points are fixed (and thus, linear), but that's not really what I'm talking about. I think linearity is a separate question entirely. There's no question at all that the entire Uncharted series is intended to be a guided experience that moves the player through one set piece after another. I'm talking about what you actually do in the context of each set piece.

Hopefully that makes things clearer. :-)

@Pedro: Yeah, there are entire chapters where you're climbing around, punctuated by gunfights and narrative. How long is a piece of string? What is the perfect ratio? Is there a perfect ratio? Probably not.

@mems_1224: It depends what you mean by exploration - I'm talking about physical traversal of environments (i.e. "exploring environments"). I don't equate exploration with open-world or non-linear necessarily (for example, Half-Life 2 was highly linear yet I'd still say that the player "explores" the world of City 17 and that this is a big focus of the gameplay).

What I'm saying is that the game balances those non-combat moments of exploration (climbing, swinging, finding the path forward, solving puzzles, etc etc) with the gunplay/battles.

I'm not sure how I feel about the overall mix, but I think they got it about right. I enjoyed the gunplay most in UC4, but still, I'm glad the entire game isn't simply about combat.

@Pedro: I'm just using the word for what it means: "the action of exploring an unfamiliar area" or "thorough examination of a subject". Both definitions absolutely apply here.

As for linearity, see my HL2 example above for my take on that.

o_O
Care to elaborate?

I wouldn't bother buying an upscaler to work with RF - I can't imagine the results being very nice. I think you're better to look at replacing the source signal from RF to something else and then adding an upscaler after that.

What console are you trying to upscale?

Most accurate comment I've seen for some time. :P

All exclusives need to have a 1:1 attach ratio to be considered successful, and Switch needs to sell 1 billion units (iPhone territory) to be successful. Rubbish.

It can be hard to have a reasonable conversation amidst all the bluster!

It certainly looks great. If it plays great, then...I'll be very keen to pick it up.

Haha. I'd rather look at Nathan's butt, thanks. :P

Seems we have an overabundance of climbing in games lately.
Maybe a session of Downwell will relieve this?

@megla: It's pretty clear that there's a huge disparity between PS4 and Xbox One in terms of the sheer number of exclusives on each. That said, I have both consoles (just picked up an Xbox One) - and man, there are some games on there that nobody should miss if they can possibly pick up both consoles at some stage.

I am almost finished playing Ori and the Blind Forest, and holy crap, it's unreal. So far, that and Sunset Overdrive are almost worth the price of admission alone.

I hate to be that guy (well, not really) - each console has some unbelievably awesome exclusive content. If you can enjoy both at all, do it.

I think this quote is the crux of it for me.

If you are talking about aggregate scores in terms of user reviews, then you might have a point, but I think it's pretty tenuous at best.
The reason is because it doesn't matter that there are more PlayStation than Xbox owners - once you get over a certain number of submitted scores, you get into aggregates and averages of these, which should act to negate any weird outliers.

Also from your first sentence, I take it you're an Xbox owner and not a PlayStation owner. Is that right? :-)