The Lazygamer Awards 2016 – Game of the Year

Played TF2 last night, wow what a blast!!!!

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DOOM = GOTY. period

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The ending of Uncharted 4 was sublime, a perfect conclusion to Nathan’s adventures..

Can’t argue too hard about it being GOTY

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What’s uncharted? As a pc gamer I have no idea.

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Uncharted is waiting at home for me like a patient puppy. But from what I have played this year, my GOTY is Skyrim Special Ed and well… That is about the only game I have bought that was released this year.
Sad state of financial affairs this year was…

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So, I actually have an Opinion™ regarding Uncharted 4.

You have been warned.

Quick preamble: Thereafter will be some criticisms directed towards Uncharted 4, but I do NOT believe it’s undeserving. GotY is basically a bunch of people going “yeah I really liked that game!”, and that’s 100% okay. What follows a purely indulgent disliked of what I liked and disliked about Uncharted 4, and why I personally didn’t think it was a good game.

I recently played and finished Uncharted 4, two days ago (so it’s purely good timing). And honestly, it feels like Naughty Dog has been desperately trying to expand their skills, but are still *entirely* stuck under rocks that have been there since Uncharted 1 (and this also applies to Last of Us).

Primarily, they’re completely unable to shift away from the exact same core narrative and gameplay skeleton. EVERY SINGLE Uncharted game sees Drake go from place to palce hoping to find treasure, only to be lead to another place, and then to another, through puzzles that are far too needlessly complex to be narratively coherent, grapples with perceived betrayal, and eventually to an inevitable lost city that crumbles and explodes in a climax completely tempered by a game over indulging in climaxes and thus completely negating any sense of amazement.

The uncharted games have always had shallow and predictable stories. This doesn’t mean the stories are bad, but Naughty Dog are honest with what they are – simple glue to connect action scenes and cool explosions together.

The combat is near identical, and it’s frustrating to see that. While it’s refreshing to see them slowly and completely abandon waves, there’s little to no evolution beyond that. Worse, the combat is blatantly inserted for no reason other than to bar progess, to the point of ridicule.

What Uncharted 4 does well, what it does BEST…. is characters. It is the goddamned pioneer in character writing, acting, and animating. Many, many times I had to remind myself I was in a game, it’s all so natural. It’s ASTOUNDING. It’s good enough to make me feel I’m in a deep and personal epic, until the gameplay and predictable narrative breaks through the 4th wall and goes “NAH BRU I KNOW YOU LIKE GUNS SO HERE’S EXPLOSIONS”.

My favorite parts of Uncharted 4 were the beginning, up until the combat wasn’t narratively cohesive (when the guns came out at the acution), and EVERYTHING after the final shoot out. Because those are the only times the good parts of Uncharted are really allowed to shine.

It’s weird to look at – parts of Uncharted are boring, plain, and predictable, but it’s contrasted with parts of it that are astounding, yet the game feels utterly ashamed of it – it hides it under what it feels the majority of it’s audience wants.

Last of Us suffers from this as well. The core narrative is great, albeit predictable (you don’t make characters get that personal without intending to have loss in the narrative), the characters are amazing, and yet again the game is completely sidelined by samey combat that breaks the narrative and immersion. 80% of humanity was wiped out? Odd that I’m killing hundreds that just so happen to be in this spot right here in the middle of nowhere. Clickers require food to live and aren’t undead? Odd that there are thousands of them all over despite all the narrative that people are struggling to find food to eat after several years and that the human population is a fraction of what it once was. collapse.

In general, it seems (to me at least) that Naughty Dog has great difficulty trying to align gameplay mechanics to become cohesive with their plots or character writing. The private armies of Uncharted and the Clickers and military enforces of Last of Us are there in the game as an obstacle – I understand that, but they are dropped in without much thought to world building coherence, and that in turn damages the overall world building coherence.

If Naughty Dog can manage to tear themselves away from their now generic combat, their not-so-impressive-anymore environmental exploration, and invest in those to walk hand in hand with the out-fucking-standing character writing / acting / animating they do? That would be neat.

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