
Developer Naughty Dog has insisted that it'll be the final instalment of Nathan Drake's adventures, and hope to put a cap on the series in grand style.
But have they managed it?
Here are my spoiler-filled impressions of the first few hours... throughout which a number of needlessly aggressive monkeys will be shouting the C-word at you.
Can you tolerate their unnecessary abuse and make it all the way to the end?
Thus... more climbing, and the first proper looking for treasure, the first puzzle... and then: prison break! And - shocker! - Drakes brother dies.
Or does he...?
But then the game pulls the rug out from underneath us: it's nothing so glamorous. He's working for a salvage team in a dirty, urban, river. He's settled down, domesticated, married to Elena from the previous games.
We head home with him, and there's a lovely little touch in his attic where he finds old relics from past adventures - and has some fun with a toy gun. Again, subtly introducing us to the play mechanics, while keeping it rooted in character.
Again... all about character and story, a clever counterpoint to Drake's real adventures - so they get away with it.
Oddly, Sam's reappearance lacks any sort of emotional weight. Nathan doesn't seem that surprised to see him, which is a bit odd given that he's been mourning him for 15 years.
We also meet some Bad People, who are also looking for the thing that the Drakes are looking for.
There's some lovely art design in this level. There's also an escape sequence towards the end, which introduces a new, Metal Gear-ish, stealth element. And feels more open world-y than Uncharted ever has done.
Alas, there's another barely interactive fist fight, which feels entirely arbitrary, and out of the player's hands.
The graphics succeed in the character animations more than anything. The landscapes are nice, but nothing so far has really stunned. It's clearly a step-up visually from the earlier games, but also somehow slightly disappointing.
Was that a conscious choice, because they wanted it to feel visually part of the same series? Well, it worked.
Naughty Dog remain the masters of making even the gameplay about the character's motivations. A couple of times, it felt like the cutscenes were longer than they had been in the past, but maybe not.
Overall... we want to see where the story is heading. And that's surely a mark of success.
Could do with a bit less of that whole Drake-grabs-onto-something-and-it-gives-way, though. Now it happens so often we've just come to expect it.
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