My Naughty Fortnight

With the Nathan Drake Collection coming out recently and the Last of Us reaching a very desirable price point on PSN, I decided to give Naughty Dog a go. Of course, I wasn’t a complete Naughty Dog virgin. The original Crash Bandicoot series was responsible for some of my fondest gaming memories. But since we live in the age of “immersive gaming experiences”, the goofy bandicoot was abandoned. In his place Naughty Dog gave us the trio of Nathan Drake, Ellie and Joel.

Let’s start by saying that the transition from the old days of Bandicooting to the new era of intense storytelling is certainly a drastic endeavour that deserves a commendation. All 4 games are characterized by meticulous design, impressive soundtrack and solid gameplay. Furthermore, beating the games one by one I saw continuity of design and a tendency to reuse the best gameplay elements. After beating the Last of Us I was already familiar with the rules of the Uncharted games and things that the games would throw at me.

I feel that the Last of Us is a really good point of introduction to Naughty Dog games. The gameplay is definitely the most varied in their portfolio. The sound design as well as the score compliment the gameplay, creating a rather suspenseful tone that will give you that tense feeling in your stomach , especially on “hard”. The short DLC campaign is also a source of some rather adept storytelling that is sure to pull at your heartstrings.  The same cannot be said about the main game.

In my opinion, a good story requires two elements: relatable characters and interesting events. All 4 games suffer from the same syndrome: it seems that the writers are too much in love with the characters they have created to allow them to duffer real world consequences. In the Last of Us the characters have great many opportunities to reflect on the events surrounding them. Instead they simply march on aimlessly, abandoning most principles they had at the beginning. At the end of the game, the writers gives themselves an opportunity for an impactful redemption. Yet again, they squander it horribly by basically retaining the status quo of the first hour of the game.

The Uncharted series suffers from the same problem. It is assumed that we will fall in love with Nathan Drake but we are given little to no reasons to feel any empathy towards Nathan’s action. Some people will say that the Uncharted series is not about the story. My reply to that is twofold. First of all, the gameplay is simply not engaging enough to give Naughty Dog a pass on it. Secondly, the entire series is modelled after Indiana Jones, a lovable douchebag that we all cheered on as he dealt with his pseudo-archeological endeavors. While where Uncharted is concerned I can bet good money that killing off Nathan Drake and continuing the series with someone else would cause no backlash. Why? Because Mr. Drake is generic, tropey and downright unlikable.

The worst thing is that each of the 4 games follows the same story arc. We begin with the main character having a clear goal. This is followed by a series of events that make the goal either undesirable or unattainable. At the end of the arc we come back to the status quo without as much as teaching the main characters a life lesson. There is ultimately no point to the events that occurred in the course of the game.

I always use the same test for all popculture I experience. I ask myself a simple question: How much of it will stay with me in my long term memory. Although my naughty fortnight was a pleasing, visually impressive experience, it was also a rather forgettable one. None of the 4 games brought enough to the table to reserve a place in my memory. None of them are particularly bad games either, they are just okay. If youre looking for accessible games to kill some hours, go for it. But be aware, Naughty Dogs quadrilogy are just 4 iterations of the same old concept.