Uncharted 4: 9 Annoying Things That Stop It Being Perfect

8. Crates, Crates Everywhere

This is the kind of thing you realised upon a second playthrough of The Last of Us - that game's liberal use of wooden boards as a means to get Ellie across any expanse of water. Thankfully they always made sense contextually (a piece of debris would always be somewhere nearby during the post-apocalypse), whereas in Uncharted, the abundance of crates starts to feel hilariously forced by game's end.

Two particular times I laughed at just how convenient these were. Firstly during At Sea, where you and brother Sam explore the Madagascan coast, finding ruined temples and disused cave systems. You hoist Sam up a ledge and he remarks that he'll "find something to help you up", only for a whopping great industrial crate - complete with wheels - to come tumbling down.

Like, who put it there? And why is it the only modernised piece of environment design to remain?

The exact same thing happens later on with Elena, where the same scenario plays out in the middle of a humid jungle - a perfectly-sized crate just happens to be lying around, waiting for you to use it.

Yes, it's a video game and yes, 'box puzzles' have been a part of the genre since Lara's chest-melons were triangles, but could Naughty Dog really not have included some other way of getting around these areas? It's a stilted reminder that you're playing a video game, amid an experience that's otherwise succeeding at being so much more.