10 Things An Xbox Player Learned Playing Uncharted For The First Time
4. Enemy Variety Could Be Improved
Naughty Dog
Naughty Dog really have a knack for perfecting AI. Uncharted's enemies are of course ruthless, but this adaptive element of combat didn't truly achieve perfection until the studio got to grips with The Last of Us, another of their critically acclaimed masterpieces.
Like any title typical of the shooter genre, enemy variety is segmented into the safe yet clichéd class types of general infantry, snipers, close quarters brawlers, and brutes. However, there is little to no variation of these foes throughout the entire trilogy. What you see in Drake's Fortune is (mostly) what you get for the remainder of the series.
It's not wholly detrimental to Uncharted's package, since there's an awful lot more to the series than its gunplay. Indeed, there's an intricate balance between shooting, platforming, puzzle-solving and, obviously, the powerhouse narrative on offer throughout. Whilst that doesn't negate any dissatisfaction to be had with the series' combat mechanics, it does show that it more thank makes up for it in other areas.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
