Steven Hansen

Nathan Drake has a brother. That is the plot device that sets Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End into motion. The once orphaned and alone boy Drake who sought a father figure in Victor Sullivan and, after three adventures, settled into a life of domesticity with Elena Fisher, has more family than we knew. And more than he knew, as Sam Drake, a ghost of Nate’s past, comes back into his life after 15 years of absence.

The drunk, nude teens bathing in the lake at sunset summed up Firewatch neatly: “you’re just some sad man out in the woods.” Kids always know just where to cut. If you could translate the insult quadrant of their brains you’d have the most precise web algorithms in the world and only ever see cute animal gifs and Missy Elliot songs.

I sometimes forget that Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981. Its breezy pulp adventure quality carries only obvious signifiers of its era (like, Nazis), and the repetition of these tropes act as enough hand waving to the point where Uncharted‘s modern day setting can be taken for granted, though mostly because the series tends to exist outside what we see as modern society (save maybe for Elena’s camcorder) and instead provide the same fantastical distance that 19th century adventure novels

[Note: This review is based on a retail PlayStation 4 copy of Batman: Arkham Knight, not the PC version that is so broken publisher Warner Bros. temporarily delisted it from sale]