IMO 2 and 4 are easily the best Uncharted games. I wouldn't recommend 1 or 3 at all, despite 3 having a plot that should have really appealed to me. The first one mostly suffers from unrefined mechanics making it a slog, but they fixed that in 2.

But, 2 and 4 are very different. 2 is a solid 3d action-platformer, while my favorite parts of 4 were when it basically just became a "walking simulator"-type game for long stretches, with most of the action and platforming just feeling tacked-on and superfluous.

> (I haven't played The Last of Us though. I hear it's incredible, but I can't deal with the subject matter.)

I should have loved it, but bounced off hard. The prologue had me, but a little while into the game proper I just wanted all the main characters to die, including the one you're really, really not supposed to want to die. They're all horrible and I didn't like or care about them a single bit, to the point that I wanted them to fail. The protagonist in particular, I had to root for him to fail because clearly this humanity-on-the-brink would be better off with one fewer self-interested mass-murders around making things even worse. That's... not a great way to motivate the player.

> I had to root for him to fail because clearly this humanity-on-the-brink would be better off with one fewer self-interested mass-murders around making things even worse. That's... not a great way to motivate the player.

Isn't the question of the players morality vs the "enemies" core to the entire concept of the game though? I think the lesson the game is trying to teach is exactly that: by what standard is the protagonist actually any "better" than those he regards as enemies? By the end of the game, I think doubting the main character is hopefully exactly the point - he isn't a good person either. In a completely lawless world such as that inhabited by the characters, I think this makes sense to explore.

Make the central character a likable, non-mass murdering fellow and this huge central theme of the game disappears - The Last of Us is harrowing by design, I'd argue, and its commitment to being harrowing is what sets it apart as a game in a sea of relatively emotionally shallow "AAA" titles of the same era.

Maybe, but it was kind of a problem when I was already like "is there a way to progress the game but have this guy not accomplish what he wants?" on like mission 1 (past the prologue)—there was no build-up to it, I thought he was wrong and should fail immediately. And they might have gone for some kind of turn-around on that when the girl comes into the story, so that I start wanting him to succeed, but then, I also didn't like her and didn't care if anything involved with that worked out, either.

I think I quit right after the game had me murder a couple soldiers for bad reasons. I already have several GTA games I can play, which, thanks to tone and expectations, aren't frustrating when they ask me to do that kind of thing. My head-canon is that the soldiers instead shot everyone there and that was the good ending for the story.

...if you haven't already heard of it, I feel like you'd enjoy Spec Ops: The Line. Go in completely blind if at all possible, and don't be turned off by the fact that it seems like a generic dudebro war shooter. It does start out that way.

Yeah, Spec Ops: The Line was really good. Really good like some movies I've seen where I was like "that was great—I wish I hadn't seen it", but still, really good.

Dunno about this recommendation, it feels like the parent poster would have the same issues with Spec Ops as with TLoU. But still they can forge their own opinions about it.

Without spoiling too much, the difference to me is that Spec Ops is aware of and addresses people's actions, and even more critically lets the player make different choices.