You’ll want to play Uncharted 4 for a bunch of reasons. Among them: its more expansive areas, slick puzzles and superb gunplay. But something I wasn’t expecting to care about is how beguiling this game cane be—and you can see why in my latest TIME Plays video above.
As I wrote in my review: “Naughty Dog’s known for bringing processors to their knees, but what the Santa Monica-based studio accomplished here—less a show of raw power than of painterly engineering—verges on sublime.” More:
Light off nearby taro fronds or distant vines dims and brightens as clouds pass in front of the sun. Jungle-choked ruins rise crookedly from cliff side foundations like a floating Atlantean paradise. Mist-cloaked mountains frame gobsmacking panoramas that might as well be National Geographic-inspired oil paintings. Foregrounds and backgrounds coalesce in visual pageantry that shouldn’t be possible on 2016-era tech. Nothing you’ve played—on any platform, including PC—approaches what Uncharted 4 looks like.
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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com