For almost a decade, from 2007 to 2016, Naughty Dog's Uncharted franchise fueled the video game medium's ascendance from a relatively niche form of entertainment to an acknowledged art form more profitable than the film industry. It's rare to find a series that's not only consistently beloved across so many installments, but whose every element pushed the boundaries of what video games could accomplish. Cinematic story structure, lively dialogue, nuanced characters, sweeping soundtracks, white-knuckle action gameplay... Uncharted has it all.
Nothing, however, spiked in complexity and grandiosity from game to game quite like the action set pieces. Every new Uncharted game managed to find a way to put Nathan Drake in parlous situations that outdid the previous game. Like some combination of Die Hard, Indiana Jones, and a Rube Goldberg contraption, they create excitement with a mixture of cartoonish stunts and logical sequencing.
Especially with the news of the franchise's foremost inspiration, Indiana Jones, going for what will likely be its biggest video game adaptation yet with Bethesda, it's time to take a look back at the set pieces that made players sweat as much as their burly on-screen avatar. From crashing cargo planes to collapsing buildings, here are the most delightfully grandiose moments the forthcoming Uncharted movie adaptation will have a hard time topping.
#4 Best Uncharted Action Sequence - Sinking Ship, Uncharted 3
Part of the joy of playing through the Uncharted quadrilogy is getting the feeling the developers are dead-set on putting Nathan Drake through every manner of disaster conceivable. Thus, it was only a matter of time before he'd have to find his way off a literal sinking ship. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception saw to that with this cruise disaster. It's not enough to just have to climb through halls of cabins, though. The scene really nails it by having a chandelier break the ship's glass ceiling, setting off the hero's most desperate escape yet.
#3 Best Uncharted Action Sequence - Collapsing Building, Uncharted 2
Over a decade after its release, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves remains the best game in the entire series. Naughty Dog truly flexed their action chops, programming it to run on their own engine advanced enough for extensive motion capture and cinematic sequences. The best instance is here, in which Nathan Drake and his British cohort Chloe Frazer are chased by a relentless enemy helicopter throughout a city in Nepal. They eventually get cornered in a building that the helicopter torpedoes, causing it to collapse as Nathan slides around, trying to fend off mercenaries before a do-or-die jump through a window.
#2 Best Uncharted Action Sequence - Cargo Plane, Uncharted 3
In a series that shamelessly wears its cinematic influences on its tattered sleeve, none may be as screamingly obvious as this one. In one heart-in-throat sequence, Nathan must climb from the edge of cargo hanging out of a plane before it crashes into the desert sand. It's an almost note-for-note lift of one of the best scenes of the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights. Even better, the crash is followed by one of the series' most grueling and surreal passages, in which Drake must wander the Rub' al Khali Desert.
#1 Best Uncharted Action Sequence - Car Chase in the Mud, Uncharted 4
2016's Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was the ideal ending to the Nathan Drake saga It also stood as one of the greatest showcases of then-next-gen graphical capabilities upon release, and still looks superb almost five whole years later. No sequence displays that visual depth like this chase scene, where Nathan is dragged through the mud (literally) and swings over a river as he holds onto a crane cable. The details of the wet mud and surrounding environment are mind-boggling in their precision.