Soapbox: I Decided to Show My Family Uncharted 4's Incredible Gameplay Demo

You've all seen the Uncharted 4: A Thief's End E3 2015 gameplay demo by now - or at least, I hope that you have. When I was sat here with editor Sammy Barker, watching Sony's press conference live at 3AM, our already tired brains had been battered by the wealth of megatons that the Japanese company had casually paraded out on stage as if they were nothing. The Last Guardian had been revived right at the start of the show, we got confirmation of a Final Fantasy VII remake out of nowhere, and the reveal of Shenmue III almost killed my colleague on the spot. We sat there wondering just how Sony would finish such a momentous occasion off, and while we both knew that Nathan Drake's upcoming escapade would have to show up sooner or later, we weren't quite prepared for just how good an appearance it'd put in.

Indeed, Naughty Dog's latest project proceeded to blow us away with one of the best gameplay segments that we've ever seen at the Los Angeles expo - but that wasn't the end. Last week, Sony released the full, uncut demo on its YouTube channel, which featured a further seven minutes of gameplay that only members of the press got to see behind closed doors at E3. Somehow, Naughty Dog managed to outdo themselves yet again with the second half of the demo, with Drake taking down a convoy of baddies at breakneck speed on a muddy road, complete with some utterly glorious explosions. The whole thing's bloody brilliant, and I was so impressed, I decided that I had to share the joy with my family.

Now, a quick bit of backstory. You probably haven't noticed, but I don't tend to write anything for Push Square on Sundays - this is usually because I bugger off to my aunt's house for a family get-together each week. I've been doing this since I was a kid, and in fact, it's the place where I was first introduced to video games thanks to my cousin's enthusiasm. Now, my cousin's married, and she's got two kids of her own that both enjoy games, and her husband likes them, too. Meanwhile, my uncle - her dad - is also a long-time lover of gaming, although he prefers his PC. In any case, the lot of them know their games to some extent, but only my 12-year-old nephew owns a new-gen console.

As such, I was dying to show them the Uncharted 4 gameplay. Confident that they'd be glued to the TV throughout, I was eager to see what they thought. I set my PlayStation 4 up, loaded the YouTube app, and waited until everyone was sat down. When the Naughty Dog logo popped on screen, my uncle chimed up. "Are they still going?" he asked. "Yep, they're one of the best in the business now," I replied. Barring the youngsters, everyone knew who Naughty Dog was as we'd enjoyed the multiplayer mayhem of Crash Team Racing for years back in the days of the PSone. Unsurprisingly, they were all thrilled to learn that the studio was still around, and was busy making such amazing stuff.

When Drake and Sully appeared, my uncle spoke again. "This is a cutscene though isn't it," he stated. "They look real don't they?" my cousin's husband followed up. I sat there, knowing full well that it was all in-game, and awaited the inevitable reactions as Drake started shuffling through the crowd. "This is gameplay," I said, like a really smug Sony employee. "Get away" my uncle replied. "Someone's playing that? This is someone playing the game?"

I pointed at the screen: "Him walking through the crowd, and all the stuff that comes after is gameplay - it's someone playing it." My uncle just shook his head, but he had a wry smile on his face. Once the bad guys burst onto the scene and forced Drake into a gunfight, my nephew was visibly enthralled. My cousin's daughter, who's the youngest of all, came into the room and asked what it was - her dad told her it was game, and even she seemed impressed.

"How long does it take them to make this?" my uncle asked as Drake jumped off a roof, whacked a guy right in the head, and caught his gun in mid-air. "A few years at least," I answered. "Don't know how they do it," he mumbled. By this point, Nate and Sully were up on a roof, and that damn truck was still trying to gun them down. Drake smashed a guy through some fencing with a heavy punch to the jaw, and my cousin's husband let out a chuckle. My uncle, meanwhile, just let out an entertained "heh". They seemed to like the dialogue, too. Sully's "still got it" line provoked some laughter, and there were more than a couple of comments about how the game was "just like a movie".

Next up, the jeep section, in which our two heroes zoom through a series of heavily populated streets in order to outrun the persistent armoured truck, was an unsurprisingly big hit. "Look at the detail," my nephew commented, visibly impressed, eyes still locked on the screen. "How many times must they have practised this?" my uncle asked, shaking his head again, as the duo avoided certain death time and time again. "It's unreal," he said. A few more dialogue-induced laughs later, and we were nearing the second half of the demo, so I thought I'd hype things up and tell everyone that the best was yet to come.

Turns out that I didn't oversell it, as the chase that starts with Drake clambering onto the back of a truck and subsequently hopping to another speeding jeep had everybody sitting in silence, transfixed on the TV, as if they were watching a film. That silence lasted up until said truck bundles off the road and explodes into red flames, when my uncle let out another entertained chuckle. "This is ridiculous," he said, then he just started to chuckle again as the action continued to ramp up.

Finally, the chase scene between Drake and his brother Sam on a motorbike, and the never-ending truck began. "It reminds me of the levels where you had to outrun boulders and dinosaurs in Crash Bandicoot," my cousin's husband remarked - and thinking about it, he isn't far off. In many ways, like the similar sequence in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, it's like the evolution of Crash's crazy chases, and considering that both were crafted by Naughty Dog, it's actually a really cool comparison. In any case, it's safe to say that my family was captivated by the intense action beaming into their minds. Mission complete.

I didn't bother showing the last few minutes of the demo - after all, none of them knew the franchise, and they certainly don't know who Elena is, but they didn't need to see it anyway. "That was incredible, that," my cousin's husband said. "It's mad what they can do these days." My nephew, being the pre-teen that he is, didn't say much, but he clearly enjoyed the whole thing. Meanwhile, my usually stoic uncle stood up and left the room with a bit of a grin on his face - which is probably the highest praise that Naughty Dog's project has received up to this point. If he's impressed, then it must be doing something right.

And that, as they say, was that. After some of the comments, and some of the looks of almost disbelief, I was glad that I had decided to show it off, even if I did act like a shill for Sony and its newest console for about twenty minutes. Writing for a site like Push Square, I see the reactions of you lot on a daily basis, but what I don't get to see very often is how those who aren't quite so familiar with games perceive them. In that sense, it was great to see people outside of the 'hardcore' sphere enjoying Uncharted 4 and its ridiculous action - to the point where my family was visibly enthralled. Needless to say, I'll be taking the full game around there next year, and hopefully, it'll be just as entertaining.