Naughty Dog Games Have a Bit of a Pacing Issue

gamerant.com:

A game can suffer from bad pacing, even if it's often associated with TV shows and movies. Pacing is a technical element that is hard to pinpoint, but when it's wrong a player or viewer can just feel it. In a movie, bad pacing can be attributed to a number of things, such as lengthy dialog scenes that cover little ground, action sequences that don't offer much excitement, or a combination of both, leading to a sense that the movie hasn't really gone anywhere. Bad pacing in a video game is very similar, and Naughty Dog games tend to suffer from it at least once during their runtimes.

Whether it's Uncharted or The Last of Us, Naughty Dog's games usually have at least one moment that feels like it drags. While these games are widely considered to be some of the best first-party experiences around, they aren't perfect, and even one or two moments of bad pacing can put a dampener on any player's enjoyment.

Naughty Dog Co-President Teases 3 Games In Development

The Uncharted series is the biggest offender of Naughty Dog's bad pacing. In all the Uncharted games, there's at least one moment where the explosive action set-pieces come to an end and the player is tasked with solving a puzzle. While this is expected of a puzzle-action/adventure game, it's undeniable that the these sections bring the game to a screeching halt.

The perfect example of this is seen with Uncharted 4's Scotland and Madagascar puzzles, which both mark an abrupt end to arguably the game's best sections. Players go from swinging around cliffs and climbing up towers to shooting their way through an intense firefight, and then are suddenly being forced to turn a wheel or flip some puzzle pieces.

While it is true that an action game needs downtime in order to make