If I'd known a movie version of Uncharted was soon coming out, I would have been a bit more guarded about admitting I'm a huge fan of the game to my editor. I am a fan, but I'm also a parent now, and I can't just leave the house on a whim for some entertainment. I need to hire a nanny to watch my kid, and like ordering popcorn and Twizzlers, that factors into the cost of catching a flick. This was this the first movie we've seen in a theater since Musa was born. I'm still waiting for the new Spider-Man to make it to streaming platforms, which is the only way my wife and I get to scratch our movie itch these days.

There are worse movies than Uncharted, especially when it comes to the seemingly cursed genre of video game adaptations. But as I struggled to stay awake through the finale -- yet another weightless action sequence where our heroes quip, defy physics and never feel like they're in any genuine danger -- I couldn't help but wonder why the film was so aggressively average. The PlayStation franchise started out as a Tomb Raider clone starring a dude who wasn't Indiana Jones. But, starting with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the games tapped into the language of action movies to put you in the center of innovative set pieces. They were cinematic in ways that few titles were in the early 2010s.

For the first-timers here, "A Thief's End" is the award-winning final act of Nathan Drake's story. I'll tip-toe around the plot details and just write that in the beginning of the game, which originally released in 2016, Drake is cajoled out of retirement to go on one last hunt for a long-dead pirate's treasure. "The Lost Legacy," which Naughty Dog released a year later, follows Chloe Fraizer and Nadine Ross -- two of the most compelling characters in the series -- on their own adventure through the Western Ghats, a mountain range on the southwest coast of India. Neither of these games is going to spoil whatever happens in Tom Holland's adventure as Nathan Drake. Sony has said that the movie "took inspiration from the games" but the story line is "completely unique."

Watching all the enthusiasm about the newly released Marvel's Spider-Man game on social media last week, one of the most interesting things is how much people enjoy the parts of the game that aren't about fighting bad guys. I've lost count of the number of tweets along the lines of: "I just like swinging through the streets; I like the sense of grace and freedom; I'd do that all day if I could." But they can't, of course, because there are bad guys to punch. The game does, however, have a photo mode and that has proved immensely popular. My Twitter timeline is awash with images of Spider-Men taking selfies in front of the Statue of Liberty, hanging out near pride flags and somersaulting past the Chrysler building in the glorious sunshine.

You can tell that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy started as more of an expansion than a standalone game. Rather than spanning the globe like previous Uncharted games, it all takes place in one part of India. And you get to play as a woman, who are so often relegated to DLC in these big franchises such as BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea or smaller spin-off games such as Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. Even in Naughty Dog's own The Last of Us: Left Behind, we only got to play as Ellie after we'd met her through the eyes of generic video game man Joel. But The Lost Legacy expanded during development, and although Uncharted 4 season pass holders won't have to pay for it, it's now a full-length by-the-numbers Uncharted game led by two women – the Indian-Australian Chloe Frazer and the black South African Nadine Ross.

Warning: this article contains sexual references, sexual innuendo and unlikely sexual interpretations of ostensibly inoffensive material. It turns out that 2016 was a pretty good year for video games. Everything else might have gone to hell, but games pretty much delivered. From the showy popcorn thrills of Uncharted 4 to the sombre gothic chills of Dishonored 2; from blockbusters to rule-breakers; from lumbering epics to short, sharp shocks, 2016 had it all. But was it a sexy year for games?

There's a question at the heart of the Uncharted games that the latest title, released to great acclaim this month, tackles most directly: is the dashing lead protagonist, Nathan Drake, a hero or a thief? The continuing success of Naughty Dog's action-adventure series, along with the resurgent Tomb Raider games, shows that the "adventuring archaeologist" trope is a resilient one. The modern precursor of both Nathan Drake and Lara Croft is of course Indiana Jones, who retains a vice-like grip over the public imagination. But Jones represents an archetype that stretches back much further, of course; his true inspiration can be traced beyond the 1950s movie matinee serials and pulp comics that inspired George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and toward the great colonial fantasies of King Solomon's Mines, The Lost World and the Boy's Own magazines. There are even older precedents: Egyptian literature from the first century CE introduces Setna – a prince who raids tombs in search of a magical book.

For his last hurrah, Nathan Drake is getting some help from an unlikely ally. The jovial treasure hunter has been the star of the Uncharted series since the first entry debuted in 2007 for PlayStation 3. Nearly 10 years and 21 million copies sold later, developer Naughty Dog is ready to say goodbye to the action-adventure franchise with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (out May 10 exclusively for PlayStation 4). During a recent presentation for the press in Los Angeles, creative director Neil Druckmann said "compromising was never an option" for Nate's swan song, hence the numerous delays the game went through before the studio firmly settled on a date. Naughty Dog wasn't satisfied with just making a larger, prettier sequel. A lot of the innovations in Uncharted 4 actually occur in between the action-packed set pieces and impressively detailed cutscenes.