Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog is for players who want story-first console games with polished action, big set pieces and strong character work. By our assessment, it is especially good at cinematic pacing and at making third-person traversal, shooting and stealth feel carefully tuned rather than rough. The trade-off is that its games are usually heavily authored and fairly linear, so there is less freedom than in an open-world sandbox. In practice that means a lot of directed movement, scripted scenes and attention to detail, which suits people who want a tightly controlled ride and not people who want a loose systems toy. Naughty Dog sits near the top of modern action-adventure studios because its work has a reputation for polish and production value.