The Podcats: Uneven 3
Looking at the uneven Uncharted 3 and MW3
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Review: Uncharted 3
Lisvender reviews Uncharted 3
Developed by Naughty Dog. Published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Available on Playstation 3.
So many threes this year! It used to be that hitting three was a big freaking deal for a video game series; Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, and Contra all made significant advancements when they hit their threes, and those games are still recognized as some of the best ever made. Capcom was so nervous about the expectations gamers had for the Land of Three, that they hesitated for six years before they brought Street Fighter there.
While I’m quite happy to see Nathan Drake, Victor Sullivan, Elena Fisher, and their treasure-hunting coterie back in action, that excitement is tempered by a dull familiarity. Like Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, and Modern Warfare 3, Uncharted 3 is not a leap forward for the series, but simple continuation with small adjustments. It’s more of what I love, but that’s just what I don’t love about it, and I just can’t give it the same wholehearted recommendation that I would for Uncharted 2.
The mysterious Katherine Marlowe, the apparent leader of some secret society of British knights, is interested in buying Drake’s ring. You know, the ring: the one that Drake’s been wearing around his neck since 2007. But Drake’s no sucker. He’s not about to sell off his precious heirloom when he understands its importance. The game’s story travels around the globe and even back in time to explain the significance of the ring, and its connection to a lost city hidden in a forbidding Arabian desert. All our favorite characters from the series make appearances, and although the sexpot Chloe Frazer disappears pretty early on this time, we get to spend a good chunk of quality time with ol’ Sully, Drake’s mentor and father figure.
Sully is thematically important in this game, as his unwavering loyalty to Drake puts him in harm’s way more than once. The actual plot of the game has a typical nature (most players should be able to guess the ending long before they reach it), so to spice it a bit, the writers decided to ask, “Drake, when are you going to settle down?” If you found Chloe’s perennial skepticism annoying in Uncharted 2, wait till you get a load of the resistance Drake faces in this game. Suddenly, everyone wants to know why Drake keeps risking his life in the pursuit of these mad quests, and I kept hoping that ol’ Drake would just get fed up and say, “We’re in an action-packed video game series, you morons! If I don’t, we’re out of work!”
The story’s got other problems too. I would have liked to learn more about Marlowe and her crew, as she seems to have an elaborate background, but as in the previous Uncharted games, the villains are given only minuscule descriptions. Apparently, all we need to know is that they’re shooting at us. Also, the elements of the supernatural, which I expected to really explode and dazzle me this time around, are restrained further than ever before in the series, so the story’s final payoff is real letdown.
But hey, you don’t want to play Uncharted for the story; you want to play it for the set-pieces. You want to see shit crumble, explode, and crash; you want to see Drake hanging by his fingernails above acres of certain death. Fear not, you get a whole lot of that in this game, but you should be prepared to wait a while for it. Though it probably would have been derivative to begin Uncharted 3 in the same way as its predecessor, with Drake in some unimaginably precarious situation, I still think it would have been preferable to the slow-paced setup that we get instead. Drake is still a walking disaster area, and there are lots of crazy and creative scenarios, but they’re not front-loaded this time, so beware.
Uncharted’s gameplay is comprised of three elements: climbing, shooting, and brawling. The first two games had some unique fighting elements with brutal combos and steel fist finishers, but this one beefs up the brawling significantly. You can now manually grapple and shove enemies, counter incoming attacks Batman-style, and sock people with random nearby objects. You can even earn a trophy for slapping three enemies with a fish. The fistfights don’t feel as smooth and elegant as they do in the Arkham games, but they’re still dramatic, exciting, and thrilling. The game’s best fights pit you against giant gorilla-men called Brutes, who can take a terrific beating before finally staying down. You’ll really feel like a tough guy after taking one of these bastards out.
When you’re not punching bad guys, you’re shooting at them, and this part of the game still doesn’t quite feel as good as it should either. The aiming speed is noticeably slower than it was in previous Uncharted games, the few new guns don’t feel all that new, and sometimes Drake will roll out into the open instead of taking cover like you want him to, but these aren’t the worst troubles. The real problems are in the level design. While Naughty Dog continue to prove that they’re the masters of creative shootouts, you’ll still encounter a few spots where you’ll get killed repeatedly by unseen dudes with rocket launchers, and others where you’ll be pinned in one place by snipers while heavily armored jerks with shotguns march up and kill you in one hit. A protracted struggle near the end of the game takes place during a sandstorm that wrecks your visibility, but doesn’t seem to hamper the accuracy of the mounted machine guns you need to take out. It’s incredibly frustrating. I understand the need to come up with creative challenges, but irritation is an important factor to consider, and I was hoping that Naughty Dog would watch for this crap and iron it out. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.
So this leaves the climbing. The climbing sequences have traditionally been the easiest parts of the Uncharted games, demanding only keen observation to complete, and here things are extremely guided. You almost always have a partner telling you what to look for, or how to get where you need to go, and it’s never very difficult. Even so, they’re still enjoyable, as they give the game a chance to showcase its incredible details and settings. Some of the scenery is just gorgeous to look upon, like an old creaky chateau or the ballroom of a sinking ship. The game has a propulsive feel overall, though, and as a lifelong gamer, I get hungry for action quickly, so my inclination is to keep moving forward. I don’t have time to marvel.
This inclination made things frustrating for me because Uncharted 3 often wants you to slow down, either to tell its story through controllable cinematics, or to make you solve puzzles. I really hate controllable cinematics: those slow-paced sequences in which games force you to walk around while you get your head dunked in exposition. Uncharted 2 had a couple of scenes like this, but Uncharted 3 takes them way too far. The first such scene in the game isn’t too bad because it’s mysterious: we’re taken to a strange time and place, and we aren’t told what we’re looking for. After this, though, it’s all downhill. Do we really need to play through half a dozen scenes of Drake wandering through a desert before we finally get to some action? You really do control Drake through these painful scenes of nothingness, too; in fact, you are forced to control him, or else the game won’t progress! It’s the equivalent of that Super Mario Bros. art video where Mario walks across a flat, featureless level, endlessly. Why couldn’t these just be put together into one long, skippable, cutscene? Why am I the only one who’s angry about this?!
The game’s puzzles, on the other hand, don’t want you to linger at all. Your companions will often call out hints for you, and sometimes even Drake will figure things out before you do. One particular puzzle required me to line up a series of cogs which were scattered around the room to make a door open. Whenever you enter a puzzle room, the game prompts you to press Select to open Drake’s handy-dandy journal. I did so, and when I flipped to the last page, I found that Drake had already drawn the solution to the puzzle before I even picked up my first cog. It was amazing! How the hell did he do that? I guess he just wanted to save me some time.
I never thought I would say this, but for me, the saving grace of Uncharted 3 is its multiplayer. While the competitive aspects are the usual frustrating games of run around, shoot people, and die, the cooperative games include a surprisingly fun adventure mode. In this mode, three players take on the roles of Drake and his buddies as they play through a non-canonical story split across five half-hour missions. Series villains Eddy Raja, Harry Flynn, and Zoran Lazarevic all make exuberant comebacks, and the delightful writing and acting of the single-player experience is all there, but condensed to keep things moving quickly. You can rescue your friends from danger, high-five them as you go, and see who can rack up the highest score. It’s the perfect way to blast bad guys and explore levels in classic Uncharted style, while earning points and money that you can put towards your multiplayer upgrades. I found it incredibly addictive, the ultimate online video game, and I sincerely hope that that Naughty Dog will release further co-op adventures as downloadable content.
If you’re a fan of Uncharted, you really can’t go wrong with this game, but I feel you should be warned that it’s not going to feel as exciting this time around. While Naughty Dog has gone to great pains to create some tremendous, scripted spectacles, it’s simply impossible to ignore the familiar, comfortable, and just plain formulaic design of the rest of the game. What Uncharted needs is a significant transformation; some real, fundamental upgrades in its structure. A total overhaul, perhaps. Or, maybe it just needs to study Portal 2 a bit more closely.
Controller1.com rating: 2/3
The Podcats: THREE (Uncharted 3, BF3, MW3)
Why has Uncharted 3 not impressed me? Why has Battlefield 3 not lasted that long? Why has Modern Warf… HOST MIGRATION… Synchronizing Game…are 3 kept peer-to-peer Multiplayer on PC?
Review: Uncharted 2
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Naughty Dog. Published by SCEA/SCEE
So I can be one of the cool kids, I too am playing Naughty Dog’s latest. A bit over half way through the single player and what do I think? It’s excellent. It’s the game that sells the PS3 in a way the first game could only dream of and only Metal Gear IV came close to doing. It makes the PS3 sing in every way possible and is a rollicking good time to boot.
So why the hell is Elena’s voice so irritating to listen to in this? I don’t know. Maybe Nolan North’s sexy Drake voice just makes everyone wet (whether he’s in this, Shadow Complex or ODST). The Farscape chick has a way sexier voice when Chloe speaks. This is the game that makes animators cry look little girls and engine programmers weep into their Starcraft pajamas. It’s prettier than a prom date after the third whiskey and sounds better than Elvis and Michael Jackson releasing an album of Beatles covers.
How did we get here? Years ago, these guys made the first four Crash Bandicoot games. Then they made Jak and Daxter on the PS2. Then everyone who knew how to make a game died and they released Jak II. Obviously they’ve learned some sort of sorcery in order to resurrect the talent and produce this masterpiece.
At the start of the game you play as Drake after he’s been involved in a serious accident. Recovering his wits as best he can we quickly get start to see how Drake got to this point. Suckered in by friends and ex lovers, Drake ends up in jail, yada, yada, blah. So he climbs a lot more and there’s less ordinary Gears clone sequences. That’s what people who played the first game wanted to know. The first game was a lot of fun, a sleeper hit for PS3 but the second game ratchets up everything that matters. More climbing and more action sequences rather than static hide behind cover and shoot all the enemies in the area. The game almost does away with constant repetition. Almost.
One minute you’ll be having a gun battle, then climbing along the side of a moving train, then attempting to shoot down a helicopter with an RPG, then have a serious conversation with a chick with eyes glassier than an Apple store. It constantly changes so that you get a feeling the developers really took the criticism of the first game to heart and just worked their guts out to avoid the same complaints the second time around. On a train, being chased by a truck, in cars, on foot, climb this- It’s all there and it’s done in a way that doesn’t scream “Hey! They just copy and pasted that bit!”
The story is classic Indiana Jones without having to pay a rich old man royalties. You have Drake, his most recent flame, plus an old flame. It’s as if the Marion showed up in Last Crusade. Go here, do this, go here grab this. It all flows together well and you don’t think “well, here’s the sewer level. Here’s the Ice level. Here’s the desert level,” like you did in the Resistance games. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like a particular scene since it’s likely going to change in five minutes to something different anyway. The awesome sense of humour is intact and funny as ever. When you hit the Nepalese levels and reach the top of the hotel, jump in the pool.
The visuals are just draw dropping. Killzone 2 doesn’t look this good. It’s not perfect but it does what you expect of it. It’s bright and colourful in away that PS3/360 games aren’t known for yet feels real. Maybe Crysis on Max has better graphics but I’ll stick with Uncharted for my own benchmark. Sound is very good but really the voice artistes are the stars of this game almost as much as the gameplay and the visuals. The acting is perfect. It sure beats the silly voices in Killzone 2 and over the top theatrics of Kojima’s last epic. Yes, Elena’s voice is whiny but she’s whiny. You need that contrast with Chloe’s deeper voice. Drake may well be the best character to headline a game since Masterchief. Despite every lead character looking the same, you won’t be mixing him up with Sam Fisher, Ezio or that Shadow Complex guy. Well maybe that Shadow Complex guy.
The game even tweets for you much to the consternation of your followers. Funnily enough- I don’t think it actually works since I’ve set mine up and my twitter doesn’t actually have any of the auto-tweets there.
Uncharted 2 manages what Killzone 2 didn’t. It was actually more than a basic shooter that didn’t try to do anything new, just solidly. Uncharted manages to meet expectations and delivers on the hype and buzz surrounding its release. It deserves to sell far more than Gran Turismo 5 or Assassin’s Creed 2. Don’t have a PS3? Well now you have a reason to get that second job (though with the price now, it’s more like overtime on your first job)
Controller1.com rating 3/3
E3 2009- part 2. I Need a Drink
To continue: the Sony and Nintendo conferences were held today, the first day of the show, proper.
So let’s get into it….
Sony
God of War III is coming in March 2010. It looks like a painting come to life according to David Jaffe and I’m not going to argue with him, merely ask him not to visit goth art galleries anymore whilst inebriated. the fourth game in the trilogy 9(!) will close out the series (!).
PSP Go! was announced. People were shocked. People who woke up from coma’s were shocked anyway. Its a slimmer, UMD less PSP that will go on sale in a few months for US$250 alongside the current PSP-3000. PSP will finally see Gran Turismo portable, which seems to have taken a leaf out of Pokemon and Monster Hunter’s huge popularity in Japan by allowing trades over wifi. There’s a new Metal Gear portable game, Peacewalker or Pisstaker or something and this looks to be set a few years after Metal Gear 3. There’s the previously mentioned Little Big Planet PSP, Motorstorm and Assassin’s Creed PSP; as well as a newly announce PSP Resident Evi, PSP Infamous and PSP Soul Calibur.
On the PS3 front there’s the duel wand motion controller, currently unnamed and listed for release sometime in 2010. You can now get your waggle in three different flavours, depending on which system you own. As far as games go there weren’t many surprises, as most had been either announced, teased or leaked before the show. What games were shown mostly look pretty cool. Uncharted 2 looks to be fantastic, but we new that. MAG looks to be big and expansive but we knew that. The demo was nice in showing the strengths and weakness of the concept. Another quick look at the new Ratchet game in one of Sony’s many montages and a new Final Fantasy online game, FFXIV for release in 2010 on PS3 only.
But the exclusive that looks most intriguing is Agent, from Rock Star. Its set in the 70′s so I’m sure we’ll get that period completely inaccurate (you know early 70′s hippie fashions and giant afros with disco music). You’re an assassin. Its a Rock Star game so you’re never going to be handing out leaflets in a mall.
Assassin’s Creed 2, not shown on the Ubi conference, was demoed but as Jade Raymond was no where to be seen we’ll skip that. Just kidding. Can this game redeem the flaws of the original? Time will tell. PS3 is getting some exclusive DLC. Its called the PSP version and if you buy that, you get some extra weapons to use. Also shown is a cartoon racer where you can make and share tracks. Moving right along, there’s The Last Guardian, from the makers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Even though the trailer showed up on the web a few days ago, its still nice to see.
Overall, better than last year but we knew 95% of the content previously so the surprise factor was lower. Personally, GoW III, Ratchet and Uncharted 2 are my must haves on PS3 out of what was shown here.
Nintendo
Well, if they could put the word Mario into any more products they would. They started by talking about mario’s evolution and how they want to take Mario into 4D. By this they mean a 4-player coop version of All New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. A 2D renaissance has taken place with this and Epic’s XBLA game announced yesterday, but hopefully this won’t merely be the DS game upscaled for Wii (though bets on that’s exactly what this is).
Of course there would be WiiFit 2. Nintendo may not be making the kewl games like they used to but your grandma needs something to do in between lawn bowls and writing angry letters to the newspaper. Motion Plus was pimped yet again, with what seemed to be a familiar montage of what you could do with it (deja vu circa the Wii’s2006 launch).
Wii Sports resort seems to be less of a tech demo and more of a “this is what we should have done all along” game.
Along the same vein, Red Steel 2 (Motion plus only, it seems) is going to try and fulfill the promises Ubi made in 2006 with the big selling but reviled original.
We have a Final Fantasy game for Wii, Crystal something. Open world gayness from SE. Weeeeee. A DS Kingdom HeartZzzzzzzzz. Mario and Luigi told from Bowser’s side. oh dear. Golden Sun. Oh well, some fanboys should be happy. But Women’s Murder Club? Cops: A recruit ?. I think my DS will be getting dustier and dustier.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong Mini’s March Again, is more puzzling action, this time with a level editor- buts its a DSi Ware game only. As is a Wario Ware title where you make your own games. I sometimes thing games where the idea is to make your own games is rather lazy on the part of developers.
There was a long build up to an announcement by Satoru Iwata (Nintendo Japan Head dude). The build up was to one of those cheap things you clip on your finger to monitor your heart-rate. The internet goes “huh?” The next announcement lead to believe its a joke at the expense of fanboys. Its Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii!
Also, making sense of the recent bundling of the three Metroid prime games on one disc is a new Metroid Game from Team Ninja. Its called Other M. And its semi side scrolling.
Controller1.com Focus Test 7- PS3 Cheap Eats
Here are some fun games you should be able to get fairly cheap on the PS3.
Battlefield Bad Company, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and something a little different, Singstar ABBA
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