I beat Uncharted last weekend (with Kelvin’s help… we did the trade-controller-on-death thing for whenever he felt like watching). Overall, an excellent game. Pretty graphics, great voice acting with well-developed (if completely cliched) characters. Gameplay was straightforward and very reminiscent of Tomb Raider, and the cutscenes were the right length and entertaining. While most of the game is good, it’s good enough that imperfections really stick out and can distract from the game. Here’s a few of the nitpicks I couldn’t quite get over:
1. Ridiculous jet ski segments – There are two vehicle sections where you use a jet ski with your buddy, and you control both the driving and the shooting at baddies on the shore with unlimited ammo. Driving and shooting at the same time BLOWS TURDS. Shooting and accelerating is on the same trigger side; that plus the left trigger aim and dual joystick moving confuses the hell out of my fingers.
You would also think the point of the a jet ski is to travel fast and zip through the water past your enemies, but NO! For some bizarre reason, there’s barrels of explosive stuff floating everywhere in the river, blocking your way. (Who the hell thinks to bring tons of explosives to an island in the middle of nowhere just to dump it in a river? Can’t they afford mines?) If you bump into them or an enemy shoots one near you, instant death. The first segment, you’re given a grenade launcher, and you can’t shoot and drive at the same time. So you have to stop every 5 seconds to shoot all the barrels in front of you. Time consuming, boring, and makes the jet ski totally useless. Why couldn’t I walk along the shore with this magical grenade launcher?
Damn litterbugs.
The second segment, you’re using a pistol that you can shoot and drive at the same time. It never needs reloading and has infinite ammo, so the entire section is just BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. There’s some auto-aiming, so this requires no skill. Controls still suck, so often times you’re running into rocks. You also drive up small waterfalls, which makes no sense.
BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM
2. Nathan’s inability to open doors – Is it really necessary to kick open every door or gate you run into? Why can’t he be a touch bit more subtle in jungle full of people trying to kill him?
3. Arbitrary puzzles – The main character, Nate, spends half of his game time hanging from his hands. Sure, inhuman feats are characteristic of video game characters, but some the grip jumps he makes are distractingly absurd. It reminds me a lot of God of War, where Kratos was always opening heavy doors with his strength. I always wondered how anybody who wasn’t Hercules got anywhere in Ancient Greece. Same in Uncharted. How does anyone get anywhere without being some mutant monkey man?
Every puzzle involves Nate scaling walls to perilous heights, long-jumping between ledges, hanging on edges by one hand… just to get to whatever random object you push/pull/break/lick to unlock whatever random passage you need to unlock. Why is there a pulley to move a hanging chain (with nothing on it) 90 degrees? Who the hell puts levers by the roof to open doors that have no path to get to them? Who uses a giant cavern to make a room full of red herring puzzles that looks like an MC Escher drawing? Apparently, the 16th century Spanish.
4. A small nation’s worth of bad guys – I don’t see why the villain is looking for treasure when he has enough money to fund a huge multi-ethnic army. There are SO MANY goons. And they’re everywhere you go. The island is deserted and not very big; how did they get all these people on there? There’s no airport or harbors (that aren’t ancient and dilapidated, anyway). Maybe they all swam there?
Once I kill the 10 people in here, 6 more will ambush me from behind
I hate 3D platforming, but I’d rather do more exploring (everything is so pretty!) and arbitrary puzzles than waste time with endless goons. And a lot of time is wasted on fighting goons.
5. What’s the point? – You spend all this time decrypting Sir Francis Drake’s doodles, climb walls, open secret passage ways, jump across decaying platforms, only to end up in front of a dozen goons. Seriously, how did these assholes get here already when I had to use some old book buried in the middle of the ocean to figure out how to open some secret door that no one has ever opened before and risk death trapezing over bottomless abysses just to get to the same point? Did the villain find some 400-year-old shortcut book? Why doesn’t Nate just use his ninja skills and follow these henchmen around? He’s obviously better at incessant murder than getting to anyplace before other people.
For example, in the last image, once you clear the area, 6 guys will ambush you from where you entered. However, you had to jump across rotting wooden planks on the side of a building in order to get to that entrance. Yet they somehow manage to efficiently get to the same spot and flank you. Stupid.
What’s even more retarded is that with half of these silly puzzles, you just end up where you started. You solve these ancient mysteries to basically go in a ginormous circle. At multiple points in the game, I looked above or below me and was like, “I was just up/down there an hour ago, wtf.”
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Outside of these points, I enjoyed the game and would easily recommend it. I’ve already started the second one, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m going to assume it will go well, as the game is winning all sorts of awards right now.
Also, apologies for the horrible screen shots. It’s literally just me holding a point & shoot camera at the TV while also trying to use the PS3 controller (so, basically a big blurry mess). If someone can recommend a good setup for getting good screenshots from my 360 or PS3 (both are using HDMI right now), let me know. Maybe I’ll implement it if I can ever find a source of monies again.
New thing I learned today: Simon Templeman voiced Kain in the Legacy of Kain series.
I haven’t played the Legacy of Kain series, but when I heard the villain in Uncharted, I was thinking, “Isn’t that Loghain?” And indeed it was! All voiced by Simon Templeman. After hearing Alistair and Morrigan again in the beginning of Uncharted 2 (their voice actors apparently play Nathan’s adventuring cohorts for the second game), I’m somewhat itching to play Dragon Age again.
