I've been playing through Uncharted 3, and um... it's better, kind of? I mean, it isn't endless bad shooting anymore. The shooting is still just as bad, don't get me wrong, it's exactly the same as Uncharted 2. I've done the same test repeatedly throughout the games of just hiding behind cover and watching how the AI reacts, and 8 times out of 10, they just shoot forever without moving, reloading, or anything. They may throw a grenade early on sure, but then they just keep shooting, just keep shooting, what do we do we shoot shoot shoot. ....I just played some Uncharted 3 and I'm bored ok. So yea, shooting is bad, AI is hella dumb, everyone is a bullet sponge, enemies have little variation, on and on. Nothing new there. What is new, is that there is less of that bad shooting. Thank you. Unfortunately, they didn't make the game much better when they did that. They added other filler to mix up the endless shooting filler. Which is good, variety helps a lot so you aren't just doing the same boring thing over and over again. But unfortunately, even with that variety, it isn't all that much better, because they replaced bad filler with different bad filler. Gotta slow that player down, after all.
Like, remember how I said melee was garbage and I never used it? Well, I've watched them expand on melee throughout, and it definitely improved in Uncharted 2 when it moved to a mashing + QTE model instead of the "shovelware brawler combos" of Uncharted 1. But it's still extremely primitive; it is by no means a decent brawler mechanically, hell it isn't even ok one, it's terrible. It's mash square then press whatever buttons appears on screen when its shown. That's it. And guess what Uncharted 3 has now? Forced melee sections, lots of them, where they deliberately remove weapons and escape routes and force the player to fight with this melee combat. And uuuggggghhhh it's so bad. Enemies take way too many hits so it's very long, it's boring as heck mechanically, and just, stttooooppp it game. Again, this would be fine if it only appeared a little bit in scripted sequences as a mix up, like in Uncharted 2. But there's so much of it in Uncharted 3 because the game is trying to move away from its tons of bad shooty filler, but it's still gotta have that filler so it's expanding a mixup into more bad filler and just, *sigh*. Uncharted.
They also greatly expanded the chase sections from the previous games. There are a LOT more of them. They're... eh. It's running in a direction and or platforming in a direction and doing whatever the game wants on the fly, with an instant (and I mean INSTANT) fail if you go off the game's preset path. It's mediocre, but it's usually fine as a mix up. But Uncharted 3 has a LOT of them, and they are quite long, so... eh. Good for variety I guess?
The best part though, is that "puzzles" and platforming have been expanded. The puzzles are better. There was actually a puzzle I didn't instantly know how to complete the moment I walked into a room! Of course that was was because I didn't realize you could do a thing, but a quick peak at the journal made me realize that and then it was just doing actions from there. But for the most part the puzzles are all things I just instantly figure out when I enter the room and then I just have to do what the game wants. Nothing new there. That said, there are more of them, and they are a little better, so, that's a win I guess.
So all combined, the middle of Uncharted 3 (specifically the bit where I stopped playing) is paced like this: Combat - Combat - Combat - Platforming - Combat - Combat - Platforming - Puzzle - Platforming - Puzzle - Chase - Combat - Combat - Chase - Melee - Chase - Melee. And that's about 3 hours of play time, and about 2 and a half hours of it is filler of some form.
The story for Uncharted 3 is again, better in a lot of ways, worse in a few others. The bad guy is always, ALWAYS, a step ahead. It's always, Nathan gets there first, bad guy shows up, steals the thing from Nathan. And I get it, it's classic Indiana Jones. But each Indiana Jones movie did it *twice* per film, at the beginning and at the climax. With it all goign to hell for the bad guy at the end in proper irony. Like, that works. Also people tend to forget that most Indiana Jones movies are terrible and only 1 and 3 were any good at all, but let's just ignore that! But to have already done four times by the middle of the game? Ooph, too much. I'm assuming they are going to hang a lantern on it to try to justify it, though you never know with Uncharted, but still, it feels lazy. Also there's this whole obsession plotline and it's completely unearned. Nathan isn't doing anything obsession-ish, in fact he isn't doing anything more obsession-y than he did in the previous games. But the way those games were written, everyone was totally liking his weird adventurey obsession. But in THIS one, it's somehow bad. Plus the way it is written is kind of like that tense atmosphere of discussing something after an argument, but, we never see any arguments, we never even see them disagree with Drake really? It's all kind "oh this is probably bad, you might want to consider giving this up" and Drake goes "nope!" and they're like "you're going to regret this." And it's just, weird. Like, they want the characters to disagree and argue, but they don't actually want to the characters disagree and argue, so they go half way and "fake argue". It's weird. And a classic example of bad writing.
But other than that, it is a lot better story wise. Like, there is actual history and character work woven into the story. Like, it's pretty decent! The story involves Nathan Drake's past, there are shady ancient secret organizations, the villiainess is clearly having a past while doing the mocap, the characters are actually *characters* (limited as said above, but still characters) and not personified tropes, on and on. It isn't just, "let's go on an adventure, shoot some bad guys, tells some jokes, and get some treasure!" saturday morning fair anymore. It's *actually* a story, a basic one, but it is genuinely a story. So even with the weird non-arguing and repetitive bits above, I think the story is a big step up from the previous Uncharted games.
So, before I wrap up, there's one other thing I noticed. I was actually able to take down all enemies in a fighting arena through stealth! Like, that's a big jump from the previous games. Sure it was short and there was a forced combat scene immediately afterwards, and sure it has all of the same stealth problems like if anyone spots you everyone in the arena instantly knows where you are and start shooting and just keep shooting shooting what do w- *ahem*. So yea, stealth is still not good, but, it's a little better, and I'll take what I can get in these games. Thaaat said, they did something strange in this game. There are scripted events where enemies aren't in a patrol until you get close enough, and then they move. For stealth, that's terrible. Like, stealth is all about watching their actions, learning how they are going to act, and then deciding what to do. If they change behavior based on an invisible trigger... it's basically just the game trying to fail you out of stealth. I mean, that's what it is. It's a very strange inclusion, especially for a game that routinely spawns enemies that already know your location the instant they spawn. If you are going to give me stealth as an optoin, why try to trap me to fail it? ┐(´-`)┌
Well, all together, Uncharted 3 is more or less what I expected out of Uncharted 1. Bad shooting, but decent humor, varied pacing, and alright story. That said, that was supposed to be the "bad one" that was radically improved upon in the next game. So um, hmm. So, I'm abandoning Uncharted 3 as well. It's hit that middle part where it's all filler of bad content, and just, nope, my time is worth more than that.
One last comment before I go. You know how they say Metal Gear Solid is a game that wants to be a movie, and it's totally wrong because MGS is awesome? THIS, this is a game that wants to be a movie. Like, everything about Uncharted so far would be better to watch than to play. It's pacing and characters and plots all just scream action movie. Honestly, I'd find it boring as an action movie, but at least then it would only take up 90 minutes or so of my time, and then I'd be like "that was alright." I know I've said this before, but if Uncharted just shorted the runtime and cut out all of the filler, it would be so, so much better. A 4 hour little silly adventure romp? Way better than hour after hour of bad gameplay between little bursts of little silly adventure! But instead they are trying to take a very short story and very basic mechanics and stretch it out to 20-30 hours and just, it's so much worse this way.
So onto Lost Legacy! This is the game that actually changes mechanics, and might actually have decent gameplay mechanics that aren't just filler. Hopefully. Maybe. We'll see. I know better than to get my hopes up for Uncharted by this point.
Like, remember how I said melee was garbage and I never used it? Well, I've watched them expand on melee throughout, and it definitely improved in Uncharted 2 when it moved to a mashing + QTE model instead of the "shovelware brawler combos" of Uncharted 1. But it's still extremely primitive; it is by no means a decent brawler mechanically, hell it isn't even ok one, it's terrible. It's mash square then press whatever buttons appears on screen when its shown. That's it. And guess what Uncharted 3 has now? Forced melee sections, lots of them, where they deliberately remove weapons and escape routes and force the player to fight with this melee combat. And uuuggggghhhh it's so bad. Enemies take way too many hits so it's very long, it's boring as heck mechanically, and just, stttooooppp it game. Again, this would be fine if it only appeared a little bit in scripted sequences as a mix up, like in Uncharted 2. But there's so much of it in Uncharted 3 because the game is trying to move away from its tons of bad shooty filler, but it's still gotta have that filler so it's expanding a mixup into more bad filler and just, *sigh*. Uncharted.
They also greatly expanded the chase sections from the previous games. There are a LOT more of them. They're... eh. It's running in a direction and or platforming in a direction and doing whatever the game wants on the fly, with an instant (and I mean INSTANT) fail if you go off the game's preset path. It's mediocre, but it's usually fine as a mix up. But Uncharted 3 has a LOT of them, and they are quite long, so... eh. Good for variety I guess?
The best part though, is that "puzzles" and platforming have been expanded. The puzzles are better. There was actually a puzzle I didn't instantly know how to complete the moment I walked into a room! Of course that was was because I didn't realize you could do a thing, but a quick peak at the journal made me realize that and then it was just doing actions from there. But for the most part the puzzles are all things I just instantly figure out when I enter the room and then I just have to do what the game wants. Nothing new there. That said, there are more of them, and they are a little better, so, that's a win I guess.
So all combined, the middle of Uncharted 3 (specifically the bit where I stopped playing) is paced like this: Combat - Combat - Combat - Platforming - Combat - Combat - Platforming - Puzzle - Platforming - Puzzle - Chase - Combat - Combat - Chase - Melee - Chase - Melee. And that's about 3 hours of play time, and about 2 and a half hours of it is filler of some form.
The story for Uncharted 3 is again, better in a lot of ways, worse in a few others. The bad guy is always, ALWAYS, a step ahead. It's always, Nathan gets there first, bad guy shows up, steals the thing from Nathan. And I get it, it's classic Indiana Jones. But each Indiana Jones movie did it *twice* per film, at the beginning and at the climax. With it all goign to hell for the bad guy at the end in proper irony. Like, that works. Also people tend to forget that most Indiana Jones movies are terrible and only 1 and 3 were any good at all, but let's just ignore that! But to have already done four times by the middle of the game? Ooph, too much. I'm assuming they are going to hang a lantern on it to try to justify it, though you never know with Uncharted, but still, it feels lazy. Also there's this whole obsession plotline and it's completely unearned. Nathan isn't doing anything obsession-ish, in fact he isn't doing anything more obsession-y than he did in the previous games. But the way those games were written, everyone was totally liking his weird adventurey obsession. But in THIS one, it's somehow bad. Plus the way it is written is kind of like that tense atmosphere of discussing something after an argument, but, we never see any arguments, we never even see them disagree with Drake really? It's all kind "oh this is probably bad, you might want to consider giving this up" and Drake goes "nope!" and they're like "you're going to regret this." And it's just, weird. Like, they want the characters to disagree and argue, but they don't actually want to the characters disagree and argue, so they go half way and "fake argue". It's weird. And a classic example of bad writing.
But other than that, it is a lot better story wise. Like, there is actual history and character work woven into the story. Like, it's pretty decent! The story involves Nathan Drake's past, there are shady ancient secret organizations, the villiainess is clearly having a past while doing the mocap, the characters are actually *characters* (limited as said above, but still characters) and not personified tropes, on and on. It isn't just, "let's go on an adventure, shoot some bad guys, tells some jokes, and get some treasure!" saturday morning fair anymore. It's *actually* a story, a basic one, but it is genuinely a story. So even with the weird non-arguing and repetitive bits above, I think the story is a big step up from the previous Uncharted games.
So, before I wrap up, there's one other thing I noticed. I was actually able to take down all enemies in a fighting arena through stealth! Like, that's a big jump from the previous games. Sure it was short and there was a forced combat scene immediately afterwards, and sure it has all of the same stealth problems like if anyone spots you everyone in the arena instantly knows where you are and start shooting and just keep shooting shooting what do w- *ahem*. So yea, stealth is still not good, but, it's a little better, and I'll take what I can get in these games. Thaaat said, they did something strange in this game. There are scripted events where enemies aren't in a patrol until you get close enough, and then they move. For stealth, that's terrible. Like, stealth is all about watching their actions, learning how they are going to act, and then deciding what to do. If they change behavior based on an invisible trigger... it's basically just the game trying to fail you out of stealth. I mean, that's what it is. It's a very strange inclusion, especially for a game that routinely spawns enemies that already know your location the instant they spawn. If you are going to give me stealth as an optoin, why try to trap me to fail it? ┐(´-`)┌
Well, all together, Uncharted 3 is more or less what I expected out of Uncharted 1. Bad shooting, but decent humor, varied pacing, and alright story. That said, that was supposed to be the "bad one" that was radically improved upon in the next game. So um, hmm. So, I'm abandoning Uncharted 3 as well. It's hit that middle part where it's all filler of bad content, and just, nope, my time is worth more than that.
One last comment before I go. You know how they say Metal Gear Solid is a game that wants to be a movie, and it's totally wrong because MGS is awesome? THIS, this is a game that wants to be a movie. Like, everything about Uncharted so far would be better to watch than to play. It's pacing and characters and plots all just scream action movie. Honestly, I'd find it boring as an action movie, but at least then it would only take up 90 minutes or so of my time, and then I'd be like "that was alright." I know I've said this before, but if Uncharted just shorted the runtime and cut out all of the filler, it would be so, so much better. A 4 hour little silly adventure romp? Way better than hour after hour of bad gameplay between little bursts of little silly adventure! But instead they are trying to take a very short story and very basic mechanics and stretch it out to 20-30 hours and just, it's so much worse this way.
So onto Lost Legacy! This is the game that actually changes mechanics, and might actually have decent gameplay mechanics that aren't just filler. Hopefully. Maybe. We'll see. I know better than to get my hopes up for Uncharted by this point.
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