The level in which I died on (the ship graveyard) is one where you are without a doubt more likely to die in if you remain in cover the entire time due to the openness of the level and enemies aggressive flanking (as you can see, towards the end when I was in cover I didn't pay attention to my left and ended up getting flanked and into the water by the armored enemy).
I almost died in the clip from 2 when I got sloppy and didn't notice a new enemy got on the turret. But, had I not been mobile in that fight I would have A) not gotten the RPG to take out the turret the first time B) Not gotten grenades and ammo refill from rushing the enemies below me C) Not gotten a hight advantage on the last few enemies which allowed me to kill them at no risk to myself rather than engage them from the ground in a protracted stop and pop gunfight where I'd have to sit behind cover and let my health recharge.
I think the difference between how you see the mobility in Uncharted and how I do, is how we view the health mechanic. You see it as negative feedback, whereas I see it as a resource to be expended in a risk/reward situation. Yeah, you get a graying screen which shows you how close you are to death, but that's just a more obvious manner to show how close you are to "emptying" your health, and how close it is to recharging. Because it does recharge, it allows you to judge the risk of running into battle to take advantageous positions without any permanent cost. Recharging health is a resource to be expended, whereas if it had finite health it would be something to be conserved. So you could judge that the reward isn't great enough to risk fully depleting your health in a situation, or, as I did frequently in the videos I felt that I could expend some of my health for an advantage in the field of combat that I wouldn't have gotten by remaining stationary behind cover.
I definitely think our differing views on the health system is a factor... but I don't think the idea of it being negative reinforcement of not is really up for debate. It occurs when a negative event happens (you getting shot), to tell you that if this continues, you die, and to recover you need to stop it from happening. It's exactly the same in every game that has a regen system, whether it be Halo, Gears, CoD,, Vanquish, anything. The natural response for the player is to avoid it as a result, which is causing so many to remain in cover in comparison to games where venturing out of cover isn't so consistently met with this cue.
I'm not saying that people will never ever move from one spot (that was just an experiment I tried with UC1, as someone claimed it absolutely could not be done in any Uncharted encounter). Typically, I just pick the best seat in the house, and stay there until another seat becomes better. That other seat just doesn't tend to occur very often. In the Borneo example (as I actually have played that one).. the top of the house where you got that RL is the best spot. nobody's flanking you, you'll never be surprised by a new enemy on the turret (and the turret shooter will fire left if you sit in cover for a few seconds, letting you kill the guy with a single pistol shot), you can kill everyone from this one spot whilst being basically untouchable. You chose to jump down after firing the rocket launcher in order to combat enemies that you could have comfortably shot with a pistol from where you already were. This is what then leads to all the other surprises during the encounter. You're the random variable.
Ammo is very rarely any sort of issue btw, as playing in this fashion means pretty much no hip-fire, no blind-fire etc... and at the end of each fight you pick up absolutely everything the enemy dropped, which stocks you well to do the same again in the next fight. Every game has ammo considerations, and so this line of argument suggests that every TPS promotes a dynamic approach to combat, which is clearly not the case.
Movement is core to Uncharted too, to suggest otherwise, or imply is baloney. I don't even have to mention set pieces which are too "in your face obvious". Lets take the ever popular shipyard, or the desert, borneo etc...As for the MP side of things, I mean...wow there...
Set pieces are a given, I agree. I'm assuming the other examples (aside from Borneo) are UC3 as I don't know them. Borneo, I've just been discussing above. The introduction of the tank definitely promotes movement too, but that again is basically a set piece rather than the game's general combat. These areas are where the game shines. But they are few and far between in the second half of UC2, and almost completely absent from UC1.
I've ever played MP, and don't think it's very relevant to this discussion really. There's very few games in existence where introducing human opponents doesn't make gameplay dynamic.
Again as mentioned above, I don't believe running around in the way Fancy Clown demonstrates, does make your combat objectives easier. The only real exceptions I feel there were to this were the riot shield guys, and if a weapon (such as a sniper rifle) is placed somewhere for you to collect.. and typically in this case, it's placed somewhere well suited for actually shooting it from too.
I don't see what's "all powerful" about a melee attack that take seemingly forever, that focuses on a single enemy and leaves you planted the entire time ready to soak up damage if there's anyone else around.
It's all risk-vs-reward in pretty much any game. I'm stating that in UC1 and UC2 the risk of being mobile frequently dwarfs the reward. This thread is intended to show that Uncharted's gameplay mechanics stand as great in comparison to other examples of the genre. This should involve a lot more than standard fare, such as "you're gonna wanna pick up that weapon/ammo"