I don't believe I've ever posted in this thread, and talking about Uncharted 2 I was reminded I never wrote anything about my thoughts on the game.
I finished Uncharted recently, and I'll admit, at first the combat was completely off-putting. I started the game and put it down fairly early into the campaign because the shooting mechanics made the game pacing much slower than I cared for. It felt more of a shooter rather than an adventure game, and I wasn't in the mood for a shooter.
That said, I decided it was time to give the game it's fair shake, and I'm glad I did.
What I feel the game does right:
Sense of adventure:
The story and theme of the game are right up my alley. It captured a lot of the Indiana Jones feeling, which was what I'll probably remember about the game in a few years. Excepting the comedy in a Indy movie, they nailed just about everything else...Nazi themes, locations, supernatural elements, etc.
Visuals:
For the most part, the visuals were outstanding. The lighting model was fantastic. Seeing rays of light through tree branches, lighting inside caverns. All top notch. Fit the mood perfectly, or I should say, set the tone for the game.
Textures were a bit hit or miss, but nothing out of the ordinary for a console game, all things considered. Some textures were absurdly low res while others looked great.
Framerate was solid; I never felt like the game was struggling to keep up with the action and there were no hitches that stood out.
Level design:
While linear, the maps always felt open. In large part, this was due to 1) the amazing vistas and detail given to areas outside of the player boundaries, and 2) the use of vertical areas of a map, like the Church. Navigating through the lower section, then later, navigating the upper sections via platforming made the levels feel open and gave a sense of exploration in a linear world that comes near to matching that of HL2.
Enemy AI:
While certainly not perfect, I think Uncharted's enemy AI was up there with the best of them. I don't think it ever reached Halo 3 levels, but it came pretty damn close, even on the regular difficulty. Waiting for enemies to come out of cover was difficult, because they wouldn't just pop out where you would expect them to. Many games have baddies roll out of cover right into your crosshairs, whereas Uncharted's enemies had at least a couple different routines for popping out of cover. Enemies with shotguns charged, enemies with longer range weapons stayed back, and enemies reaction to grenades was for the most part appropriate (although throwing two grenades seemed to really confuse the AI).
Where the game needed improvement:
Combat:
Combat was a letdown in almost every respect. Melee was unresponsive; timing of the button presses seemed to have very little do do with what was actually happening on screen, causing a disconnect with the user and making it feel strictly like a QTE. Variation in weapon damage was unrealistic and gave the impression that very little thought went into ranging of weapons and amount of damage inflicted. As an example, some of the assault weapons did relatively little damage at any range, which felt completely unrealistic and frustrating.
I did enjoy one aspect of the combat however. The cover system is well implemented. Certain objects you might find cover behind are destructible, which keeps the player moving. And as I noted before the enemy AI is aggressive and unpredictable. It keeps the player from staying in one spot for too long, which is a trap a lot of cover based games fall in to.
Pacing:
Because of the unsatisfying combat, I felt there was far more of my playtime spent in a 'arena' setting where the player was placed in a area with 'X' amount of baddies positioned just so, with triggers that started another wave once the first wave had been defeated. I would rather these sections reduced by half in favor of exploration, story, variations in combat situations and platforming elements. After a few hours with the game, I felt like I knew exactly when these situations were about to begin just by looking at the area I was about to enter and the amount of time since the last encounter.
Player Control:
I very much enjoyed the platforming elements, which is highly unusual for me. Typically I despise any and all 3d platforming, so this was a refreshing change. That said, too often the control of the character felt slow or unresponsive, making certain sections of the game frustrating when they should have been fun. At times there seemed like there was a slight input delay, which meant that even if I jumped from the exact location twice I might see different results. Sometimes that character would just not respond in time to make a difficult jump, which during a long section of platforming, made for a frustrating experience when you had to start again at the beginning of the section.
Conclusion
Uncharted ranks up there with my favorite games of this generation everything considered. When you break it down, there is certainly room for improvement in several aspects of the game's design, but in the end it's a game that's fun to play and that I wouldn't have any problem recommending to a new PS3 owner regardless of genre preferences. I think the game catches a lot of flak on the Internet, but like anything PS3 related, that has more to do with the fanbase than it does the actual game. The only element of the game that I can see being completely off-putting would be the combat. While I'd describe the game as an adventure game, it often feels like a shooter at heart. Some players might be disappointed with ratio of adventure/platforming/exploration elements to combat situations, and it would be hard to for me to disagree with them.
Score:
90/100
