cereal_killerxx
Junior Member
I loved all 3 games in the series. Fantastic series overall.
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RTTP: The Uncharted Series. The Third One's the Best. Here's Why
- Thread starter digitalrelic
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Jawmuncher
Member
I actually prefer UC1 to UC3. I kind of like how reserved UC1 is compared to the rest of the franchise. No real big set pieces. Just killing dudes and unraveling the mystery.
digitalrelic
Banned
It's merely an above average TPS, but is one of the greatest adventure games ever made.
Fancy Clown
Member
Passive aggressive potshots in a different thread? You feisty, pizzacat
Don't get me wrong, I adore UC1, but it's kinda jank as hell. It was clearly their first foray into a more 'realistic' adventure experience game, and it shows. Still amazing, but the climbing sorta works, pacing is really weird, and the entire finale is atrocious.
The problems with UC3 are mainly through the lacklustre plot, plotholes or abandoned storylines out the wazoo, and their obsession with making every setpiece as nuts as possible to nonsense levels. E.G. That entire section in the ship graveyard being superfluous and having literally nothing to do with the plot.
Also the supernatural stuff that they seem to have forgotten about halfway through that only serves to make fan theories like one of the villains being a D'Jinn... maybe make sense.
The problems with UC3 are mainly through the lacklustre plot, plotholes or abandoned storylines out the wazoo, and their obsession with making every setpiece as nuts as possible to nonsense levels. E.G. That entire section in the ship graveyard being superfluous and having literally nothing to do with the plot.
Also the supernatural stuff that they seem to have forgotten about halfway through that only serves to make fan theories like one of the villains being a D'Jinn... maybe make sense.
SaganIsGOAT
Junior Member
In my most honest opinion, the gameplay never felt good. U2 felt great due to tight controls and good hit response. Enemies in 3 just eat bullets without flinching. I believe great hit reactions to be one of the most important aspects of gameplay. It's one of those things that made it so much fun to shoot Helghast in Killzone 2. When you feel a true impact behind your actions it immerses you more in the action.
Magic Mushroom
Member
Superfluous in story terms, but easily the best part of the game for me.
That said, while it does certain things better like puzzles, the lack of hit feedback and the new melee systems (which only works great when you have fisticuffs with other unarmed enemies) make the combat worse. I also dislike the AI, especially in the first half of the game, which seems to be running around like headless chickens at times.
Disagree. 1 is better for pacing alone and the island setting (the island in 1 is essentially its own character). 3 fails to achieve even remotely decent pacing, it crumbles after Chapter 11 (and some argue even sooner, as soon as Syria it crumbles).
2 is still better than 3, its pacing is sublime and it never loses it from Chapter 5 all the way to the end. 3's problem is how disjointed it is, it doesn't come close to how UC2 does it where you start in Nepal and you're in Nepal until you get on the train. The train feeds into Tibet and the snowy region which then feeds right into the monastery and then right to the gates of Shambhala from there.
UC3 tries to emulate it with Chapter 10-Chapter 15 (before you wash ashore on Yemen again) but it's so bad because Drake conveniently washes ashore on Yemen and everything you do outside of Yemen has no bearing on the story -- it's filler/padding for the sake of a set piece! (A cool set piece but no story relevance like I said).
16-22 also tries to copy it but fails because the village Drake arrives at isn't populated and you don't get a single quiet moment besides the Desert walk which isn't very eventful. You don't really get to learn anything about Salim's group either like you do Tenzin's.
So it's not a great story nor is it great pacing. All it has is gameplay improvements but along with that it goes two steps back with no hit reactions. And thenall that's left are some of its sandbox arenas which can be fun but also frustrating at the same time with how the AI behaves (ultra aggressively).
So, I do not agree with OP's assertion of it being the best.
2 is still better than 3, its pacing is sublime and it never loses it from Chapter 5 all the way to the end. 3's problem is how disjointed it is, it doesn't come close to how UC2 does it where you start in Nepal and you're in Nepal until you get on the train. The train feeds into Tibet and the snowy region which then feeds right into the monastery and then right to the gates of Shambhala from there.
UC3 tries to emulate it with Chapter 10-Chapter 15 (before you wash ashore on Yemen again) but it's so bad because Drake conveniently washes ashore on Yemen and everything you do outside of Yemen has no bearing on the story -- it's filler/padding for the sake of a set piece! (A cool set piece but no story relevance like I said).
16-22 also tries to copy it but fails because the village Drake arrives at isn't populated and you don't get a single quiet moment besides the Desert walk which isn't very eventful. You don't really get to learn anything about Salim's group either like you do Tenzin's.
So it's not a great story nor is it great pacing. All it has is gameplay improvements but along with that it goes two steps back with no hit reactions. And thenall that's left are some of its sandbox arenas which can be fun but also frustrating at the same time with how the AI behaves (ultra aggressively).
So, I do not agree with OP's assertion of it being the best.
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digitalrelic
Banned
Eh, I prefer the slightly shorter playtime of UC3. UC2 dragged a bit for me, especially the third act.
Salz01
Member
Recently played through 3 again. It holds up better than I remember. But Charlie irritated me, Chloe was kind of an after thought and the villains were pretty poor. Also didn't like the same brute fist fight over and over again. It's like you keep fighting the same clone. The crashing plane sequence could have been fleshed out more too. Still like 2 the best because the characters just felt more real to me.
Edit, oh I and I thought the pacing of the puzzles were annoying in the third one. A couple of puzzles are welcome but I feel there were too many.
Edit, oh I and I thought the pacing of the puzzles were annoying in the third one. A couple of puzzles are welcome but I feel there were too many.
Curry-Hakase
Member
I couldn't bring myself to finish UC1 since the enemies were so bullet-spongey.
So because of that(and my OCD of not doing things in order) I didn't want to give UC2 and 3 a chance since I feel like I would be missing a large chunk of the narrative.
Honestly, how much am I missing out on if I skip UC1?
So because of that(and my OCD of not doing things in order) I didn't want to give UC2 and 3 a chance since I feel like I would be missing a large chunk of the narrative.
Honestly, how much am I missing out on if I skip UC1?
The story took itself too seriously. This in and of itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that it never made good on any of the convictions that it tried to set. All the "emotional resonance" you refer to equates to jack shit by time the game is through. Every person questions Drakes motivations. It's a running theme throughout the game to the point that it even acts as a double entendre for the game's subtitle. But i ask you, what consequences did Drake ever face (besides believing that sully was killed) that made him actually stop and think about what he does and how it puts those he claims to love in danger? No one ever called drake on his shit and actually made him face it and address it. By the time the story introduces you to Elena and she's spouting the whole "why are you doing this/think about sully" crap, i expected her say "No drake, i will not follow you on another silly fool hearty adventure, you're on your own" She could have even threw the wedding ring on the ground for added dramatic effect. Atleast one supporting character should have said this. No one ever does. All they do is point at how silly drake is for being a globetrotting treasure hunter but then sully on (no pun intended) right behind him. If you're just gonna enable him then why even complain and point out the shortcomings? So, because none of this happened, the whole "epiphany" boils down to a hallucination where he thought his friend was dead. Weak.
There were certainly gameplay tweaks that helped elevate it above UC2 in some respects but overall it wasn't any spectacular and i wouldn't dare call it varied. It tried to refine the hand to hand combat but it felt stunted and kind of disjointed. It just felt like you were getting stuck in an animation. There was no real fluidity to it and it only ever felt interesting when you were in a context sensitive environment that made use of the things around you. The game's final boss battle even involves this terribly scripted melee combat which is unfortunate because it's far from being the strongest aspect of the gameplay for it to end that way.
One of my biggest gripes with the game is that it seldomly teases you with the idea that certain areas can be stealthed (Airport, cruise ship, Ship graveyard, sandstorm) however complete stealth is either 100% impossible or at the very least extremely difficult. As if that's not bad enough, once you fuck up the stealth, instead of just dealing with the handful of guys you weren't able to successfully stealth, the game throws TONS of guys at you from nooks and crevices you didn't even realize existed in the damn arena. In my book this is just flat out bad game design.
The pacing in this game is just god awful to the point that i border on being completely dismissive of anyone who suggests otherwise. It's the biggest problem i have with the game and drives me mental that some how people don't see it. Taken from another post i made a while back:
- beginning of the game is front loaded with puzzles and exploration with all the shootouts and set pieces showing up on the back end
-Major characters get introduced in the first half of the game to never be heard from or referenced again and vice versa.
-major set pieces in the game serve no narrative purpose and do nothing to drive the story forward. This is evidenced by the fact that ND went on record saying they had set pieces in mind long before they had a story. You can literally remove the chase scene with talbot and the cruise ship set pieces and the story wouldn't change or suffer one bit
-character development is spotty at best. Talbot being the most confusely written/undeveloped character I've ever seen.
There's really no denying this. The game even does these transitions from cutscene to gameplay where it lingers on drakes face for a few seconds as if to say "Look how good we made drake look!"
This is a bit difficult for me to quantify given that i feel like impact of the set pieces needs to work within the scope of the story which as i pointed out earlier, they kind of don't. Individually, in their own right, i'd say the set pieces are certainly more over the top and bombastic but i'd probably still take the set pieces from UC2 as they all just flowed better and felt like they made sense narratively.
bytemovies
Member
I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with what Revven and hbkdx12 have said here.
UC2 overall is a much tighter package with pacing, storyline, gameplay and set pieces that mesh very tightly together and create a polished experience. UC3 definitely builds upon a lot of those aspects and is a lot more bombastic in some regards, but it feels like those improvements also introduced a lot of negatives that also detract and make it less perfect than UC3.
Borderline useless stealth that constantly teases you thoughout the game but never works as well as UC2 did it (as far as stealth goes, it basically regressed to UC1 levels), plot that jumps all over the place and doesn't transition smoothly just for the sake of bigger and more intense set pieces, gunplay that feels absolutely worse with no enemy reactions, hand to hand combat, while being more complex actually just became sort of frustrating coming from UC2 (where H2H was admittedly pretty OP, but it felt funner/better). Also, the AI tended to suffer when placed in the larger, more open maps that UC3 introduced which broke immersion for me a couple times, I felt like ND kind of noticed this by the time the graveyard level was made so they just tossed in turrets and tons of difficult/stationary units to compensate. Atleast with UC2, despite much more linear and smaller level design, the AI acted in a way that fit better and thus the experience was better.
Overall UC3 had the potential to actually be better than UC2 in every way, but it feels like they prioritized making everything bigger without taking the time (or maybe having the time and budget) to smooth things and refine it into a more coherent package. In that sense, UC3 IS bigger/better, but UC2 is the more refined/polished game. Hopefully this just means that ND has learned from their mistakes and UC4 will be the bigger but also refined game that UC3 could have been.
UC2 overall is a much tighter package with pacing, storyline, gameplay and set pieces that mesh very tightly together and create a polished experience. UC3 definitely builds upon a lot of those aspects and is a lot more bombastic in some regards, but it feels like those improvements also introduced a lot of negatives that also detract and make it less perfect than UC3.
Borderline useless stealth that constantly teases you thoughout the game but never works as well as UC2 did it (as far as stealth goes, it basically regressed to UC1 levels), plot that jumps all over the place and doesn't transition smoothly just for the sake of bigger and more intense set pieces, gunplay that feels absolutely worse with no enemy reactions, hand to hand combat, while being more complex actually just became sort of frustrating coming from UC2 (where H2H was admittedly pretty OP, but it felt funner/better). Also, the AI tended to suffer when placed in the larger, more open maps that UC3 introduced which broke immersion for me a couple times, I felt like ND kind of noticed this by the time the graveyard level was made so they just tossed in turrets and tons of difficult/stationary units to compensate. Atleast with UC2, despite much more linear and smaller level design, the AI acted in a way that fit better and thus the experience was better.
Overall UC3 had the potential to actually be better than UC2 in every way, but it feels like they prioritized making everything bigger without taking the time (or maybe having the time and budget) to smooth things and refine it into a more coherent package. In that sense, UC3 IS bigger/better, but UC2 is the more refined/polished game. Hopefully this just means that ND has learned from their mistakes and UC4 will be the bigger but also refined game that UC3 could have been.
digitalrelic
Banned
You're missing the introductions of the three main characters and what their relationships mean to eachother. Also Nathan Drake's ring and its importance to him. Other than that, storyline-wise, you aren't missing anything that I can recall. All three games have very separate storylines apart from the characters that connect them.
Andy Believes
Banned
I am actually liking UC3 better than UC2. The locales are gorgeous. Story seems to be better as well...
Set Pieces:
The caravan set piece is my favorite till date (better than the train sequence - sacrilege I know). Maybe because the train sequence - though novel in games - is standard fare in movies and when you are in the train, you can be static for as long as you want. The caravan sequence is more dynamic. You can jump onto trucks and then jump back on to the horse... the animations also account for how you land on the horse and how you are faced relative to the horse... holy shit... who thought of that? and they made it happen... it has the most Indy Jones feel to it... and it is fast paced.. it was over in a few minutes and left me wanting more... In fact when I first heard about the chapter, I was thinking ambush and boring, etc. static game play basically - boy was I surprised!
UC2 did have truck to truck jumping; UC3 changed it to boats instead. Not as successful, but still pretty phenomenal nonetheless...
Also the roof top chase sequence... one of the best... frantic and well executed...
Did I mention the plane sequence? Taken almost directly out of the James Bond Movie "The Living Daylights" and brilliantly executed.
Cons:
The enemies do feel like bullet sponges because their aim is not affected when you hit them though they do go down quickly.
Too many armored enemies.
Even though I can move around and not die, I still get hit. That makes me feel like I am not doing a good enough job or like my playing style sucks. Thanks to Fancy Clown, I feel a bit better - it seems that is how you play UC. In fact I have incorporated more movement into my game play.
Set Pieces:
The caravan set piece is my favorite till date (better than the train sequence - sacrilege I know). Maybe because the train sequence - though novel in games - is standard fare in movies and when you are in the train, you can be static for as long as you want. The caravan sequence is more dynamic. You can jump onto trucks and then jump back on to the horse... the animations also account for how you land on the horse and how you are faced relative to the horse... holy shit... who thought of that? and they made it happen... it has the most Indy Jones feel to it... and it is fast paced.. it was over in a few minutes and left me wanting more... In fact when I first heard about the chapter, I was thinking ambush and boring, etc. static game play basically - boy was I surprised!
UC2 did have truck to truck jumping; UC3 changed it to boats instead. Not as successful, but still pretty phenomenal nonetheless...
Also the roof top chase sequence... one of the best... frantic and well executed...
Did I mention the plane sequence? Taken almost directly out of the James Bond Movie "The Living Daylights" and brilliantly executed.
Cons:
The enemies do feel like bullet sponges because their aim is not affected when you hit them though they do go down quickly.
Too many armored enemies.
Even though I can move around and not die, I still get hit. That makes me feel like I am not doing a good enough job or like my playing style sucks. Thanks to Fancy Clown, I feel a bit better - it seems that is how you play UC. In fact I have incorporated more movement into my game play.
I agree with the OP, especially in regards to how well-done the character content is. U3 Drake isn't just a cheap Indiana Jones copy pasta anymore, he's a complex flawed human being who through the villain is made to question himself (like a good villain is supposed to do).
I played U3 before they fixed the aiming dead zone, too, so my opinion would likely only improve with a replay.
For melee combat, yes the big guy QTEs were very repetitive after the first few, but U3 also had excellent contextual animations and attacks, like breaking bottles over dude's heads in the bar scene and such.
I played U3 before they fixed the aiming dead zone, too, so my opinion would likely only improve with a replay.
For melee combat, yes the big guy QTEs were very repetitive after the first few, but U3 also had excellent contextual animations and attacks, like breaking bottles over dude's heads in the bar scene and such.
UC3 was an absolutely mediocre game with pretty terrible gunplay, story and pacing. There were some bright spots and I liked the caravan chase ( still not as good as the convoy chase in 2 ) but overall it was a spectacular disappointment for me.
UC2 will be the only great game in the franchise and by god what a game. One of the greatest of all time.
UC2 will be the only great game in the franchise and by god what a game. One of the greatest of all time.
digitalrelic
Banned
It's actually crazy how divided GAF is on UC3. It also seems to set up a possible divide of opinions once Uncharted 4 comes out. It seems that people want different things out of the franchise.
SunBroDave
Member
Nailed it. Go home folks, nothing more to see here.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Seriously, the relationships in UC3 are just so goddamn good. The story between Nate and Sully, and between Nate and Elena. The father/son story is so good.
Segaswirl
Member
I recently platted all 3 back to back on the PS4. UC3 was definitely the weakest, it also took some adjustment with regards to the gunplay. I was having a difficult time getting headshots at first when compared to the other 2 games... plus the enemies steaming towards you despite you hitting them was ridiculous (yeah, git gud... save it). Being able to throw grenades back was a nice addition though.
The gunplay might have sucked but I also didn't find the locations all that interesting, if anything they were boring. Everything about the game just felt off and half arsed to me when compared to UC2.
The gunplay might have sucked but I also didn't find the locations all that interesting, if anything they were boring. Everything about the game just felt off and half arsed to me when compared to UC2.
Gillian Seed
Banned
Yes it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Uncharted 3 is the best in the series. Each game has improved upon the last. I have very high hopes for U4!
Jack Scofield
Member
I made a similar thread to this a few years ago, and after completing Uncharted 3 again in the Nathan Drake Collection, my opinion hasn't changed. It's not perfect, but Uncharted 3 is my favorite game in the series.
One of the biggest issues I have with the game is how easy it is to die during some of the big set pieces. Maybe I'm just bad, but I died a ton of times inside the plane before it went down. Kind of killed the pacing for me a bit.
One of the biggest issues I have with the game is how easy it is to die during some of the big set pieces. Maybe I'm just bad, but I died a ton of times inside the plane before it went down. Kind of killed the pacing for me a bit.
SRTtoZ
Member
Just finished UC2 (Remaster) today on Hard and can't wait to get into UC3. I havent played these games in years and am enjoying them a ton. I really remember playing UC3 and loving it but not quite as much as 2 but that was a different me back then, so I really hope I share these views when I start UC3 tomorrow. I'm really curious to see how it looks because UC2 looks great in the remaster with a super clean IQ and couldn't imagine UC3 looking that much better.