Don't step in the Pharaoh

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Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Green Gibbon! »

I assume at least one of you shitnozzles must have picked up Uncharted 3 by now. For mysterious reasons, Amazon won't ship it here, so I had it shipped home so my parents can eventually send it to me when they feel like it. Hopefully that will be before Christmas.

Please transcribe your thoughts below. It does have a pyramid, right?


Also, did anyone else try the demo of Rayman Origins? I have only one thing to say: one hit kills what the hell Ancel I'm too old for that shit

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Popcorn »

I'm not sure what this has to do with Sonic.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Delphine »

Fuck that shit, last night I slew a dragon.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I finished the campaign the other night.

You know how there were a slew of improvements between Uncharted 1 and 2? And that going back to Uncharted 1 after playing Uncharted 2 is pretty difficult? Well, the gap from Uncharted 2 to Uncharted 3 is almost as big of a leap as that from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2. The mise en scene is more developed in cutscenes. You can throw back grenades when they're thrown right next to you. There are improved brawling mechanics - they're actually fun now. There's more seamless interaction with the environment. For example, for the finishing punch in a fight in a bar Nate grabs a bottle from a table and smashes it over a guy's head. The graphics are improved too. It's particularly noticeable in the texture of characters' skin, but also in the environments. The canyons near the end of the game are beautiful, but things seem also to be laid out in an increasingly natural and organic way. The way books and odd and ends are left on shelves, for example, feel real.

I actually enjoyed Uncharted 3 more than Uncharted 2 because I went into it knowing what to expect. I would say that the story is a little more serious this time and there are parts where gameplay takes a backseat to story (although the reverse is true in places as well!) - for example holding forward to have Nate walk through a town while dialog happens. I personally like these areas and I'm glad that they put in a couple to flesh out the characters more and take a break from the action. I just don't think I'll enjoy replaying Uncharted 3 as much as I did Uncharted 2 because I don't think these parts will leave the same impact the second or third time. I should also mention that there are a few environments in the game that feel a little forced for the story, but they don't ruin the game by any means.

The sand effects and little amount of time actually spent in the desert felt a little underwhelming and made me want to play something like Journey. It made me want to explore a desert in its entirety.

There's quiet a few moments in this game that left me almost hollering at the screen with excitement. Everything is so exceedingly polished. It makes me wonder what next gen games could do or look like. This certainly feels like a good blueprint to start off on.

No, GG! there are no pyramids as far as I remember.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Green Gibbon! »

How's the gunplay? I read that some people have a problem with aiming?
Delphine wrote:Fuck that shit, last night I slew a dragon.
That's Skyrim, right? How is that? The only Elder Scrolls game I've ever played was I think Morrowind on the Xbox, and that was for like 10 minutes at a friend's house and it wasn't a particularly enjoyable 10 minutes. But now Skyrim is supposedly all that and a bag of Fritos, so I was kind of looking at it.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Cuckooguy »

When it got released I noticed a bunch of people say they had problems with the aiming, but I never had an issue with it. Just point and shoot, how different can that concept be? But I've yet to start Uncharted 2 and I only finished Uncharted 1 about 2 days ago, but as someone who doesn't competitively play shooting games, the differences between 1 and 3's aiming is miniscule.

My favorite levels are the Chateau and the Cruise Ship. There's something about these beautiful locales having been dilapidated, but still give a sense that people used to live here at some point. Syria on the other hand is my least favorite, level, the most personality that level had was a broom closet. I also really dig the character Charlie Cutter, just the way he and one of his allies gets on eachother's nerves over small things makes it feel like they're like young brothers who quarrel and almost act like children when they're close to their immediate goals.

The technical achievements definitely are jaw dropping, just looking at some of the graphical stuff they do makes me wonder how the hell they accomplished it, for example there's this one sequence where the environment and all NPCs are becoming distorted, which is not a 2d filter, which is a recipe for polygons and vertices clipping into eachother but somehow they manage to pull it off flawlessly.

As for the story, it feels like they made most of the level scenarios first and stringed them together somehow to make the story after. However, because I played it for hours upon hours on end, it's something you probably wouldn't notice terribly if you played it your first time through, but I mostly echo j4y's statement in that there are a few environments in the game that feel a little forced for the story.

An astounding technical achievement nonetheless.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Green Gibbon! wrote:How's the gunplay? I read that some people have a problem with aiming?
I never had any problem aiming. It's pretty much the same as Uncharted 2 - use L1 to aim, R1 to shoot, L2 to throw a grenade, R2 to reload, L3 to zoom in when you can, you can carry a handgun and a long gun,switching weapons with the d-pad. I found myself using cover less than the other games somehow. The main addition to gunplay is the ability to throw back enemy grenades that land by you. Near the end it also gets a hair more difficult than the other games did due to the number of enemies surrounding you.

Actually, no I did have problems aiming once in co-op. The game glitched and just took away my cursor suddenly, which made it very hard to aim. It came back after I left that match and that was in version 1.00. They're on 1.01 so hopefully it's fixed now. It was never a problem in campaign.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Crisis »

I'm also curious about Skyrim. It's the first Elder Scrolls game that's really caught my attention. Dragon slaying looks awesome, I like the snowy mountain aesthetic, the procedurally generated content sounds great, and the skill system looks like it actually had thought put into it.

Is there a demo somewhere? I couldn't find one on the Mac Steam client (I'm away from my PC). It's crazy that companies are prepared to sink so much capital into a game and then don't ask the development team to take a week out and make a working demo. Surely that would be the most cost-effective part of the whole development cycle? (Unless they have something to hide, I suppose.)

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Blount »

Green Gibbon! wrote:Also, did anyone else try the demo of Rayman Origins? I have only one thing to say: one hit kills what the hell Ancel I'm too old for that shit
It's like watching a cartoon where the main character keeps dying.

I think what keeps it from getting frustrating is that you have unlimited lives, unlike the original game where dying too many times meant pulling out your hair and restarting a long way back. Other than that, it has good level design and the controls are perfect, so it's less easy to die too. I also think it's one of the best-looking games I've ever played, at least as far as 2D goes.

My wallet is in a coma right now, so I haven't gotten Uncharted 3 yet. I did get The Fourth Labyrinth though (the novel), and I'm liking it so far.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Green Gibbon! »

I was literally one death away from giving up in that underwater chase before I finally pulled it off. In retrospect it doesn't seem like it was too far to backtrack, but at the time I would've told you otherwise. And I assume this is from an early stage.

I'm sure I'll pick this up when it comes out, but I have no confidence in my ability to beat it.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Delphine »

Green Gibbon! wrote:That's Skyrim, right? How is that? The only Elder Scrolls game I've ever played was I think Morrowind on the Xbox, and that was for like 10 minutes at a friend's house and it wasn't a particularly enjoyable 10 minutes. But now Skyrim is supposedly all that and a bag of Fritos, so I was kind of looking at it.
Well first keep in mind TES fans have been waiting for this game for five years. Half of the hype surrounding the game is us weirdos shouting FINALLY at each other. I never played Morrowind (and that is the part where the fanboys set me on fire) so I don't know how it compares, but I can say it's leagues ahead of Oblivion.

I really, really, really like this game, so it's hard for me to step back and be objective and explain it to someone who isn't crazy. Yesterday's playthrough I told the main questline to go screw and took off seeking adventure. I joined the Wizard's College and dug up an ancient artifact we still haven't figured out what is, solved a murder mystery (it was vampires), rescued two separate cities from dragons, became trapped in (and rescued myself from) the mind of a dead homicidal maniac, led a foreign criminal into a trap so she could be sent home and brought to justice, got ahold of a marriage amulet so I can find a pretty polygonal lady to make my lawfully wedded wife, and watched a herd of mammoths go by as the sun set.

And it only crashed once!

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Post by Senbei »

Morrowind's real complex, which is probably why its proponents are so attached to it and why it's hard to get into. I haven't played Skyrim yet (I really want to play it on PC but don't have one), but I imagine gameplay's more streamlined without losing the depth that made Morrowind such a milestone.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Radrappy »

you guys are liars, I'm 3/4s through the campaign and everything from the gameplay to the story is worse than Uncharted 2. The story is what offends me the most at this point. Uncharted 2 had wonderful pacing with great motivations for the cast. Having Flynn betray Drake at the start of the game more or less propelled the characters into motion in a satisfying way. In Uncharted 3 , I'm still not quite sure why I'm looking for the lost city in the first place. The wholecruise ship was a cool level that had no place being in the game. I still don't know what that "pirate's" plan was and how it tied into things at all. When the Bedouin dude saves me in the desert, it's incredibly stilted as opposed to when your life is saved by the mountain man in 2, which felt completely natural. And when he starts telling me about genies over a camp fire, I'm out completely. I'm still enjoying myself and it's still great fun but it's definitely inferior to 2. Unless of course the endgame totally blows my face off.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Arcade »

You know, you made me want to take out the dust of the dreamcast and play rayman 2 again...

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by MiraiTails »

I'm just going to copy-pasta this from the 'What are you playing?' thread:
I wrote: Best Buy has a thing going on where if you pre-order 5 games from a set list you get $100 in gift certificates. Here are some thoughts on the 5 I got:
...
Uncharted 3:
Disappointing!
I had to put the game on the second hardest difficulty to have any real challenge. Before that, I could often run up to guys during a firefight and just punch them into submission. I almost got the impression they dumbed down the difficulty to make it appeal to a larger audience.
I had the most fun playing the ship graveyard, boat, and ocean liner levels.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but the cliffhanging elements just didn't seem to have the same punch as UC2. Perhaps it had something to do with Nate not acting that surprised he survived? Like even he was going through the numbers motions.

I should also note that I finished it in a few marathon sessions over the course of a couple of days. Maybe I wouldn't have been as disappointed if I gave it more time.

Edit: The little bugs also took away from the experience as well. For example, when hands would clip through things while Nate was hanging, or when Nate would constantly interact with walls he wasn't actually touching. I think things like this are more forgivable in a game like Skyrim (see below) because it gives the player so many more hours of gameplay.

Skyrim:
I'm liking this game a lot, even though I'm not normally big on RPG's. I like the real time combat and very non-linear nature of the game. The bugs are there, but isn't that somewhat expected of a game with such grand scope?
(I once was able to kill a fox with my bow because he began running straight up into the air instead of across the ground.)
...
I did enjoy UC3, but not as much as UC2. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or a lot of the elements just didn't feel as fresh the second time around. Maybe it was the 'third in a series curse.' I think it's interesting/odd that the sequence of sea levels turned out to be a dead-end story wise. Couldn't the pirate have just as easily had Sully? I I guess the point was to show how loyal Drake is to Sully? Still, it seems awkward some how. Maybe the developers thoughtthose were the strongest levels, so they went with any excuse to keep them in?

I also agree with what Rappy says about your rescue in UC3 feeling more stilted and unnatural than the rescue in UC2.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Esrever »

I'm about 60% of the way through UC3 (I think), and I've got to echo the vibe of MiraiTails and Radrappy. It's been good so far... sometimes great... but it is no Uncharted 2.

I think I'd pin the blame on two problems. One is the narrative... it's not as compelling, especially initially, and the way it propels you from one brief sequence to another like a laundry list feels disjointed compared to the previous game. And the other is some of the traditional "cinematic" setpiece sequences... there are just a few too many of them that play up things Uncharted doesn't do very well, like fist fights (shallow) and chases (trial and error).

That said, last night I played everything from the ship graveyard to the cruise ship, and every moment of that completely lived up to my lofty expectations (Even though, as others have mentioned, it took a pretty substantial narrative dead-end to get any of it into the game in the first place.) Unlike most of the areas in the first portion of the game, everything felt fully realized... unique, substantive environments full of great shootouts and crazy climbing sequences, where the insane cinematic "out of your control" moments were balanced by and meshed perfectly with gameplay. I just expected the game to be that good right from the beginning. (And I hope it stays that good right until the end!)

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I feel like the ship graveyard/cruise ship areas are the kind of thing that should have been DLC, but Naughty Dog doesn't believe in doing single-player DLC because they're too small to work on the next game and DLC at the same time. Something more tied into the story would have been better. Or maybe if they had the pirate as a more prominent character early in the story rather than shoehorned in right before he becomes relevant.

When I played through Uncharted 2, my expectations were too high and I almost expected to play a different kind of game. While playing through Uncharted 3, I knew what kind of game I was getting into and I knew where to place my expectations. I enjoyed it a lot more because of that. The cinematic sequences in Uncharted 2 (while more lighthearted) feel less sophisticated than those in Uncharted 3. While playing Uncharted 3, I actually get that "movie game" feeling that I didn't get while playing Uncharted 2.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Esrever »

Finished the game last night! From a gameplay, design and "cool settings" perspective, the 2nd half of the game was definitely a lot better and a lot more consistent than the first. (Although I still think the boat graveyard and cruise ship area was the best designed part of the game.

The story never really came together, though. Actually, I'm just really confused.

What were the spiders? Where did they come from? Why were they in all the various secret tombs throughout the game? I thought that in the end the spiders, the curse of the Atlantis of the Sands, and the mind control drugs Marlowe used would all be related in some way, but now it seems like... none of them were?

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Radrappy »

yeah and what about when

cutter shot the fucking henchman guy and he didn't even appear to be hurt? That was never explained as well. I'd assume it's because cutter was under the influence of the drug, but all members of the cast saw the dude get shot. or the fact that the evil genie jar never even gets opened? You can't introduce a pandora's box like element and NOT OPEN IT. And what were the baddies even going to do with it? I still have no idea what Marlowe was trying to accomplish.

so yeah, the story is pretty shit. Especially compared to 2's.

I was flipping through a gaming magazine at Ralphs the other day and they had awarded batman, drakes, and saint's row a 10/10 all in the same issue. You can bet they probably gave skyrim a 10 too. This grade inflation business is getting pretty ridiculous.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Radrappy wrote:I was flipping through a gaming magazine at Ralphs the other day and they had awarded batman, drakes, and saint's row a 10/10 all in the same issue. You can bet they probably gave skyrim a 10 too. This grade inflation business is getting pretty ridiculous.
That poor soul who was undecided on which of the four to buy and was relying on the scores to decide his purchase will have to... *gasp* READ THE REVIEWS!

Seriously though, it is getting pretty ridiculous. An 8/10 is apparently a bad score these days for a major release.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Cuckooguy »

They even admit in the bonus videos that they thought of all the levels and scenarios first before stringing them all together in a haphazard plot!

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Radrappy »

gr4yJ4Y wrote: That poor soul who was undecided on which of the four to buy and was relying on the scores to decide his purchase will have to... *gasp* READ THE REVIEWS!
I'm sure each of the 10/10 reviews brought up a number of pros and cons with which to help the potential buyer decide. Either that or it was paragraph on paragraph of praise!

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Esrever »

I just can't believe how few Uncharted 3 reviews mentioned the game's story problems. I remembering a few of the more critical ones ragging on the linearity and trial-and-error cinematic gameplay, sure, but almost none that touched on the swiss-cheese plot which is now being widely complained about on pretty much every gaming blog and forum I read.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by Crisis »

I was thinking the exact same thing about grade inflation. I recently put together my own ratings system for games, with a little input from friends. There are specific criteria for each point. We then started putting our favourite games on it, for giggles. Skyrim got a 5/10. "A generally solid experience that contributes something meaningful to the genre... marred by a small number of severe design or technical oversights."

The metacritic average of Skyrim on PC is 95. To get that score on this rating scale, Skyrim would have to "exceed our highest preconceived expectations and be the best representation of the medium we can hope for. It ought to stand tall with celebrated pieces of literature, film, etc." That's a bit of a stretch for a buggy, hundred-hour, single-player dungeon crawler.

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Re: Don't step in the Pharaoh

Post by MiraiTails »

So it's a 1 to 10 scale? I have a hard time justifying more than 1 to 5.

Can you post the criteria you came up with? (Unless you're afraid of someone using it without permission or something...)

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