Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment

[Green Gibbon!]

It turns out that Tsui was right for the third time in his life: Uncharted 2 is really, really good. And I didn't like the first one.

I'd played a demo of the first one way back when it was big news, but it struck me as a lot of tedious, generic gunplay. I played the full game a couple weeks ago only in anticipation of the sequel, but my feelings didn't change much. I actually liked everything about it except the gunplay - roughly 85% of the game. It's incredibly incosistent. It starts off good, then gets really bad around chapter 4 (I almost quit playing outright after chapter 5), then it gets good again, and then it gets really bad again right before the end.

Fortunately, the sequel has no such balance issues, at least not up to the point I'm at (chapter 18). The gunplay blends in much more smoothly with the rest of the action - none of those agonizingly drawn-out shooting galleries of the original. The environments are also much more varied and positively, utterly gorgeous. This is inarguably the best looking game so far this console generation, which could theoretically mean it's the best looking game so far ever. According to the in-game log, out of 9 hours of gameplay I've spent almost 2 hours standing still, which is pretty telling. How many hundreds of graphic artists did it take to model and implement this much inconsequential detail? Naughty Dog needs to be investigated, because the only possible way they can be making a profit from this is if they've got a south Asian sweatshop where droves of dirty 10-year old kids are working 14 hour days in deplorable conditions for 10 cents a week.

Shenmue factor aside (from the back, incidentally, Nate Drake is almost indistinguishable from Ryo Hazuki), the level design is always clever (occasionally ingenious) and the score is as epically beautiful as the scenery. The whole game plays out very successfully like a cheeseball Hollywood action-adventure flick, complete with an ongoing stream of lousy wisecracks. Of course I hate action flicks, but the fact that someone was able to take that framework and wrap a great game around it is an impressive feat.


So yeah, 2009 now officially has two games that are so good they made me start new threads.

[Segaholic2]

Uncharted 2 was indisputably my favorite game of 2009. I've never seen a game deliver that kind of entertainment experience with the level of cohesion and polish that Uncharted 2 has.

[cjmcray]

Damn. I thought this thread was going to be about Shenmue 3. Fuck you Gibbon.

The commercials make Nate Drake seem like a very generic douche-haired faggot. But otherwise, the game itself looks pretty cool.

[Green Gibbon!]

Yeah, character designs are pretty cut & paste, like the rest of the story, but it works for what it is, which is a cheeseball action flick in game form. A good cheeseball action flick, mind.

It reminds me of Shenmue at times. That's actually a recurring theme in most of the games that I really like, there's always something that makes me say, "This is kind of like Shenmue."


NOT THAT I'M A NERD OR ANYTHING.

[Esrever]

I'm actually playing this right now, too! (I think I'm pretty far in -- I can't remember what chapter I'm on, but I just arrived at the monastery.)

I think I liked the first game a bit more than GG, but I found the shift in focus of the last hour or two so infuriating that it completely destroyed my enthusiasm for the sequel. Up until that point, I had been enjoying the shooting segments nearly as much as the platforming -- I thought the aiming and cover mechanics worked great with those big showpiece "shooting gallery" sections, and had a lot of fun each time I had to strategically take down a massive arena full of of mercs. But then, without warning, the cover-shooting and mercenary armies were replaced with empty dark corridors and scrambling, kamikaze zombies... zombies who run MUCH faster than you can turn and lunge at you with no regard for their own health. Suddenly, Nate's aim seemed slow and lumbering, his health minuscule, and his cover abilities totally useless. It was like he had been inserted into a completely different game... a game he was never designed to play in. Yuck!

That is a terrible thing to do to a person. Even now, 3/4 of the way into Uncharted 2, I am still waiting for it to go off the rails. Yes, the improvements made to both the combat and the platforming are striking... particularly how much better the two are now integrated with one another. And the action set pieces, as linear as they may be, are some of the first "next gen" gaming moments I've seen that actually feel like something that couldn't have been done before. It's solid, breezy entertainment, right down to the basic story and sharp, likeable characters. But I keep waiting for another equivalently game-breaking moment to show up and RUIN EVERYTHING. (When I first saw the shadowy monster Yeti lurking in the ice caves, I thought that was going to be it, but in the end their movement was much more intelligently designed and worked just fine with the gunplay system.) I know everyone sings this game's praises right until the end, but I guess I won't believe it until I've seen it myself!

[Segaholic2]

In Uncharted 1, at the shift you're talking about, using nothing but blindfire and moving constantly (not using cover) is pretty much all you need to effectively progress.

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm innately not a fan of third-person shooting games, which is basically what Uncharted is, and the original game very much fits the part, but the sequel never feels as mechanical as the first. The first one bored me every few chapters, but Uncharted 2 is much more cohesive and engaging, even when it inevitably comes down to gunplay. It's the only game I've ever played except for Metal Gear that made me enjoy shooting.

The "guardians" are not nearly as retarded as the zombies and there's no corridor crawling. There's also a trick to killing them, so they're never more frustrating than normal, very strong enemies.


The monastery gets my vote for the single best action game stage I've ever played. This game is really beautiful in ways most developers don't even attempt.

[Green Gibbon!]

Now on the bad side, the game is Twitter enabled. Which falls under the "goddammit" category.

[Neo]

...Wait, what pray tell is a "twitter-enabled" game?

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm not totally sure. I think it automatically tweets your progress in the game to your Twitter account, if you have such a thing.

I do think there's such a thing as being too connected.

[G.Silver]

I have to say I really enjoyed Penny Arcade's take on that. I'm sure that whatever it actually does tweet is completely uninteresting.

[gr4yJ4Y]

A Facebook friend of mine had it set up so his Tweets went straight to Facebook and it was just things like getting trophies and leveling up in multiplayer. It wasn't particularly interesting and he changed his settings so the Twitter messages didn't pop up anymore.

[Blount]

I'm not disputing the quality of the game, but it has led to the most ridiculous score ever.

Everyone knows Uncharted 2 deserves at least 25/20.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

so is there going to be a third game followed by a kart racer, or what.

[G.Silver]

so is there going to be a third game followed by a kart racer, or what.

I hope they call it "Uncarted."

[Delphine]

BA-DUMP-BANNED

[Radrappy]

Last night I had a chance to play Uncharted 2, as well as FFXIII, both for the first time at a friend's apartment.

We played FFXIII first, it being monstrously hyped and all. The opening cinematic was extremely disorienting. Every sequence was overly kinetic making it hard even keep track of the action. The characters were ridiculous looking, the acting was goofy and the plot, incomprehensible. My friend had to translate almost every single line for me seeing as there was barely any visual story telling to speak of. Every character looked like a dolled up J-pop idol and had ridiculous names to fit(Lightning? Vanilla? Hope? Snow? what the fuck?). Even Sazh acted like a goofy japanese man in a black man's skin. The gameplay seemed to me, unchanged from FFX, but hell maybe it improves with time.
Again, for emphasis, the story made no fucking sense.

After an exhausting two hours of nausea, we popped in Uncharted 2, which by comparison is absolutely fucking brilliant. I've never been so impressed with editing or shot choices in a video game before. The plot, while cliche' is at least understandable and the characters are straightforward, relatable, and best of all look and act like fucking real people. Uncharted made FFXIII look like it was made by a team of 13 year olds with millions of dollars to blow through.

In conclusion, Uncharted 2 is great and Square has gone off the deep end. I hope none of you are actually excited for XIII.

[Blount]

Lightning? Vanilla? Hope? Snow?

BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED

[Shadow Hog]

Incidentally, I also heard FFXIII was linear as all hell - like, literally no world map to speak of - you heal completely after EVERY battle, removing most of the meaning behind Potions et al, and there are no special stores or anything - all the save points act as your shops instead. A few relatively bold moves there, but I don't really think it's going to pan out.

[Opa-Opa]

FFXIII look like it was made by a team of 13 year old girls with millions of dollars to blow through

Fixed.

I

[Delphine]

Lightning? Vanilla? Hope? Snow? what the fuck?

See, in Japan, using random English words for names sounds cool. Over hear we, y'know, SPEAK English, so it's lame. In 1997 I thought the name Cloud was kind of neat, but nowadays I'd just laugh at it.

[Shadow Hog]

Instead, we use random Japanese words for names if we're trying to be "hip" and "edgy" in the same fashion. It comes across as being just as contrived.

[Isuka]

Instead, we use random Japanese words for names

...... Oh FUCK!

As for FFXIII, it should be noted that the old games don't have much in the way of visual story telling, either. In that particular sense, I don't think they're getting any worse than they already were. The mass adoption of regular English nouns and the tinkering of game mechanics, now that's something (and I kinda expected them to do so, after all they're known for taking the finer aspects of a previous title and turning them upside down, and there was little remaining unchanged from past titles other than towns and shops).

[Senbei]

For the record, my random Japanese word name is not random.

Final Fantasy was cool when I was ten.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

DOCTA BAGUMAHN