Uncharted 3

    It's definitely inferior to Uncharted 2 in pretty much every way, but I still had a great time playing it. I completely agree that with this third game the lack of any redesign or polish on their core shooter mechanics have really started hurting them. It still has the same floaty feel that the first one had, but without the amazing reload animation (Reload anims in the first game, still best in the business, srsly guise). For me then it actually wasn't as much the shotgun dudes that bugged me, I got some mad respect for them fairly quickly, but rather the RPG and grenade launcher dudes that always resulted in hit deaths out of no where. One of the things I liked the most about UC2 was how agile and exciting you could make firefights by constantly moving around, and with UC3 it really felt like they put a dampner on that, making it much harder to be out of cover, at least on normal difficulty.

    Again, still think its a great game but sadly nowhere near UC2's awesomeness~

    Just finished it myself, clocking around 9 hours, it's slightly shorter than U2. But that doesn't mean anything, the game ended when it should have ended, if it dragged for too long just for the sake of being longer it would have been worse. When I finished this, credits started rolling and I just said... wow! Even my girl watched me play through the entire thing and she cannot believe how good this is, it's just as fun to play as it is to watch.

    Quote from Rick_D

    i also like to pretend that the ship graveyard never happened. that was the point in the game where i really lost the love for it that uncharted 2 had created.

    You know, I so don't agree with this?

    The Ship Graveyard was my favorite level in the ENTIRE game, you know why? There was no silly gameplay interruptions to give place to a cutscene where everything collapses down and drake just manages to come out alive. It's an amazing level from a gameplay perspective, and it also looks great! I love how it felt like a sidequest, there was no pressure from the main plot, so the game felt more relaxed and gave way to a more gamey experience, the gameplay paced really well on there. I also love how the areas open up a bit to give way to different paths and different strategies, you could go left, right, down (swim under) or up (climb to the boats) and after the firefight you have an amazing sequence of platforming through all the destroyed boats. Of all the levels in the game, The Ship Graveyard felt the most "Uncharted" to me.

    The rest of the game was still amazing tho, It's like with this IP the bar is being raised so high you wonder what they're gonna do next to top this, not only ND but also other companies.

    I did felt a lack of polish that made Uncharted2 so good though, firefights in U2 felt better, and they got harder, and harder as you progress then they hit a peak and then it's the calm after the storm before it picks up again. I'm talking about the train sequence in U2 for instance, It's just packed of action then you have the village level where you just walk and look around, then the platforming in the caves and only then you have more combat after more than an hour without firing a shot. Pacing like this it's what made U2 really feel like a well thought out movie.

    Uncharted3 felt more like a action movie, it's so action packed even there's more stuff on there than the majority of any action movies I've ever seen; obviously this damages gameplay a bit. As awesome as I love to see stuff burning, collapsing, moving, being turned up side down, etc, I love to play a game where I feel like I'm in control of the action, U3 failed in this aspect, you feel like you're rolling down a train of scripted scenes.

    With that being said, Uncharted3 is no doubt the most amazing game I've played this year, hands down!

    The art is gorgeous, and locations are so well portrayed, it's a joy just to stare at the textures. I also love their engine, it's a marvel of game engine tech.

    PS. for those that never played Uncharted 1, DO IT! It's still my favorite of the series.

    finished it too now ! all around love but their 3 gameplay columns fist fighting / climbing / gunplay are all rather lack luster and clearly took a backseat compared to graphics / storytelling / spectacle . which is a shame because u2 excellent in pretty much all those areas at once so u2 remains my favorite ! and not matter how much i love the storytelling i think they stuck a bit too close to "the last crusade" !

    stumbling from "inspired by" to "unauthorized remake" in the process.

    @hp my favorite level was also the shipgraveyard ! ... besides that i agree with everything that rick said !

    Mazy drugged sequences -> simple vertex shader with some scrolling sinus curves that adds to the x y an z world coordinates of a vert ... i have made one of those for my game for grass and sails and stuff like that ... not for being drugged ^^ but what they also do is wobble the uv coordinates around a little which (together with their cool transition stuff) makes it look like there is some moss growing over edges and receding or stuff cracking and than getting fixed again ... very subtle but very cool !

    edit: also i had trouble redeeming my online pass voucher i order my copy from amazon.co.uk and i am sitting with my ps3 in germany ? anyone ? ... HP ? ...? same problem ? the codes that came with the shadow of the colosuss hd collection also didnt work.

    By the way, have you guys seen the mess over the Eurogamer review? Simon Parkin highlighted some reasonable problems with the game and gave it 8/10. 8/10 is a good score but the Internet blew up. It was all collated on NeoGAF but it looks like you need an account to read now, so have some Google Cache.

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&c…5l670l1.3.1l5l0

    Basically endless comments like

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    Anyone who gives Uncharted 3 anything less than a 9.0 is nothing but a troll and deserves to be slapped.

    And now Eurogamer have interviewed Richard Lemarchand (ND's lead game designer) about their scandalous eight out of ten review. This is mental.

    Quote from Warby

    Mazy drugged sequences -> simple vertex shader with some scrolling sinus curves that adds to the x y an z world coordinates of a vert ... i have made one of those for my game for grass and sails and stuff like that ... not for being drugged ^^ but what they also do is wobble the uv coordinates around a little which (together with their cool transition stuff) makes it look like there is some moss growing over edges and receding or stuff cracking and than getting fixed again ... very subtle but very cool !

    Thanks for making me feel dumb (Hint: It's quite easy)

    Oh and fuck review scores

    Quote from Warby

    gameplay = 6/10 spectacle = 10/10

    averaged = 8/10 seems reasonable to me ...

    As much as I love the series and have huge respect for Naughty Dog...I have to agree with this.

    Quote from Mazy

    It's definitely inferior to Uncharted 2 in pretty much every way, but I still had a great time playing it. I completely agree that with this third game the lack of any redesign or polish on their core shooter mechanics have really started hurting them. It still has the same floaty feel that the first one had, but without the amazing reload animation (Reload anims in the first game, still best in the business, srsly guise). For me then it actually wasn't as much the shotgun dudes that bugged me, I got some mad respect for them fairly quickly, but rather the RPG and grenade launcher dudes that always resulted in hit deaths out of no where. One of the things I liked the most about UC2 was how agile and exciting you could make firefights by constantly moving around, and with UC3 it really felt like they put a dampner on that, making it much harder to be out of cover, at least on normal difficulty.Again, still think its a great game but sadly nowhere near UC2's awesomeness~

    Pretty much agree with this.

    It seems like once an enemy locks into close combat with you, usually when you're behind cover trying to avoid a grenade launcher guy, it's like he's magnetic and you can't exit the close combat in a good way, so instead you try to kill the close combat guy (which takes 2 hours if it's a shotgun dude) meanwhile getting killed by a grenade from the other guy because you're not in cover anymore. VERY frustrating.

    Several times I thought I was safe in cover while I wasn't. It's just all these random one shot kills really piss you off

    But overall I enjoyed it very much, not as much as UC2 but still a great game.

    Just finished it, 17 hours + it took me apparently, I know I spent some of the time looking at the environments and looking for treasures but man, that's a lot longer than either of the previous games!

    Well I have to say that Uncharted 2 was a tough one to beat and although it certainly doesn't surpass it, it gives it a run for it's money.. it just falls flat due to flawed script and bad gameplay choices. U2 for me, is still king of the hill.

    U3 seems like what many of you have already mentioned, like everything is part of an action movie... it feels like material for about two games rather than one, things happen so fast that your memory of exactly what happens in some sections may become blurred.

    The combat threw you into a lot of stupidly tough scenarios, I played on easy as I do on any new game I'm playing, once I'm for the first time, I'll go play through again on normal.. but with this, I think I'd end up turning the difficulty back down because some of the sections were on the verge of not being fun.. and for a game like Uncharted, that's a very bad thing. Several times there was a machine gun turret, rpgs, snipers and shotgun guys all going for me, as soon as I popped my head out of cover I was almost completely greyed out by the time I made it to another wall for protection or ended up dead via fire from any of the above. Often I'd take out all of the bad guys and get killed by a stray rocket guy I didn't spot in the distance, then it's back to the start of the fight... before I'd taken out about 20 enemies. Frustrating.

    Melee combat at times pissed me off as well, because you'd be concentrating fire on one set of enemies and someone would appear out of nowhere and start punching you, forcing you out of cover and leaving you exposed. U2's combat was better, at least when you needed to dodge it went into slow motion so you had enough time to beat the opponent before being shot in the ass by anyone else around. The option to throw back enemy grenades is as useless as it is in COD, unless you time it just right you still get blown to bits...

    The puzzles as Taylor mentioned were actual puzzles that needed solving, nothing really taxing but better than just looking at Nate's journal for the solution. Do I need to mention graphics?! The game was phenomenally beautiful, as Rick said it seemed like some of the art direction was kind of "Let's shove lots of random cool things into the levels as we can", pleasing to the eye but perhaps not quite as well realised as the artwork in U2. That said, ND's texture artists are the best in the business.. no other games on any platform rival the detail and quality present in the Uncharted games. The chateau was gorgeous, London skyline was authentic and pretty and I really liked the

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    ship graveyard

    , having seen the trailers I had expected a single level on a cargo freighter but I was wrong. I didn't really like the

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    castle in Syria

    , it seemed very bland and dull which could possibly be due to the night time lighting...

    I loved the

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    chase

    sections, very well done and genuinely fun to play, the only downside being that with so much going on you don't have time to stop and admire the scenery! I had this issue with the

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    horse riding

    too, but it's a game so I'll shut up about that I liked the addition of having to search for clues in some locations, pretty run of the mill stuff but it was at least something new to break up the all too familiar mechanics.

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    Young Drake in Columbia was a nice twist as well, didn't see that coming...

    I didn't like Katherine Marlowe's character, she had a lot of potential but she was barely in it and when she turned up her voice just didn't sound like it belonged to that character's face... the actress Rosalind Ayres, doesn't usually play that kind of part and although she did very well.. if for example say Helen Mirren had voiced her, she would have been a lot better. Lazarević was a much better antagonist, despite the cliches. The storyline in general was partly muddled and confusing, I didn't understand what the flask was at the end or why

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    Talbot was so pissed off at Marlowe's death considering Drake tried to save her

    .

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    The final encounter with Talbot was easily one of the worst bosses I've ever fought, I wouldn't even consider it a boss fight, it was a mess, I died so many times and failed save Sully several times too despite shooting the bastard in the head. I remember how they used the QTEs in the boss fight with Navaro in the first game but unlike this, that was actually pretty well done.

    .

    The eurogamer review was spot on, 8/10 is what I would give it, I thoroughly loved the majority game, it's better than 1 but fails to stand up to 2.

    I had planned to write more but I thought I'd gone overboard a little as it was :embarrassed:

    How many treasures did you all find on first playthrough? I got 81, some of them are very well hidden. On that note, anyone else disappointed by the total lack of unlockables in the game? U2 had a store where medals gave you money to buy things like special rendermodes, extra concepts, weapons and character models to play as for single-player etc There's none of that here! Even the behind-the-scenes stuff is a bit lacking imho.

    Also you can't play the cinematics seperately from the game this time

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    You got 80? Nice... you explorer! I I got 50 I think, It's almost impossible to find all the treasures on a Uncharted game without a guide.

    Yeah, I only found about 60. I think the treasures in U2 were actually harder to find -- my first playthrough of that I think i only found about 35 :S.

    Quote

    On that note, anyone else disappointed by the total lack of unlockables in the game? U2 had a store where medals gave you money to buy things like special rendermodes, extra concepts, weapons and character models to play as for single-player

    Yeah I was pretty disappointed. I was looking forward to buying weapons so I could have an easier time getting the 30 kills trophy for each. But at least we don't have to spend the cash to unlock things like the art gallery and BTS videos. I was annoyed by that part in U2 (mainly because the BTS videos went up for free on PSN Store after I had already unlocked them in the game).

    i genuinely don't care about the treasures because they seem like an artificial way to lengthen the game by making you play through more than once. i'd love challenges like older games had then: beat the level without taking any damage, run through in X amount of time, etc. i don't really enjoy hunting things down knowing they have been placed in as obscure a place as possible.

    Quote from Mazy

    Oh and fuck review scores

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    Quote from Grimmsorg

    This might have already been posted before but I came across a presentation on Naughty Dogs approach to environment art, its about 3 hours long and quite in-depth so its defiantly worth a watch:http://%7boption%7d

    thx man, it's great !

    Finished it last night with a friend (taking turns not coop). Gotta say very impressed, still love this series. Naughty Dog is still making incredible things that I've never seen before. Like the first two there is a constant stream of new and unique areas and ideas and nothing ever really get's old or repetitive. No it wasn't as good as Uncharted 2 and it was a bit shorter, but there were some sections and aspects of UC3 that are much cooler.

    There are some problems, pretty much everything has already been covered by D3ads or someone else. The new fighting stuff which is pretty great but there are some basic problems that have existed from the first one. I think the problem is that there's just some areas where they spent less time on everything and all the flaws are exposed. Places where the combat is less polished they just spam enemies, especially the dumb grunts, who still have horrible AI, and some jilted animations, add to that sulley running around randomly and you just get all the flaws exposed at once. But the most polished areas are very smooth, and the more powerful and unique enemies have better AI and animation, so there's a big disconnect between the epic parts and the random corridor parts.

    Also, the worse you do, the more the flaws are exposed, for example the cover stuff.

    I find that if I assume I'm always in control and just keep hitting the buttons I want to the transitions between the different kinds of fighting, semi-scripted parts, cutscenes, and everything are well done. Except in those few places where they didn't put as much effort in the scripting. A few places where you have to hit your marks exactly or whatever feel mangled. It also shows up in the puzzle sections where your buddies will get to the marks before you tell them to, or you are being constnatly told what to do (way more urging in this one!), or sulley does his robot ladder climb. Really it just seems like different areas had more or less attention than others, which is fine.

    All in all a great game.

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