It looks really nice
I got myself a PS3 Slim a few weeks back (yeah I know, I’m always at the head of technology) along with copies of Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain. Not played that much of the latter so far, mostly because I got completely turned off by the utterly confusing movement system. I feel like I’m playing the original Resident Evil all over again…
Anway, I’ve been playing through Uncharted 2 and finished it at the weekend. I can see how this got it’s 9/10 and 10/10 reviews: it is highly polished visually, the cutscenes and story are slightly better than the traditional writing videogames offer the player and it’s got some nice set pieces which I really enjoyed. However there were many things about it that I felt disappointed by.
For a start I thought it was far too long. Admittedly I got distracted by the hunt for treasures and spent probably a good 1-2 hours purely searching nooks and crannies for them. But ignoring the time spent gathering shinies it still took me over 12 hours to finish. My thoughts while playing were that a lot of the time it was being padded out needlessly. A lot of the navigation ‘puzzles’ were just time sinks to delay you and didn’t feel like a challenge I had to overcome for any important gameplay reason other than the basic ‘get from A to B’. As such, a lot of them could have been cut and the game would not have lost anything. The Monastery was the worst offender. I would complete one tiresome section only to reach a corner of the mountain to see yet another collection of improbably perched ruins waiting for my aching arms to climb. I almost gave up at that point as I was just wanting to finish the damn game.
Another thing was that the entire time I was playing I had the constant, nagging sensation that I was moving too slowly. Even when running full pelt it felt like there was something holding me back, like I had invisible tyres round my ankles. Can’t quite describe it, but it was infuriating when playing for long periods. It certainly didn’t help when yet another huge section of level was revealed to me (see above). Must admit I did wonder if the developers were aware of this since when I had a look at the Bonuses, there was an unlockable one for ‘Run faster’ (forget the actual name). A bit of a self-aware dig perhaps?
Finally there was too much gunplay! I genuinely hadn’t expected this much. I’d heard sarcastic comments about Nathan being a mass murderer and how it was completely at odds with the pulpy story, but didn’t realise it was so true. Combined with the never-ending levels and slow movement speed, some of these battles were interminable! This wasn’t helped by the developers falling back on the decades old crutch of gradually adding in harder-to-kill enemies the further you get in to the game. Guys with riot shields – fair enough, cute idea and a good challenge. Then guys in kevlar body armour with shotguns, then guys in metal body armour carrying massive chainguns (eh?) then finally blue-skinned mad natives with superhuman strength and stupidly powerful weapons. THIS IS NOT FUN GUYS!!! This is supposed to be the prime example of action-adventure videogaming, top of it’s class and all that, and you’re simply throwing more and harder enemies at me as I go along!? Bloody hell.
Still, I enjoyed it for what it was, but won’t be chasing any remaining treasures. Trade-in time!
[Oh, and I’m ignoring the physical improbability of surviving such close contact to explosions and huge falls, the impossibility of being able to climb, jump, run, fight like that for such protracted periods of time, the unbelievable jumps across gaps (world record held by athletes 8.95 metres FYI) – including backwards jumps from holding onto a ledge etc, etc… after all, it’s a videogame :)]
