The Backlog Check-in Vol. 30: 7/28/18: Uncharted Edition
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 3:43 pm
Played: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Finished: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Playing: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
I finished Uncharted 3 last night, and it was a similar situation to Uncharted where I wasn't really having fun playing it and just pushed through it for the story. While I have some nitpicks with Uncharted 2, it's still one of my favorite games. It's a cohesive and fun action adventure thrill ride from start to finish with an entertaining story and cast of characters along with great gunplay, platforming, scripted events and set pieces. The same can't be said for Uncharted 3, it's a disjointed mess that becomes infuriating after the halfway point.
The first half of the game is good, it's a nice mix of adventuring, brawling, shooting, platforming and puzzle solving. I liked that it wasn't essentially just one shootout after another like in the two previous games (especially Uncharted). But then it basically turns into that when you reach the shipyard/boat level with pirates. The entire level feels out of place and shoehorned into the game, and outdoes the first Uncharted when it comes to pinning you down and surrounding you by wave after wave of of enemies with grenades, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and gatling guns while you have a pistol and a machine gun. You have to run around frantically just trying to survive while every enemy has pinpoint accuracy on you. The saying "shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind, you're the fish in the barrel being shot at. To add insult to injury, the gunplay is worse than in Uncharted 2 where it was solid and tight. In this game it's looser making pinpoint aiming a lot harder since you're constantly correcting your aim, and the enemies are more bullet sponges not even flinching when you shoot them so even though you're plugging away at them they just stand there and shoot you back. I don't know how many times that I died because after empting clips of ammo into an enemy and thinking that they were dead they ended up killing me off screen because they weren't dead.
A lot of the scripted events/set pieces throughout were totally absurd, and over the top to the point of ridiculousness. They were meant to be exciting, but instead were completely bonkers and not in a good way. I don't think that there's one thing in the game that Nate can grab that doesn't break. Things continue to go downhill with a long drawn out walking through a desert section immediately followed by another infuriating lengthy shootout level against onslaughts of armed to the teeth enemies throwing everything and the kitchen sink out at you. Thankfully things calm down a little during the last level of the game, there's still tons of enemies to shoot but not as bad as the levels before and the final boss is basically a QTE which is good because after the frustration that I had getting to him I wasn't in the mood for more frustration.
The bottom line is that Uncharted 3 lacks the charm, cohesiveness, fun and humor that Uncharted 2 offered throughout. It takes itself a lot more seriously most of the time, and ultimately feels like a hodgepodge of levels instead of one well thought out adventure.
I'm going to start Uncharted 4: A Thief's End now.
Finished: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Playing: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
I finished Uncharted 3 last night, and it was a similar situation to Uncharted where I wasn't really having fun playing it and just pushed through it for the story. While I have some nitpicks with Uncharted 2, it's still one of my favorite games. It's a cohesive and fun action adventure thrill ride from start to finish with an entertaining story and cast of characters along with great gunplay, platforming, scripted events and set pieces. The same can't be said for Uncharted 3, it's a disjointed mess that becomes infuriating after the halfway point.
The first half of the game is good, it's a nice mix of adventuring, brawling, shooting, platforming and puzzle solving. I liked that it wasn't essentially just one shootout after another like in the two previous games (especially Uncharted). But then it basically turns into that when you reach the shipyard/boat level with pirates. The entire level feels out of place and shoehorned into the game, and outdoes the first Uncharted when it comes to pinning you down and surrounding you by wave after wave of of enemies with grenades, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and gatling guns while you have a pistol and a machine gun. You have to run around frantically just trying to survive while every enemy has pinpoint accuracy on you. The saying "shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind, you're the fish in the barrel being shot at. To add insult to injury, the gunplay is worse than in Uncharted 2 where it was solid and tight. In this game it's looser making pinpoint aiming a lot harder since you're constantly correcting your aim, and the enemies are more bullet sponges not even flinching when you shoot them so even though you're plugging away at them they just stand there and shoot you back. I don't know how many times that I died because after empting clips of ammo into an enemy and thinking that they were dead they ended up killing me off screen because they weren't dead.
A lot of the scripted events/set pieces throughout were totally absurd, and over the top to the point of ridiculousness. They were meant to be exciting, but instead were completely bonkers and not in a good way. I don't think that there's one thing in the game that Nate can grab that doesn't break. Things continue to go downhill with a long drawn out walking through a desert section immediately followed by another infuriating lengthy shootout level against onslaughts of armed to the teeth enemies throwing everything and the kitchen sink out at you. Thankfully things calm down a little during the last level of the game, there's still tons of enemies to shoot but not as bad as the levels before and the final boss is basically a QTE which is good because after the frustration that I had getting to him I wasn't in the mood for more frustration.
The bottom line is that Uncharted 3 lacks the charm, cohesiveness, fun and humor that Uncharted 2 offered throughout. It takes itself a lot more seriously most of the time, and ultimately feels like a hodgepodge of levels instead of one well thought out adventure.
I'm going to start Uncharted 4: A Thief's End now.