AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! MAKE IT STOP! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! MAKE IT STOP! I WILL SHOOT MY PS3 IF YOU DO NOT MAKE IT STOP! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!
How can it be slightly better, then WORSE than before? Are you just screwing with me, Naughty Dog? Is this some metastrategy to drive me insane? If it weren't for me re-reviewing my old reviews to update them, I wouldn't even be doing this. This is like stabbing a fork into my leg repeatedly, except the fork is bad game design and the leg is my brain.
So yeah, things haven't been going much better than last time. I'm still going to say this is better than Tomb Raider, and the shooting is still better than Uncharted 3, but that's like saying a broken car is better than a crashing car that you're trapped in that is on fire. It's still not the ideal, and it's still inoperable for doing what you want.
What boggles me the most is, as I play this, how this game still gets hailed as a landmark piece of entertainment while games like Fuse are called unoriginal garbage. I'm sorry, but no only does Fuse's control scheme actually work better, but it actually has unique enemy types and weapons! I am to chapter FIFTEEN of this game and lets see what weapons I've encountered:
SMG pistol
Semi-automatic pistol
Shotgun
Shotgun pistol
Sniper Rifle
Burst-fire Rifle
Automatic Assault Rifle
But that's not all folks! We have the far more original Bullet Sponge With High Power Weapon That Will Probably Be Low On Ammo When You Take It, Big Guy with Minigun Who Walks Slowly, Regular Grunt, and Ate His Vitameatavegemite So He's Slightly Tougher Grunt. My, what a fine set of goons to shoot. If only we had a -- oh look, it's non-descript bullet sponge Helicopter that just either shoots at you circling around or does a prescripted dance around you. Stay tuned and maybe you'll get to do the same thing with a tank!
Experience a narrative so hamfisted that they make it literally rain for about ten or so minutes as you trudge through the most irritating and unrewarding escort section in a game since the invention of escort sections, and feel "sad" (FEEL THE SADNESS DANGIT!) Watch as interesting characters state that they are "too old" for this and commenting quite accurately on how contradictory Drake's morals are before abandoning him and repeatedly trying to get him to leave them alone. A villain so villainous, he's got a scar across his eye, burn marks, a bald head, AND a Russian accent (oh yeah, TOOOOTTALLLYYYY EEEEEEVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIILEEEEEEEEEEE!). A backstabber so obvious, that you'll be left wondering why anyone trusted him in the first place, and why Eddy Raja was reincarnated as an Australian.
Ponder the existential meaning of Drake's quest, as you tumble through building, after building, after train, after building, after street, after car, through one of the most awkwardly paced, badly scripted, and downright boringly repetitive singleplayer campaigns to grace the PS3 in graphics so stunning that you can clearly tell where the budget was focused.
Embrace new friends with Chloe, the girl who is clearly Lara Croft in disguise that totally makes sense with Drake but that he seems to keep turning down. Jeff, the idiot camera guy no one cared about and who literally has no substance to the plot beyond making people sad. Elena, who apparently got a face lift and a lot better lines while still remaining kind of bland if likeable. Sully, who's barely in the plot because "reasons". Flynn who... seriously, who didn't see him stabbing you in the back?
Enjoy new gameplay as Uncharted pretends it's Splinter Cell, while totally not understanding what makes a stealth game fun. Carry a riot shield, but only if you're just walking and only when you have a pistol out. Solve new puzzles, that basically are so linear you can complete them without trying. Do more platforming sections that basically lay the path before you in case you might get lost. And most importantly of all: CLIMB SIGNS! Climb signs in the rain! Climb signs in the sun! Climb signs while people shoot at you. Climb signs just for the hell of it. Uncharted 2: Among Signs was the original subtitle!
Enough Honest Trailers-esque angst though. I usually try to say it's fine for people to like this game, that it's fine to enjoy what you enjoy, but you know what, no. If anything, this should only be a guilty pleasure. It is an awful, awful game. I cannot see why it'd be anything else. (Note: I'm not giving any judgment on those of you who do enjoy it, since I have apparently made that unclear) It is not fun, the controls are not well mapped -- especially roll and cover being bound together. The shooting is substandard at best, relying on tricks we all have seen since the last generation. The stupid running sequences and attempts at platforming were done better in the ironically less linear Mirror's Edge. The puzzles of Quantum Conundrum are more mind boggling than this game's brain wobblers (not even a twist, just a wobble). The writing is downright atrocious at times and at best is average. Nolan North and the rest of the voice cast are talented but clearly just doing it for the cash and laughs. The only person so far to have development in any form is Drake in that he apparently likes butts no matter who's they are.
Part 2 of this review will be detailing the rest of my thoughts after I beat the rest of the game but my gosh... this is just such a soulless, lifeless, empty, badly put together game seemingly made to sell a graphics engine. I mean it, I don't get why you people like it. There's not even a Bayformers "I'll just turn my brain off" aspect to it, as you get the feeling it -wants- you to think, it just can't manage asking you to and doing it on its own at the same time. The most open and free to approach section is a traversing a straight train. The sound design has been outdone by indie games, the world is bland and worthless, and the stakes aren't even that high. We go through all these ridiculous situation to stop the villain when really, just breaking the stupid trinket used to unlock everything necessary to the plot would solve the entire scenario in an instant. They could then just lay low, Zoran would get caught and killed, Flynn would probably die at Zoran's hand, Chloe could sneak off (as she's really good at that), Elena could have taken her footage to prove Zoran was still alive, and what's the worst end of all this? Oh, Drake's not loaded with all the money he learned last time. If only he knew a rich person who cares a lot about him and would take a bullet for him -- oh hey Sully! Nice priceless artifact collection! I'm sure you got those from the dollar store.
In fact, you know what, this basically could be said about anything in Uncharted. The circumstances happen "because they do", not because they're logical, not because they serve the story, in fact some twists don't even make sense and fail to add to the plot. Meeting Tenzin and his people could be ripped right out of this game, and you'd still be fine. Chloe or Elena could have been your sidekick throughout the entire thing, no swapping, no unnecessary double crosses. Jeff was one of the worst attempts at making me feel an emotion since... no, he was before the Mass Effect 3 Kid even existed, so he's just the worst as far as the date of his awfulness is concerned. We don't need to have tedious mini-puzzles so long as you actually pace the game properly and only have like three really smart, really nicely done puzzles. We don't need every location to turn into a warzone. Not every building we set foot in should be destroyed before or upon arrival. We don't need boss fights outside of the brilliant finale (which I'm hoping I can say again because that was the one part I -did- like about Uncharted 2 the first time round), and we don't need to use a "roll' button if you just include a frigging sprint function like every other shooter-platformer that isn't Tomb Raider!
All you need to do is a protagonist who is likeable but ambiguous in a way that isn't sociopathic, a love interest, a decent sidekick and/or mentor figure, and some bad guys who aren't downright comically evil. That's the basic shtick of any action adventure story at its core, give or take maybe lacking a love interest (which isn't always a bad thing). If you want to deviate from that, fine, but don't rip ideas straight from other, better things and call them your own. Don't waste our time with twists and events that don't matter. My gosh, this is why writing based around scripted sequences is a bad idea! It leaves you with a broken storyline that is working for the gameplay's benefit, not in unison like for Bioshock, Dead Space 2, or Shadow of the Colossus. A game that gets twenty-five game of the year awards shouldn't fail to understand that.
My final thought though lies in that the real falseness of how "good" this game is, was actually best put by Game Informer, back when they had their Fifty Best Video Game Characters issue, where, describing the finale of Among Thieves, they wrote about how it was as real and genuine as "any Hollywood movie". Let's look at how wrong that statement is. It's the continued "games will only be good once their like movies" and the fact that yeah, Uncharted constantly throws away attempts at being fun in favor of being cinematic. It's suggesting that not only are our games not good enough now, but because we're trying to be like Hollywood, which is in its own spiral of trouble like the game industry, that that somehow makes us better. We're an entirely different medium, but we're praising a game that tries so damn hard to be anything but a game. That's why I say I liked the co-op -- because then it actually played like a frigging game! It still was a completely average game that I'd toss in a minute to instead play co-op in Mass Effect 3, Syndicate, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, Fuse, or really any other cooperative game to play, but it at least plays like a game.
Movies should not be games, and games should not be movies. Can we just accept that and stop pretending like it's going to happen? Sure we got a few good ones like Prince of Persia and Dead Space: Downfall, and just as well got The Adventures of Tin Tin game and a dozen good Star Wars games but these are small numbers in the face of mountains of failures.
*sigh* Let's face it, I am not going to like this. It doesn't matter how hard I try to like it or how much you insist my opinion is wrong -- my opinion is unchanging. I can keep going on to Part 2, but all you're going to get is more *****ing because I HATE THIS GAME. Nein, I hate this FRANCHISE. Stop expecting me to change it or to give in, because I've already gone to great lengths to find something enjoyable in it. "The co-op mode is fine" is the best you're gonna get. Alright? Okay, proceed to your usual response.
Cheers,
Paradigm the Fallen
I cannot get that theme song out of my head! MAKE IT STOP!
Trivia: This is officially the third time I've had to hand out judgement on this game.