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luna_manarI keep meaning to babble about the Uncharted games. I feel like I almost need a prompt, there's so much there. I think I've talked it to death with Owen.
In any trilogy, you can usually label each section with one piece of OMG WTF BBQ. Which one is which varies, but Uncharted was one of the few that differed, in that its particular pattern goes, "OMG OMG OMGWTFBBQ." The last one encompasses them all, really, and not always in a good way.
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Date: 2012-04-17 04:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-17 10:13 pm (UTC)-First of all, it was beyond comical how often Drake says "shit." It's like he's so happy that he's allowed to say it now, he HAS to say it ALL THE TIME. Ohshit! What the shit? Holy SHIT. SHIIIT!!
I thought Drake's signature "Oh, crap" was actually really charming in the first two games. He says it about twice in Deception. The rest of the time it's just shit, shit, shitshitshit. His dialogue is literally full of shit. XD
-And, and...what...was up with the end? It made NO SENSE. It's like they just had a million ideas for what to do with the story and couldn't bear to NOT do any of them, so they tried to do it ALL and ended up failing in a lot of ways. None of it meshes well, and a lot of the, uh, action sequences are SO OUT THERE that I have a hard time suspending disbelief even for the sake of a video game. Uncharted is a game, and of course you're going to do some humanly impossible things, but...jumping from debris to falling debris and climbing said debris and shooting enemies out of the sky while in free-fall? Badass, no doubt, but I think that's something more suited to Mario Galaxy than a "realistic" setting like Uncharted. I spent that whole part laughing my ass off and yelling "What. The. FUCK? Am I DOING?"
There's just too much Drake Randomly Becomes A Superhero in Deception, especially at the end. The Tomb Raider movies were more realistic.
My favorite interpretation of the end is actually that Drake dies. The entire ending, including the happy conclusion, is a dehydrated hallucination. It's the only way any of it makes sense to me. Including...
-The GLITCHES. Holy shit. The game glitched up so badly on the LAST FIGHT that I almost couldn't beat it. I got Drake's head stuck UNDER the crumbling platform, so he was just pounding his fists into polygonal stone while my "Nemesis" was fighting empty air above me. I finally got out of it, but man, it ruined the "final battle" experience completely for me. And it wasn't the only glitch. I got stuck on walls, in mid-air, under horses all over the place. Gaaah!
-And on the subject of horses: I understand that it's probably more convenient for the use of firearms, but WHY is everyone riding WESTERN? No one rides Western in that part of the world, and even if it's more convenient to keep a hand free, the horses in that area are not going to understand Western. They ride English in most places that are not the United States.
Maybe that's why the controls on the horses sucked to bad.
-There just wasn't the diversity of weapons in this game that there was in the other games. Where's my fuckin' DEagle man? Also, shut up the Thunderbolt is a better rifle than the Dragon. It doesn't even work as well in the game.
-Speaking of which, controls--what the hell did they do to the controls? Drake used to be able to swivel around on a dime and when I aimed at someone with my gun and their head was smack in the center of the targeting recticle, you know what happened? THEY DIED. I wasn't blown back so hard by the recoil that the bullets went whizzing anywhere _except_ at the target. Apparently Drake has some serious carpal tunnel syndrome.
Also, I know Drake is supposed to be older in this, but apparently they decided that being a little older makes you wander randomly around when you're supposed to be running in a straight line, walk around in a circle when you should be spinning on your heel, and punch WALLS instead of bad guys. A LOT. I could NOT get Drake to do what I wanted him to do half the time. It was one of those things where he had to finish his punching or shouting or shooting animation before he could listen to me again, and it made some of the more complicated fights awkward as balls. Thankfully, all the enemies were cursed with the same affliction.
-Speaking of enemies, I was really, really disappointed that there were no zombies in this game. Or Nazis. I mean, I know that the Nazi thing is overdone in treasure-hunting adventure stories, but it was a theme in the first two games and I don't know why it didn't carry over. And...really, I LIKED the crazy El Dorado and Shangri La zombies. I wanted poison-water-crazed zombies in this one, dammit!
-And on the topic of bad guys, my biggest and most passionate complaint about Deception is..."SO WHAT?" That was the feeling I was left with, after the game was over (after I was done with WTFBBQ). You NEVER get to find out what Drake's actual relationship to Sir Francis is, if anything, you NEVER get any payoff from Marlowe's cryptic hint-drops on account of DEAD, and I just plain didn't give one shit about Talbot. He was a lousy and boring creep of a villain. Instead of being proud that I was awesome and sent him packing, I was just relieved to have him gone the way I'm relieved to be rid of a flea infestation.
After the plane crash, I had no fears of Nathan dying. In fact, I was hoping he was dead, because he'd just so far surpassed what is humanly possible to survive in one piece that he was either Superman or Dead, so either way there was no more suspense for me. I wasn't even afraid that Sully was dead, because either he would come back/not really be dead and there wouldn't be any real consequences for Drake's actions (which is what happened), or nothing was real at all. And there WERE no real consequences for Drake's actions. Sully lived, Elena still loves him, blah blah blah. I did all that work and I got nothing, no big reveal about Drake's past, no character development or growth. Everything is still the same.
UNLESS Drake is dead, which I am choosing to believe he is, because that would make everything leading up to the plane crash worth it. Because...because the first few parts of the game really WERE done very well! I was living it up, even with the control issues and Drake's potty mouth. I really liked Marlowe as a villain, I thought she had a lot of potential. I liked Drake and Elena's schmaltzy make-up romance. I liked the suggestion that Sully would not survive the last game.
But nothing delivered. Chloe and Cutter randomly exited state left, never to be seen again, Marlowe got sucked up by quicksand before anything solid was made of her character (SO disappointing...there was SUCH a great setup for this), Talbot turned out to secretly have the back legs of a mountain goat so you could just CHASE him through the rest of the game and...Nate...lost all his personality, slipped into a dehydrated daze for the rest of the game and if he didn't die, his character sure did. Nothing he did or said from the desert on tracked at all. And it's such a shame, because I really did like were they were going with everything. And the game itself is GORGEOUS.
I just felt like they put in a lot of effort to make this really great setting, built up all this support to pull off a great climax...and then just took it in a completely different direction and FORGOT about the first four fifths of the game. It just blows my mind how they took this really great setup and just...wasted it.
I still like Deception. I would (and will) play it again, but this game deserve some SERIOUS fanfiction to make up for its utter lack of a final payload. It's like they just couldn't figure out a way of topping Uncharted 2 (SO. MUCH. LOVE. <3), so they thought they'd just try to use every idea they ever had left for Drake, but never tied it all together. It's like the Silmarillon of video games.
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Date: 2012-04-18 03:43 pm (UTC)- Oh man, I really missed Nate's 'oh crap!'s and, even more than that, his hysterical laugh whenever he barely makes it out of a near-death situation. Like, you know, climbing up trains.
- Segueing right into your comment about Nate dying: I never really expected that he would die, either, although that was more because that seemed like a pretty dark ending for an otherwise upbeat trilogy. I actually was mildly concerned about Sully, but was pretty sure they'd bring him back. BUT. Talking about all of Nate's death-defying escapes, I agree that it was too much. I feel like if they'd split up the sinking ship and the airplane crashing into two different games, it would have been more palatable. I mean, in the second game, there were a lot of death-defying escapes, too, but... I don't know, I feel like one of the main differences was that most of the time, Nate got himself into trouble. I love so much that the train crash was entirely his fault in the second game. I'm not sure that really held for the third game (well... maybe for the airplane? I don't actually remember what caused the airplane to crash in the middle of nowhere).
The ship graveyard was absolutely my favorite part of the third game (aside from Nate and Elena's reconciliation scene, but that's comparing gameplay to an FMV which I don't think really counts). It was such a cool dungeon and the epicness of escaping from a sinking ship made up for how unbelievable it was, for me, but... yeah.
I did think they did a really good job of showing Nate wandering stupidly around in the desert, but once we got to the town and suddenly had to shoot ALL THE GUYS, still without any water, I started yelling at the TV.
- So much agreement, I was disappointed that there were no weird monsters in this game. I guess there were spiders? But nothing ever happened with them. The creepiness from the first few dungeons seemed to go absolutely nowhere, despite all the lead up.
- Also, yes, I really wish we had gotten more about Nate's background. I kind of liked that they just left us with the implication that Nate made the whole Drake thing up as a kid, possibly even believed it himself but was never entirely sure. But MAN I wanted more!
- Hahahaha, your glitch problems sound frustrating and hilarious. I actually didn't have any problems with glitches? It must have been fixed by the time I played it. I did have quite a few problems making Nate run where the crap I ordered him to, especially when he was a kid. And YES, dammit, what happened to headshots?!
I didn't play the second game (Baco did), but I played the first and third, and I'm pretty sure I got more headshots in the first game than the third. Which is saying something; I found the controls in the first game to be seriously frustrating.
OH OH and it's time to go. I did want to say, though, that I had no idea that there are different styles of riding horses! I'm sad that they missed that detail, but am glad to know it myself now. :D
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Date: 2012-04-18 03:44 pm (UTC)I was so angry that Elena didn't come with us to save Sully. FUCK YOU, NATE, even if I kind of expected it. She's a way better shot, anyway. At least, uh, she is when I'm the one playing. XD
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Date: 2012-04-19 02:50 am (UTC)Right? (Oh god, the train. That may have been the single greatest mechanical story/game integrated element ever pulled off perfectly in the history of forever. It was an absolutely perfect moment for Thieves to revolve around, and they handled it just right.)
I love so much that the train crash was entirely his fault in the second game. I'm not sure that really held for the third game
I really enjoyed that aspect, too, largely because I really, really like it when heroes have to face their mistakes (+10 if they actually figure out a way to make up for them). In Deception, I felt like they went out of their way to avoid punishing Nate (beyond tossing him around and putting his body through hell, for which he doesn't even have a broken bone to show). He gets Elena back (which I don't actually mind--I really, really liked their reconciliation and thought it was really sweet; however, as you pointed out, given their resolve to be in it together until the end, it drives me nuts that she wasn't around for the last part of the game.
The ship graveyard was absolutely my favorite part of the third game
Mine, too!! I absolutely adore old, corroding structures...buildings or ships, like old skeletons you can walk inside and explore. And the shipyard was absolutely gorgeous. I feel like the game should honestly have climaxed there, but if they'd done that, they wouldn't have gotten to throw Nate out of a plane and make him walk for a day in the desert. =P Also, I guess it would be harder to hide an old ruin under a shipyard.
I have an almost pathological love for places like that, though. It was surprising, for some reason, to see a shipyard in Uncharted (more because of the feelings it tends to evoke in me than it's appropriateness for the game), but I really got deep into the scene (the Tetanus remark was on my lips long before Nate said anything XD) and really drawn into Nate's worries. I figured the hooded Sully was a fake, but it didn't keep me from feeling Nate's disappointment, and the escape from the ship was both fun and appropriately panicking (and a much better use of topsy-turvy physics than was used in the plane crash). What I really wish had happened was for Nate to wash up on a conveniently obscure island and that had the crazy acid-trip temple in it. It's still kind of unbelievable, but certainly not worse than surviving the plane and the desert and the random million guys with guns.
I guess there were spiders? But nothing ever happened with them. The creepiness from the first few dungeons seemed to go absolutely nowhere, despite all the lead up.
I DID like the spiders. They were awesomely Indiana Jones, and succeeded in making Owen scream like a 4-year-old girl a few times. XD They reminded me of some of the more horrible little critters in the Dead Space games (which...man, I could write a whole other post about the things I love about Dead Space, but that's a tangent for another time).
I actually didn't have any problems with glitches? It must have been fixed by the time I played it. I did have quite a few problems making Nate run where the crap I ordered him to, especially when he was a kid. And YES, dammit, what happened to headshots?!
They used a different engine for Deception than they did with the other two games; largely, I think, because there was a lot more brawling in Deception and they needed to be able to do all those badass martial art moves. Oh, and in regards to the guns, how come I lost ALL my guns every time I entered a new area? WTF? Especially because, Nate, WHY are you WEARING all those BULLETS if you ditched all the GUNS I just spent all that time collecting that actually USE them? Blargargarg.
I'm pretty sure I got more headshots in the first game than the third. Which is saying something; I found the controls in the first game to be seriously frustrating.
IMO, Among Thieves fixed the vast majority of the control problems in the first game. Some things were still a little mushy, but not enough to complain about. It's a little frustrating to me that they fixed up all those issues and then switched to an engine that caused a whole host of other problems, many of them worse than before.
I did want to say, though, that I had no idea that there are different styles of riding horses! I'm sad that they missed that detail, but am glad to know it myself now. :D
To be fair, I was nitpicking. But as someone who spent a fair amount of time riding and caring for horses growing up (random skill set I spent a lot of time cultivating but will never use...), I couldn't not notice. It bugged me the whole time, but it's a rather dumb thing to be annoyed with, like the fact the raptors in Jurassic Park are Deinonychus, not Velociraptor. =P Who cares?
I was so angry that Elena didn't come with us to save Sully. FUCK YOU, NATE, even if I kind of expected it. She's a way better shot, anyway.
One thing I DID like about Deception more than the other two games: your partners' shots mattered. And a good thing, too, what with the ungodly amount of armor a lot of the bad guys had on. In the first two games, I don't think Sully, Elena or Chloe's shots did much, if anything at all. They appeared to be there for show. In Deception, they actually helped out a bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-19 02:53 am (UTC)I don't know why DW ate the other half of that. Or maybe I accidentally deleted it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-23 12:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, there really weren't any consequences. At least in the second game someone he really loved got badly hurt (Elena). In this one it... just... didn't happen. I mean, I probably would have been heartbroken if any of the main characters had died, but somebody could at least have gotten maimed or seriously injured. Or at the very least, Nate could have learned he made up that whole Francis Drake thing and felt kind of embarrassed and a little broken about it. Argh.
I think that I wouldn't have been so bothered by the lack of consequences if a) Nate didn't keep barely escaping certain death and b) if they hadn't pulled that "omg Sully is dead!" trick. If you're going to pretend that there are going to be consequences, it really cheapens things later when it turns out there aren't going to be any.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir here. XD
I absolutely adore old, corroding structures...buildings or ships, like old skeletons you can walk inside and explore.
Yes. This.
And now I'm trying to figure out how you could hide a ruin underneath a shipyard. They could've have gone with the whole Atlantis angle and you have to dive down and find a rusted passageway or something. Airlocks. I don't know. That would have be awesome, though.
Or! Yes, washed up on a crazy acid-trip island temple.
They used a different engine for Deception than they did with the other two games; largely, I think, because there was a lot more brawling in Deception and they needed to be able to do all those badass martial art moves.
This makes so much sense. I have to admit; the brawling was pretty epic (did you see the bit when you're running around as a kid and slam a freezer door in someone's face? the best -- but then again, I, uh, find brutal-but-blunt trauma the best anyway) but I really did miss my headshots. And... in my mind, Nate had never really been that good at brawling, just because it always went so horribly wrong in the other games. XD
ALSO YES LET ME KEEP MY FRICKEN GUNS >:[
It's really interesting to me that the developers didn't get that detail about Western vs English riding styles, since they seem to do a really good job with location details (at least, in the second game and according to someone online, take that as you will).
your partners' shots mattered.
I actually started getting frustrated with Elena about this. XD I was being all careful and, you know, finding the best vantage point to kill everybody and then it was all over already.
I was a little frustrated about the sneaking, too. I mean, it's pretty awesome that you can do any of it, but I kept wanting to see if I could take everyone out via sneaking. And then I'd get caught. And then I would respawn, already spotted. Sigh.