What We Played #27

Continuing his sprint through Nathan Drake’s personal story, Kris spent a day playing through Uncharted 2: Among Thieves’ single player. His verdict at the end? “It was good”. Sounds to me like his whelm was definitely undered.

“The blue guys nearly made me give up”, he tells me, “they’re just awful and completely change all the combat rules that have been carefully set up throughout the rest of the game”. Kris did not enjoy the more stealthy sections either, finding them “awful”. The primary cause seems to be the no-shades-of-grey nature or those sections where either none of the guards know where you are or they all do; there’s no middle ground.

The game’s controls come in for both criticism and praise. The criticism is that “whoever decided to bind ‘cover’ and ‘drop to ledge’ to the same button has clearly never actually played the game”. While the praise is reserved for the fact that the motion controls have been removed. Lastly, though Kris preferred the story telling in Among Thieves he likes the story from Drake’s Fortune more calling it “more robust with a much more defined sense of what you were chasing”.

Staying with all things Drake, his latest outing gets something of a ‘mixed’ reception from Peter.

I’ve finally got some proper time with Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception this week. I’m not sure I like it. I mean, I love the dialogue and scripting but I know exactly what to expect from the narrative and the greater game mechanics are still based on the premise that Drake is the only one that can climb and there are lots of gates/doors/collapsed things which just need climbed over and given a shove from the other side.

I also find a lot of the camera angles and perspective shifting to be irritating. Running towards the camera as the world blows up behind you is very cinematic but not very pleasant to have to control. Still, there’s nothing like it for characterisation and cinematic presentation, which I really enjoy in videogames. I’ve also heard that Chapter 11 is amazing and I’m currently at chapter 9, I think so maybe I’ll forgive it the minor irritations when we get there!

I just hope for all our sakes that Chapter 11 lives up to its reputation when Peter gets there.

[drop2]Dan basically put the rest of the world on hold to adventure his way through The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The epic collection of words in his review were enough to bring down the site earlier this week, despite the name-calling directed towards Lord Ghirahim. Dan’s now trying to choose between playing either Disneyland Adventures or Skyrim next. I’d suggest to go with the one least in need of a patch or two…

We’ve not exactly been short of Zelda games this year if you availed yourself of a 3DS. Pre-price-cut purchasers got free copies of The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II The Adventure of Link while all 3DSers got a chance to grab Zelda: Four Swords for free back in September. Last but not least is of course the 3D-enhanced version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.

It’s that last Zelda that Joseph has been playing through for the very first time recently. Having now finished it, he confidently calls it “a damn good game” and “a lot of fun”. He’s also indulged in some more Japanese-style gaming action with Dissidia: 012 Duodecim Final Fantasy which he says is “alright” but “essentially just Dissidia 1.5”, finding little new except for a few characters.

Next he returns us to this week’s underlying thread of being underwhelmed with Uncharted. As he nears the end of the Drake’s third outing he’s finding the experience “a little hollow”. He cites the game’s overly cinematic feel with it having failed to strike the balance between gameplay and spectacle that Among Thieves had. He ends by daring to suggest that it also feels “a little too linear”.

[drop]Flying in to Drake’s rescue with an Uncharted 3 verdict of “excellent”, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a “quarterback sized mohicaned wizard in very tight shorts.” Yes, Tuffcub has a new favourite game, the newly free-to-play DC Universe Online, which is consuming much of his gaming time. Despite still continuing his valiant crusade through Batman: Arkham City though he admits to “still really, really struggling” with the game. It seems to be little more than dogged determination keeping him going with that one.

Aran has been spending almost all his time playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and when not playing it, aside from a bit of “shoot some fools” Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer tomfoolery, he’s been waxing lyrical about Skyrim. You can read about some of his adventures here. Just a few of his comments are “amazing”, “it’s gaming perfection for me” and “I could play this game forever and not get bored”. Even the odd floating-mammoth glitch is taken in his stride.

Someone else having “a lot of fun” online with Modern Warfare 3 is Blair. That’s when he’s not “thoroughly enjoying” Assassin’s Creed: Revelations or playing Uncharted 3, which he’s now taking a bit of a breather from while he psychs himself up for his Crushing run through.

As for myself it’s been the usual Gran Turismo 5 online sessions and lots of Fallout: Whiterun Skyrim. It does feel uncannily like Fallout to me, far more so than it does Oblivion. It looks like Fallout, plays like Fallout and glitches like Fallout. Being like Fallout isn’t necessarily a bad thing I just expected it to feel more different. Instead it feels like I’m wandering around a vegetated area of The Wasteland, where the local irradiated geckos now fly and breathe fire, while I’m armed with a sword and bow instead of a plasma rifle.

For all the talk of Bethesda’s new ‘Creation’ engine it seems remarkably close to Gamebryo’s engine that we’re familiar with from Fallout, glitches and all. It’s almost as though they’ve slightly spruced-up a reverse-engineered version of the older engine and slapped a new name on it. Or slightly spruced-up the older engine itself and slapped a new name on it. Some of that can be explained away by Bethesda’s continued use of Havok’s physics middleware, but still… I can’t help but wonder.

I doubt those wonderings will stop me sinking a Fallout-like 200+ hours into Skyrim though. So far it’s meant my copy of Uncharted 3 has remained firmly shrink-wrapped and comments like Peter’s and many others aren’t encouraging a hurried unwrapping.

Hands up all those who’ve played an unhealthy amount of Skyrim (or anything else) this past week.