Review: Uncharted 2

To start with I currently do not have the means to take video or screenshots from my consoles, so my apologies in advance for the lack of both (until I break down and get something like a Hauppauge HD-PRV). Uncharted 2 was my first Playstation 3 (PS3) experience, and what a fun experience it was. I had such a great time with the single-player component of the game that I am perfectly content without experiencing either the co-op or multiplayer modes for now.

Being the proper gentleman that I am, when the system was unboxed, hooked up and the game was in the system, the controller went right into my girlfriend’s hands. I watched with youthful glee as she snuck up behind guys and snapped their necks, worried for naught as she shot advancing hordes of soldiers in their heads with an AK-47, and marveled as she navigated Drake through the well-designed and lovely playgrounds otherwise known as the levels in Uncharted 2. Even the act of observing somebody play the game was memorable and enjoyable, and I can’t say that about many other titles. Thinking back, I actually watched a friend play Metroid Prime for about 5 min. before that put me to sleep. So before I even got my hands on the controller I was impressed; Uncharted 2 was almost literally an action movie with an input device.

Eventually the hordes of soldiers became too much, and after hours of uninterrupted play and a couple of loaded checkpoints the controller fell into my lap. The controls were intuitive even in my Xbox 360-molded hands, and the platforming elements felt solid; I missed a total of two jumps on my journey to the rolling credits. One was at the very beginning, and the second miscalculation was a leap toward something that wasn’t actually interactive in the environment. I was worried that my girlfriend was just making the stealth kills look easy, but the melee system seemed to be well designed whether it was grabbing enemies from behind, punching them in the face, or slipping out of their grapples with appropriate quick-time events.

Uncharted 2’s cover system gets special mention though. Movement generally feels fluid, but then you get behind a wall or something and water turns into glue. This is disappointing, because frequently in combat there was something tripping me up enough to make the issue stick in my mind. If this was Gears of War it wouldn’t be so notable because in Gears you basically play a brick in a real sense of the word: no definition, no personality, and no real movement. Nathan Drake is the antithesis to this and probably has no idea of the concept of “trench warfare.” If you’re not constantly moving around the environments, staying one or two steps ahead of the enemy you’re playing Uncharted 2 wrong. If the cover wasn’t such a double-edged sword in how entangling it can be the combat would probably be more remarkable.

Another flaw with the combat was the gunplay. Aiming was straight-forward, as were the guns, and getting headshots was not difficult to achieve. The animation of the bullets registering on the enemies as I shot and hit them was very satisfying. Often enough though, that animation would go off, yet the enemy would not go down, and these were the run of the mill minions and not the tougher variety of bad guys that could maybe survive a hit like that normally. In an action game this kind of bug is absolutely distracting and damn-near unforgivable. Coupled with the cover system with assimilation on its mind these issues really pull the player out of the game that otherwise draws them in so well, and it’s kind of disappointing.

At one point Uncharted 2 crashed my PS3. I finished a rather lengthy battle sequence near the end of the game, went into a hallway, and then my TV screen went black and the PS3 was frozen and no longer responsive. I had to unplug the system to get it restarted. The game reloaded and I was at a checkpoint just past the room with the conflict. It only happened that one time and nothing else even close has occurred since. It was slightly upsetting though, especially with a brand new PS3. To be fair though, I had to remind myself about this to get it into this review.

A conscious decision was made in Uncharted 2 to have the player constantly doing new things, and repeat was minimal. From chapter to chapter I had no idea what kind of crazy thing I was going to be doing next, and for the most part it added to the charm of the game. After a certain point though, the “think fast” moments started to feel a bit overused and the enthusiasm for having accomplished something like surviving something like a falling building or not dying in a deadly game of hopscotch was noticeably diminished. To be honest though, from a single-player perspective I’d much rather a developer takes the chance of fatiguing me rather than spoon-feeding me combat with a sprinkling of one or two neat little events. This view especially takes preference when the interesting situations blended into both the gameplay and the story of Uncharted 2 so well, and when an event was gratuitous a character usually finished my thought for me with a funny bit of tongue-in-cheek dialogue.

The puzzle elements are probably the biggest conceptual fault I need to take with Uncharted 2. At some point I was randomly prompted to press a button to bring up a journal. Apparently Drake was taking notes and drawing sketches between the microseconds that I was having him climb a wall or take a shot at somebody. With these sketches I was able to match foreign characters and align them in the proper way to unlock doors and whatnot. If I remember correctly, this only happened three times, but it just wasn’t handled well enough to warrant this particular mechanic’s existence in the game. It would be amazing if the player actively took the notes, or snapped pictures of some statuette with an iPhone and was subsequently rewarded later with an easier or more lucrative path or a new gun for having taken the initiative to use such a mechanic, without overly punishing less forward-thinking players who could frankly care less. Holistically though, this journal checking ends up as more of an annoyance that slows down an otherwise well-paced couple of levels, rather than being of a missed opportunity.

Second behind the worthless puzzles would be a schizophrenic approach to some of the skirmishes, or what might better be referred to as boss fights in Uncharted 2. In most cases, the player would be required to move around the environment and evade the boss character to scavenge ammo or acquire more powerful weapons to use in their present predicament. Ammo management is a simple enough a concept to understand, and something that the player presumably gains proficiency at over the course of Uncharted 2. Then there are some encounters where Drake conveniently finds a gun with unlimited ammo. Without spoiling the story, from a design perspective this actually makes sense because of the setting, and leaving the player with a clip of only 20 bullets would be ridiculous. But it is an incredibly lazy and unimaginative way to handle such encounters, especially in a game that is otherwise so creative and fun. A clip of bullets doesn’t always have to be the answer, and for a game where the environment is otherwise important, that the player couldn’t just outmaneuver these bullet-sponges into a trap is kind of stunning, especially since this concept is touched on in the final encounter of the game!

But I digress.

To say that Uncharted 2 was presented well would be an understatement. Save for some kind of weird glossy sheen over the characters’ eyes, there is nothing negative to mention. This eye-thing was pretty distracting during the cut-scenes, particularly with the character Chloe, who was voiced by Claudia Black. If you read my Dragon Age: Origins review, this factoid should provide better context for my fatigue with this actress. Otherwise, the voice acting, and the writing behind it was superb and of a caliber I would not expect to see in a console game. I mentioned above that characters would often finish my thoughts for me as I was playing the game, and this happened to an extent that would almost seem creepy except for the disappointing reality that original thought has been surpassed by cliché. That Naughty Dog’s writers have been able to harness this tells me that they really have a solid understanding of multimedia today when most everyone else is fixated on simply stealing superficial details from each other to try and make the next blockbuster a success. Uncharted 2 is a gourmet pizza when every other game in its section of the menu is fast food.

Uncharted 2 had an entertaining story that wasn’t allowed to take itself too seriously. It stands alone well enough that I don’t feel a need to go back and play through the first game which feels kind of liberating against some contemporary releases like Mass Effect 2. Additionally, everything wraps up without the cliffhanger every other release seems to afflict gamers with these days: this is excellent.

I would go so far to say that Uncharted 2 is Generation X/Y’s shot at Indiana Jones. In effect, Naughty Dog walked up to Spielberg and Lucas and kicked them in their baby-boomer balls after proclaiming that they can keep squandering their gold and turning it into shit because we’re ready for our time in the spotlight. And thank God that they did that! In turn, Uncharted 2 is pure and unadulterated fun with only a few hiccups in comparison despite my above, overly verbose criticism. I pray that Naughty Dog takes their time and further refines what made Uncharted 2 great for the inevitable third release that I find myself eagerly anticipating.

I would like to end this little piece with a challenge: If you can, name me better developed action-game characters than Nate Drake in the comments to this post. The list I can think of is pretty short.

Psychonauts $2 on Steam

Get it. It's not the best game ever, but it's pretty close. For $2 how can you go wrong? In other news, working on my new review for a game that was much fun. Stay tuned!

Review: Dragon Age: Origins for PC

Dragon Age: Origins (DA) was a good game that is as entertaining as it is progressive, but not exactly the perfect gaming experience I was hoping for.  I played DA on normal difficulty on my PC and used a human noble for my first play-through.  My character started as a rogue and transformed into a bow-specialized ranger.  For most of the time played my party consisted of a mage, a warrior/templar, and the golem Shale from the collector’s edition of the game/DLC.  By the end of the game I invested just over 60 hours of total playtime.  My graphics settings and some end-game statistics can be seen in the below screen-shots.

Click image to see my graphics settings for the game.

Click this image to see my time played, world explored percentage, etc.

When looking at DA in comparison to earlier BioWare products, one would be hard pressed to find where DA doesn’t attempt to push forward the normal conventions of the role-playing genre.  A clear and visible alignment system that plays off of dichotomies like right and wrong, or obedience or rebelliousness is moved and replaced with the player’s choice of action being instead shown through worldly impact.  Quests that  seem straight-forward at the offset invariably become muddled at some point as the player progresses through them, going so far as to change the very make-up of boss encounters.  A more suitable tagline could exchange “Origins” for “Choices” arguably, as the player has no shortage of those to make during the span of their game.  Admittedly, there are some instances where the choices the player makes have consequences that are difficult to discern, if anything really happens at all.  The idea of dichotomy that has been a strong trend in recent Bioware titles and other games isn’t completely gone though as characters (some of whom can still be angered beyond repair by just one or two decisions, resulting in the character turning on you or leaving your party) are now managed through a visible love-hate meter and can be given gifts or choice words to influence that meter.    

The aforementioned subtitle change would work doubly in the sense that the origin stories for the character seem lackluster.  That’s not to say that the concept of character origins in DA isn’t a drastic change to how they have been presented in the past, but rather that there was not enough done in this respect, especially as how each origin branch is eventually visited through the main plot of the game and ultimately, the conflicts and achievements are ancillary to the game’s overarching story.    Every character is ultimately a grey warden first, and a noble/commoner/whatever second, which makes the “origin” feel more like an afterthought than something that actually made the character who they are.  

Initially, the combat system was rewarding and enjoyable, but over time some undesirable aspects began cropping up.  The player will enter “combat” mode just by being in proximity to an enemy (which will sometimes be exactly at the limit of drawing distance on the screen by my settings at least), and breaking that combat can be difficult, requiring an exorbitant amount of backtracking or the death of the enemy, which isn’t always the desirable action.  Stealth scouting is made especially difficult because of this particular mechanic.  Similarly, attracting the attention of one party of enemies has the possibility to attract groups of other enemies from some distance away, turning a fun and balanced encounter into a frustrating exercise in loading the previous save, over and over again until the foes glitch or become aggressive in turn to the player’s favor.  

With closed dungeon doors from adjacent rooms flying open mid-fight in this perpetual manner of the enemy dog-piling the heroes, a common tactic that would prove effective was to simply have the bulk of the player’s party hold back some distance away and pull enemies away in as small groups as possible.   A loading screen prompt even advertises this method as a helpful hint.  While effective, this tactic isn’t the glorious and violent blood bath that the marketing for DA was perpetuating.  If the alternative is merely getting lucky after multiple failed attempts, resorting to “ganking” the enemy in this manner becomes a dull and unfulfilling necessity.  

People who say skill-bar size doesn't matter are just trying to be polite.

I only have one really negative thing to say about the UI: unless I missed the option somewhere, a second skill-bar would have been a godsend near the end of the game.  Otherwise, the game makes going back to Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, or Neverwinter Nights an almost painful experience.  A big selling point of the PC ver. of the game was the isometric camera view that the console versions of DA are lacking.  The feature is a nice inclusion, and definitely helps call back mental images from the lazy filled RPG-full days of yonder, but the use for the pulled back view is severely limited by the three-dimensional design of some of the environments.  Ultimately, an over-the-shoulder view better served better my interactions with various elements of the environment, like treasure hunting for specific items or places to click hidden in bushes or under trees for example.

Unless the player has a specific cast of like-minded characters, the love-hate relationship system mentioned earlier will be a constant flux of positive and negative points at the bottom of the screen, no matter what the player does or says.  This is largely mitigated through “plot” gift items which can be found scattered throughout the land and give a massive boost of positive points in favor of the player character.  Lesser gifts can also be found or purchased with lesser and diminishing returns.  If this is a thinly veiled commentary on how materialistic Western civilization is, it is a rather humorous mechanic, but it cheapens the relationships amongst the characters.  This is strongly accented in that this gift-giving is the most prevalent way that a given character will really open up to the player and give them a character-specific quest,  almost as if they were a victimized child opening up after receiving a cup of hot chocolate or a new toy in any derivative crime drama.  Subsequently, the relationship mechanic feels less fluid than in other games, particularly other BioWare titles like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).

The characters themselves are archetypal but with some interesting twists, which the player generally doesn’t get to learn about until having purchased their love or approval.  Particularly remarkable characters include the drunkard, near-outcast dwarf Ogrhen, the older mage Wynne, and the stone golem Shale.  The party banter will often entertain and distract from whatever the current task at hand is.  The main drawback to this will be disappointment in that the player cannot necessarily form the party of their choice characters because the classes just wouldn’t mesh well, which is maybe a good problem to have in that it makes additional play-throughs even more appealing.

Speaking of Shale, I don’t want to imagine the gameplay experience without this character.  Initially Shale appears to be a knock-off of KOTOR fan-favorite HK-47, but through events in the game Shale grows and changes like any decent protagonist should. Shale was the penultimate “outsider” character looking at some of the intimate areas of the DA world, and offered a black humor-tinted insight that actually lightened the mood for lots of otherwise dark and depressing stuff.   The instances that were open because of this DLC felt like they fit naturally into the story and world, which makes the argument that they weren’t cut out just to make an extra buck for the Electronics Arts shareholders difficult to refute, especially as the other DLC pack has a badly needed and otherwise absent storage chest (if you play on PC there are good mods to address this storage for free).  If you play DA and don’t have this character, I’d highly recommend grabbing it even though you’re rewarding bad behavior.

The romance options seem pretty par for the course, unless the player wants to take the time to set up a crazy foursome that is reportedly possible or pick the “surprise me” option at the Denerim brothel.  Ultimately it’s a pretty small aspect of the game vs. what I remember hearing about it hype-wise.  Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I feel this was less effectively handled in DA by Bioware and executed much better in Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR.

Plot-wise, DA takes the perspective that the overarching conflict is secondary to other problems in the world that the player is in the unique position to solve.  This approach is satisfying and even rewarding to an extent, because the player isn’t just saving the world like so many other games, but is instead actively building and shaping it.  Like the problem mentioned earlier with ambiguous consequences to some of the choices made, the visuals that could have accompanied some of this world-building are incredibly limited, and by the end of the game are represented in what can only be considered a disappointing manner.  For as great as the actual game is, the ending to DA was a complete letdown because the player doesn’t really get to experience what they built, and if this was instead included the obvious and condescending cliffhanger would be forgivable.

 
A really bad Dragon Age: Origins glitch.

There were other bugs and issues in DA outside of the combat.  In the above embedded video my party was randomly teleported past an annoying puzzle sequence to the room that would have been locked otherwise.  I was able to kill everything inside with little problem and got some nifty treasure, and it would have been cool if I wasn’t locked inside the room.  Unfortunately, my previous save was near half an hour old, so that was half an hour of playtime wasted.  Even more perturbing was that I could not recreate this particular bug, the unpredictability of which adds more tension and apprehension about what can happen than an otherwise good dungeon crawl deserves.   Another problem was that dagger damage wasn’t incorporating dexterity correctly, but that issue was patched relatively quickly.  This was relevant because if I switched my control to other characters, like to direct heals better or cast a particular spell, my bow ranger had a nasty habit of switching to daggers and engaging in melee combat.  Lastly, while the scripting system for what your AI partners do in combat is impressive, I had problems with it working as it should have intended as AI partners stopping action completely mid-combat needing direction to reset, or in the case of my ranger pets not saving any of the scripting info at all.  One last issue was stealth-scouting, where my ranger would sneak around without the rest of my party.  He would trigger ambushes that resulted in enemies charging and then crashing into each other and glitching out because, while he was there, they couldn’t detect him.

It seems these days that a good game is going to have a good amount of Meta surrounding it, and DA is no different.  I feel particularly sorry for anyone who purchased DA for the absurd marketing campaign and not because it was a good throwback to retro-PC role-playing games.  The excess gore was a silly, forgettable gimmick that was quickly overshadowed by the rest of the details in the world, and I didn’t hear one beat of nu-metal on the soundtrack that I can recall.  There was also some considerable hype about sex being in the game, too.  What many may have wished to be a vivacious cry for attention from a developer was merely a whimper that didn’t get in the way of an entertaining story.  Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been a contentious point between a vocal consumer base and EA/Bioware, and DA is a good compromise in that to use the DLC stuff like Shale you must activate online with an EA account, but otherwise there is only disc-check running, which isn’t unreasonable.

Even though I am just about sick of listening to Claudia Black, the voice acting in DA is top-notch and so common that when it’s missing from a narrative perspective it’s a glaring and distracting omission.  While I don’t necessarily care about graphics, the world looked believable and the environments were varied and capable of inspiring a wide spectrum of different emotions, with one level almost too creepy for what I thought I signed on for with DA, all of it backed with journal entries and characters that made the world feel alive.  Despite the meager ending, DA is an enjoyable game that is presented very well; with the recently announced expansion set for a March 2010 release, it is a game that I look forward to revisiting soon.  I will just be sure to save and save often when I get pulled in again.

Full Stovetop

I’ve currently got a review of Dragon Age: Origins for PC that I need to finish editing, as well as set aside the time to collect screenshots and capture some video from the game for this week.  Between that, a new and exciting campaign project that my girlfriend and I have cooked up for L4D2, and work/life stuff, I am clueless as to how I will have a play-through of Mass Effect on PC ready when the new game lands at my doorstep next Tuesday.  Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes has been a good reason to keep my DS charged lately; it’s a great little game that I look forward to expounding upon further in the near future.