Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

[Russic]

Let's do what we can to eliminate spoilers. Let's break out the white text shall we?

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by Russic

Let's do what we can to eliminate spoilers. Let's break out the white text shall we?

Good idea. Even though someone states *SPOILER* it's still rather difficult to not look.

[Hemi-Cuda]

just picked up the game today. very pretty, but the combat is annoying. i can only take a couple of hits before the vision goes blurry and i need to find cover, but i have to pump a clip into a standard bad guy before he falls if i can't get a headshot. some of the platform stuff is pretty unforgiving too, i hate having to redo a section because i jumped a couple of pixels from where i was supposed to

[simmer2]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

just picked up the game today. very pretty, but the combat is annoying. i can only take a couple of hits before the vision goes blurry and i need to find cover, but i have to pump a clip into a standard bad guy before he falls if i can't get a headshot. some of the platform stuff is pretty unforgiving too, i hate having to redo a section because i jumped a couple of pixels from where i was supposed to

You'll get used to the combat pretty quickly; it is challenging which is nice to find in video games these days. The jumping thing is a tad annoying, but overall the game isn't that long so this helps extend it a bit.

[Hemi-Cuda]

wow, i give up, this game is a POS. worst $30 i've ever spent

i can take challenging games if they don't use cheap tactics, but this one does in spades. my guy is a pansy who can only take a couple of shots, i have very limited ammo, the weapons suck, and the controls are terrible (especially the grenades having to use the sixaxis crap). meanwhile the enemies seem to spawn in endless hordes, have unlimited ammo and grenades, have perfect aim, and they can take an entire clip to bring down. i had to shut the game off before i threw the controller at the screen, i can't remember the last time a game made me physically angry

at least i know to stay away from the second one now though. i was going to pick it up since it seems to be getting a lot of hype, but now i feel better about saving my money and grabbing something like CoD: Modern Warfare 2 instead

[Yeah_Baby]

Wow, did you at least like the story? Different strokes I guess. I love that game.

[3 Justin 3]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

wow, i give up, this game is a POS. worst $30 i've ever spent

i can take challenging games if they don't use cheap tactics, but this one does in spades. my guy is a pansy who can only take a couple of shots, i have very limited ammo, the weapons suck, and the controls are terrible (especially the grenades having to use the sixaxis crap). meanwhile the enemies seem to spawn in endless hordes, have unlimited ammo and grenades, have perfect aim, and they can take an entire clip to bring down. i had to shut the game off before i threw the controller at the screen, i can't remember the last time a game made me physically angry

at least i know to stay away from the second one now though. i was going to pick it up since it seems to be getting a lot of hype, but now i feel better about saving my money and grabbing something like CoD: Modern Warfare 2 instead

Yeah, the demo convinced me. I mean, why does it take 8 bullets to take down an enemy, and they shoot me 2 times and I am nearly dead. Not to mention they spawn over and over. The only thing I liked about that game were the graphics.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

Wow, did you at least like the story? Different strokes I guess. I love that game.

seemed like a generic Indiana Jones type story to me, never really grabbed my attention. i got as far as just past the 2nd sea-doo part, having to swim down a short alleyway then having a dozen enemies spawn just as i get out of the water. that's the part that made me quit, just needlessly hard

the game doesn't seem to know what it wants to be though. it's not a good shooter, games like Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas are much better. and it's not a good platformer either, pales in comparison to Assassin's Creed or Prince of Persia. and Infamous also does the melding of both much better. the only thing about Uncharted that impressed me was the facial animations, that's it. everything else is sub-par

[Cactus Jack]

I'm a third of the way through the game (Chapter 5 or 6 when he gets to the castle) but I'm not loving it either. The story is kind of cool and the graphics are amazing but it's just not a game that is that much fun or sucks you in. I may try it sporadically throughout the year but I doubt I will play it much more than that. It is needlessly hard and not in a fun way.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

seemed like a generic Indiana Jones type story to me, never really grabbed my attention. i got as far as just past the 2nd sea-doo part, having to swim down a short alleyway then having a dozen enemies spawn just as i get out of the water. that's the part that made me quit, just needlessly hard

the game doesn't seem to know what it wants to be though. it's not a good shooter, games like Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas are much better. and it's not a good platformer either, pales in comparison to Assassin's Creed or Prince of Persia. and Infamous also does the melding of both much better. the only thing about Uncharted that impressed me was the facial animations, that's it. everything else is sub-par

The thing you have remember though is that it came out before Assassin's Creed and Infamous. So not a really fair comparison. And I will admit that some of the bad guys seem to be on a deadly mix of steroids and cocaine.


Maybe I'm just a graphics whore, and a sucker for "generic Indiana Jones" type story telling. I really enjoyed the cutscenes too. I liked the smooth mocap, and I believed in the repore that Drake had with Sully and Elena.

[Hack&Lube]

The problem with the combat is not that it's "challenging", it's that it feels cheap and unrealistic since the enemies wearing nothing but t-shirts can take plenty of bullets unless it's to the head...or if you are using the magnum revolver which is a magical golden gun because it transforms you into Dirty Harry.

Me and my friend playing this game used to joke (albeit in a somewhat racist manner), that all the locals in the game must have bullet-proof skin from growing up on the dangerous streets of Mexico and South America.

Then again, you can take damage and all you need to do is hide a bit until your vision clears and you are healed again. I guess these are just more console conventions that I dislike but it's spreading to more and more games. Personally, I think games should be realistic in the amount of damage people take from gunfire and even dependant on their body armor and the type of ammunition used, etc. I don't mind dying instantly if shot if the enemies will also...I guess that would be another limitation of consoles because people would get mad at constantly dying if they only have checkpoint saving and not auto or quick saving like on PC.

[Human Torch]

Seems like you guys need to play on a lower difficulty. I'm pretty sure you can change it in the middle of the game. Personally I never had problems with it.

I find it strange how you dislike how enemies take a lot of hits yet compare it to gears of war, which is known for the enemies to be bullet sponges.

Also, enemies do not respawn, there is a finite amount you have to kill until you move on. Much like a room in a zelda game. The call of duty series is the one with endless respawning bad guys(I hear this is gone from modern warfare 2 though).

And lastly, in uncharted 2 armor for bad guys is now taken into consideration. Normal bad guys will now go down in 1-3 hits.

[simmer2]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

wow, i give up, this game is a POS. worst $30 i've ever spent

i can take challenging games if they don't use cheap tactics, but this one does in spades. my guy is a pansy who can only take a couple of shots, i have very limited ammo, the weapons suck, and the controls are terrible (especially the grenades having to use the sixaxis crap). meanwhile the enemies seem to spawn in endless hordes, have unlimited ammo and grenades, have perfect aim, and they can take an entire clip to bring down. i had to shut the game off before i threw the controller at the screen, i can't remember the last time a game made me physically angry

at least i know to stay away from the second one now though. i was going to pick it up since it seems to be getting a lot of hype, but now i feel better about saving my money and grabbing something like CoD: Modern Warfare 2 instead

I liked how tough the combat was; it actually made the game challenging. That's the problem with pretty much every game now; they are all too easy.

Drake's Fortune is one of the games which isn't easy and I thought that was refreshing.

As for the bad guys not dying right away, what else do you expect, its a video game!

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by simmer2

As for the bad guys not dying right away, what else do you expect, its a video game!

Correction - it's a videogame where bad guys don't die right away. There are games that have realistic damage. Sorry I can't enjoy games that ruin my suspension of disbelief by me having to pump guys wearing t-shirts full of lead before they get put down. If a Koopa can die from one fire-ball from Mario, I fully expect a South American mercenary in a bright yellow wife-beater to go down with one bullet of any calibur to the chest. Why should we have to settle for stupid things like that in games? Things that make me scratch my head and put me out of the zone ruin games for me (like the infinite respawning waves of enemies in Call of Duty - that feature worked for when it was a WWII game and you expected hundreds of soldiers on the battlefield and fresh waves of reinforcement but not in modern warfare). It's an artificial measure of difficulty added to the game when they could go in many other ways. I don't like this in games like this unless there is a real reason (body armor, they are aliens, robots, zombies, etc.). It was sort of okay for me when it was zombie nazis' later on but with the regular guys, it ruins it for me. I'm not complaining about the difficulty either. I like games where I can die in an instant and have to reload every 5 minutes...but I understand that in a console game with only checkpoint saves, that would be crappy.

The combat ruins an otherwise fantastic game with great settings and scenery. I've said before, I wished this was an adventure game like Indiana Jones crossed with Myst.

[yads]

The keyword is that it's a game. Most games are unrealistic. They'd be pretty crappy games if they were 100% realistic.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by yads

The keyword is that it's a game. Most games are unrealistic. They'd be pretty crappy games if they were 100% realistic.

Here I am arguing out of the other side of my mouth. But I would say the hit ability and damage of Rainbow Six is more realistic and is fun. Just in a different way from Drake's Fortune.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Human Torch

Seems like you guys need to play on a lower difficulty. I'm pretty sure you can change it in the middle of the game. Personally I never had problems with it.

I find it strange how you dislike how enemies take a lot of hits yet compare it to gears of war, which is known for the enemies to be bullet sponges.

Also, enemies do not respawn, there is a finite amount you have to kill until you move on. Much like a room in a zelda game. The call of duty series is the one with endless respawning bad guys(I hear this is gone from modern warfare 2 though).

And lastly, in uncharted 2 armor for bad guys is now taken into consideration. Normal bad guys will now go down in 1-3 hits.

but it makes sense in that game, the enemies are aliens with thick skins and the weapons you use actually do the job and are fun to use. and there's actual strategy involved in that game, either you deal with a large swarm of enemies, or you lob a grenade (with a MUCH better control scheme) into their hidey hole and stop more from coming out

i just hated the whole premise. in GoW it makes sense for hordes of enemies because, well, they're a horde. in Call of Duty it makes sense because you're fighting a war against an opposition army. but in Uncharted, how much sense does it make to be fighting hundreds of enemies, who somehow magically appear in tombs and ruins that i have to monkeyman around just to reach?

the worst was the jeep chase sequence. somehow these thugs manage to get a hundred or so jeeps/ATV's to a remote island locations, which i blow up and evade after making a huge jump, only to have the bad guy catch up right away with all his henchmen (i guess they had no problem with that huge jump right before). then i take a cliff dive into the water to evade them yet again, only to run into another army of bad guys down below who magically appeared to block my path

i don't need realism in my games to enjoy them, but i get annoyed with games that try to be realistic in some areas (weapons, damage, storyline) but completely ignore realism in other aspects

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

seemed like a generic Indiana Jones type story to me, never really grabbed my attention. i got as far as just past the 2nd sea-doo part, having to swim down a short alleyway then having a dozen enemies spawn just as i get out of the water. that's the part that made me quit, just needlessly hard

the game doesn't seem to know what it wants to be though. I don't think it's a good shooter, games like Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas I think are much better. and it's not a good platformer either in my opinion, pales in comparison to Assassin's Creed or Prince of Persia. and Infamous also does the melding of both much better. the only thing about Uncharted that impressed me was the facial animations, that's it. everything else is sub-par in my opinion

I took the liberty of editing your post a bit. Pet peeve.

[Human Torch]

Personally when I went through the game I had no problems with these unrealistic parts of the game...I didn't even notice it actually. I did go for headshots all the time so maybe that's why enemies seemed to die quick for me...and when you play on crushing mode headshots are the only way to survive really.

Anyways this is not the first time I've heard this type of complaint for this game. The developers were actually asked this is an interview they did recently and while they don't really solve the problem they do acknowledge it exists.

Here it is: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager....=0&cId=3175544

Originally Posted by 1up

OK, first off: Should we consider Nathan Drake to be a sociopath? I ask this because I realized that while I was playing Uncharted, it felt odd that he would be this charming everyman kind of guy, but he also killed about 400 guys by the time the game was done, and it's just something that's been in the back of my mind that I can finally ask...

Amy Hennig: Yeah, it's funny -- it's actually a dilemma that we're going to face more in this medium now that characters are getting more well-rendered -- I mean in all forms, not just visual rendering -- in characterization, in acting, the performances, and all that stuff. I've heard some people refer to this as a sort of "uncanny valley of characterization." I'm not sure how we deal with it in the industry. Because you don't want to constrain yourself to saying, "well, we can only tell certain kinds of stories and games, and it's all got to be soldiers; they've all got to be hard-bitten, and it's all going to be post-apocalyptic and grim; there can't be any humor or any romance or anything like that because it's still a game, and you want to be shooting things and having combat."

Now, if you made a game that matched a movie... Let's use a literal example -- let's say you made a game out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wouldn't be any fun. Because [gaming's] an active experience; you have to have that interaction of shooting and having combat. On one hand, I almost take it as a compliment, that we've done our characterization so well that people have that potential cognitive dissonance of, "I'm this character, yet I'm doing these things." On the other hand, [sigh] you almost have to take the gameplay as a metaphor. Maybe that's going to sound like a cop-out, but, we want the game to be fun at the end of the day. It's not to be taken seriously. Yes, it's maybe a little bit over-the-top in the sense that when you compare it to a film -- or in our case five or six films because of the length -- you wouldn't have that body count. But it's a different medium, and you almost have to take all of that and say, "we want to keep the tone of that genre that we're trying to match." But if we only had you fight three guys over the course of two hours, you'd say, "this sucks." So I think we need a little bit of slack in regards to that cognitive dissonance. Otherwise, the only kinds of games anybody's going to get are...

Evan Wells: Military.

AH: It's a tricky question, and I'm not sure what the best answer is, because you don't want fewer types of games out there -- you want the variety. And you want the gameplay to be fun between all the story elements.

EW: Without giving away too much, I can safely say that we do call it out -- we do make reference to it.

AH: [Laughs] Sometimes you just have to hang a lantern on these things too, when you're like, "OK, we know this is an issue, so let's let everybody know that we know this is an issue."

This was only in regards to the respawning enemies problem. The "bullet sponge" enemies are already fixed in the sequel.

Anways I'm a big fan of the combat in uncharted. I liked how agile you were able to be...and though I don't really want to make this comparison...how opposite it was to gears where you're a slow tank. There's going to be an open multiplayer beta coming in the next few weeks. I urge you to at least download it and give it a try. The combat system actually works great in multiplayer which I didn't believe it would.

And here's another jab at gears just for fun...didn't it bother you that your crew of big and heavy armor wearing buds never wore helmets?

[Human Torch]

Also about the twist:
They aren't zombies. Here's a post from another message board that explains it:

Ages ago, the Spaniards came searching for El Dorado, which was believed to be a golden city but was really a golden statue. They found it. They opened it up, and out came the virus and made them all go insane and lose much of their humanity.

Now, after generations of crazy Spaniards inbreeding (I'm not making this up, it was confirmed by someone at ND - possibly Evan Wells) they've turned into grotesque-looking creatures, more animal than human. So that's what the "zombies" are. They are crazy inbred Spaniards, not undead fantasy creatures.

The same thing happens to Gabriel when he opens the statue at the end of the game (although he is just changed mentally - the physical changes to the Spaniards is the result of the inbreeding). Navarro knew that this would happen all along, as his goal is to secure the virus and sell it to the highest bidder for use in biological warfare.

What may be a bit removed from reality is how fast the virus acts, instantly making its victim into a raging maniac, and also that it's contained inside the statue and clearly visible (but if it hadn't been, you wouldn't know what was happening). Other than that, there's nothing that dumb about it.