The Strategy Gamer goes to town on how strategy games portray narrative through gameplay, a detail a lot of popular games haven't considered.
"Games like Uncharted 3 try to cover up weak core gameplay with highly polished non-interactive elements. While Naughty Dog did a fantastic job with those cutscenes, with beautiful graphics, excellent and top notch voice acting, they served as misdirection, as the actual gameplay consisted of weak shooting and poorly designed levels. It is a monstrous error when the greatest feature of a game is a portion where the player does not even get to participate."
Civilization V continues to be one of the most popular grand-strategy games you can play on Steam, for about three years.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception has a lot to live up to as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an incredible and near-perfect game.
I cant even say what the point was its easily the worst story in the series. The online was a whole lot of fun though but overall doesn't come even close to 2
It was a step back for sure. Personally, I thought even the MP was way better in U2. Solid game, glad I played it. I just think they didn't push as hard as they did with U2.
The "young Drake" portion was pretty top notch, story-wise. But yeah, everything outside of that I felt was inferior.
Villains were all over the place in this… one second they wanted Drake dead, the next they needed him, then they want him dead again, then they coulda killed him, but poisoned his friend instead, then coulda shot him again, but had brunch with him, then needed him alive, then coulda mowed him down, but decided to kill him by fire and let him escape… Uncharted 2 was way better. 😅😅
=D Sounds crazy. I don't remember any of that. Played it on ps3 and I remember thinking that why was this game so bashed compared to second one. I liked it.
Another thing that annoyed me about UC3 events was the agent Talbot teleporting around Turkey. It just felt off to me, and made no sense.
Also, for about one third of the game, you go on a wild goose chase to rescue Sully, who wasn't even there to be rescued, and you end up back where you started again. There was simply no pay off for all the events you go through, so it fell flat in that regard as if they couldn't figure out how to make the game longer, so they decided to side-track you to do something with no pay off, hoping you wouldn't notice due to all the incredible action set pieces they made.
Overall though, even with its flaws, I still enjoy the game.
This was actually my least favorite in the series. Didn't have that same impact that part 2 set.
Uncharted 2 is the pinnacle of the series (to me).
Granted, 4 had the best story in my opinion, but 2 was the overall best game.
A decade after its release, how does Uncharted 3 fare today? Does its story still work? Was its precursor’s legacy a bedrock or quicksand for its own aspirations?
Replies(2)When arguably the weakest game in the series is still awesome and more fun than most games today, you know you're onto a winner!
I'd extend "arguably" before awesome too. Many technically demanding scenes were jaw-dropping for the time, but it's tough to ignore the sub-par context propelling the action forward.
Tough for you, perhaps, and that's fine. I enjoyed it very much. Perhaps a little less than the others in the series, but then the bar is extremely high.
I remember being blown away by the water and sand tech in U3 for the time too. It certainly was a visual treat!
It is very good, but when I originally played Uncharted 3 it was the most disappointed I'd ever been in a video-game because Uncharted 2 was just that good. I enjoyed 3 much more when I replayed it in the Nathan Drake Collection though. I could just enjoy it for what it is and accept that it's not Uncharted 2 - it's not a roller coaster, and it doesn't balance and rotate between action, puzzles, platforming and set-pieces in the same way.
Uncharted 3's gameplay is a bit more compartmentalized and focused on one thing at a time. I'm not surprised the scrapped version of Uncharted 4 was going to have no gunplay for the first half. It's also paced much differently - it takes a long time to get to the notable set-pieces. Uncharted 2 is insane from Nepal onwards which is about an hour into the game. haha.
I did like the introduction of chase sequences, and I love first hour (bar fight, young Drake) and from the airplane sequence onwards but I just think the rest of it just sort of meanders along without as much purpose as 2.
When it comes to the script, you can feel the absence of Neil Druckmann and Josh Scherr (writer on every other console Uncharted game). Drake gets hit in the face, and the game goes on a random side plot for an hour to give you some boat set-pieces. He then washes up on a beach close to where Elena is staying to get you back to the real plot. Drake just says "How convenient" to try make you laugh off how sloppy the plot got.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if Naughty Dog were ready to work on 2 different games at once. 3 clearly had production issues that 1 and 2 didn't have, and Hennig's version of 4 didn't work out. They had to crunch so hard to get the rebooted version done on time that Bruce Straley gave up making video-games.
I'll give you some props for the extra analysis. I remember Druckmann climbing his way to a writer spot in UC2, but wasn't aware of Josh Scherr. I didn't know that was the reason for Straley's departure either. That's pretty damn rough.
They had to make some weird choices as far as story went because the actor for Cutter had to bail which left a few holes in the story.
Uncharted is one of my favourite series and while the leap from 2 to 3 was not nearly as big as the leap from 1 to 2, I think it was an amazing experience none the less.
Graham McTavish's departure wasn't easy, but I don't think that would fix many holes tbh. Because the main issue to consider is the precarious mindset Naughty Dog was operating on: an increased emphasis in set pieces that HAD to go in and worrying about the context later.
I really liked part 3 ( Among Thieves is still the best in my opinion) My only complaint was the interactions with the villains and how they were a missed opportunity, Linda MacMahon (Marlowe) was an interesting antagonist due to the history with Sully and Nate but it fails basically flat especially with her ending. And I couldn't care about Navaro 2.0.
What I did love and made me care was Cutter, in the short time he was in the game you could feel that the guy was a good treasure hunter for example when he pulled his own notebook with the clues he founds so the team can escape a room.
It was a small touch that add a lot to the character.
I have mixed feelings on the series. I still own all of them on the PS3, and the collection for PS4, but I didn't truly "love" any of the games until 4.
They're good games, but they always stumble on some element.
The first is good, but the climbing mechanics weren't exactly fine tuned with the first showing. Not to mention the spongey enemies if you played on anything past normal; but you're then faced with a fairly unchallenging game experience.
The second mostly fixed the climbing, but added in a pretty clumsy stealth mechanic.
Three was just two with a new story.
Four got it right though.
I don't remember once getting annoyed by any mechanic had in the game.
I know that everyone has a soft spot for 2, and 3 is sort of the black sheep of the series; but they did, overall, get progressively better. Which doesn't always happen.
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Uncharted 3...the game which will be nitpicked to death for years to come
Ahh its almost been a year lets go bash uncharted 3 again that never gets old...
its failed sold hard it sold in the millions and a year later i still play it every single day and online community is always active.
I don't really understand what was wrong with Uncharted 3 and why people need to nitpick it.
Story was more personal and added much-needed depth to Nathan Drake.
Core elements such as shooting and platforming were refined and more puzzles that required you to think were added.
Online was also leagues above Uncharted 2.
But Uncharted 3 does have horribly done stealth sections.
But I guess I'm only calling them horrible because you need insane timing and positioning to really get through the optional stealth sections, and if you failed, Uncharted 3 made you pay, hard.
But at the end of the day, Uncharted 3 was spectacular.