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Well I for one am excited
spoiler (click to show/hide)
New commercial. someone at GAF caught this in the background:
(http://i35.tinypic.com/1613eb.jpg)
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Jack Tretton :lol :teehee
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Yes they're in it
Glad to see that you shitheads are just too cool nerdy for spoiler warnings. Jackass idiot cunts.
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They're kidding
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I'm kidding
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I bet you expected me to say it wasn't a real spoiler in it but the truth is is that it's a real spoiler and those fucks ruined it
I've been playing this game for six hours today! :o
On chapter 18; am I close to the end?
If you've played for 6 hours you have spoiler (click to show/hide)
maybe 3 or 4 more to go. 25+ chapters.
True, I just thought you were referring to something further along.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Besides, it's also part of the intro, so I'm technically right.
Holy shit at everything from Nepal city streets and onward. The train sequence which looked a bit average in previews turned out to be fuck awesome, and the area right after was the most ridiculously awesome looking thing I've ever seen. I can't remember the last game I played that was this good and paced this well. Pretty much the pinnacle of action adventure stuff, and it's a shame that Insomniac hasn't made the same kind of leap this generation.
:bow This game. :bow2
That said, I don't think I'm going to ever bother with doing this on Crushing. It's challenging on Hard, but it has never felt cheap.
There are a lot of sections that are better than expected in game when you realize you have full control during that sequence. I thought the section shown at E3 was just a scripted sequence, but you were actually running around and fighting enemies as the building was tipping.
Of those sequences that seem like they would just be cutscenes, the best was (fairly late in the game): spoiler (click to show/hide)
Jumping from car to car. They didn't even try and slow down your jumps to make it seem like it was a set path. You were actually just using regular platforming elements to jump from one moving truck to another.
Boosting people and kicking conveniently placed ladders down is the "exploding barrels" of U2.
Those plus climbing something and having it break halfway. But it is kinda funny that they reference most of those quirks at some point.
:bow Heart of Ice :bow2
Platforming isn't really challenging in this game, but it definitely feels like proper adventure stuff.
Oh yeah, and Ketastrophe, about the supernatural stuff:
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The supernatural element has so far been nothing like in Uncharted. More like Resident Evil mini-boss style stuff. Maybe that will change later on.
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Collapsing building holy shit!!
What I'm really impressed with is how (at least so far) none of the big action sequences are cutscenes or QTE based. It's all gameplay.
Then there are the new enemies at the end that will make you long for the zombies from the original Uncharted.
:yuck So glad that I didn't buy this (yet)
LOL, such bullshit.
SPOILER-TON SPOILERS ON THE ENEMIES AT THE END:
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At a few points in the game, you encounter some seemingly-supernatural "Yeti monsters." Turns out that these aren't monsters at all, but some fucked-up super-strong/agile people from Shambahla (Shangri-La) who dress up in Yeti costumes to keep people away.
In Shambahla, they ditch the Yeti costumes and come at you with crossbows and slings that throw explosives. They take a lot of hits with regular weapons to put down and can be challenging to face. Much, much better than the awful in-bred "zombies" from the original Uncharted.
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I didn't know that Yeti had horns.
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I didn't know that Yeti had horns.
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I initially thought it was some kind of demonic mountain apegoat. But
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Keep playing.
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That animal/colored object puzzle in the tower. I got the objects lined up with the animals no problem, and I thought I had the letters solved, but it's not moving the story forward, so I clearly got it wrong. Any suggestions?
edit: Nevermind, I just got it.
They really need to stop using "OH NO CHARACTER X HAS BEEN SHOT" as a storytelling device. Drake takes shotgun blasts to the face and shrugs them off, and yet certain plot-related magic bullets can wound or kill? Pffffffffff
There is always that big disconnect between the cutscenes and gameplay. For what it's worth, I thought they did a good job at addressing those things throughout the game. Like spoiler (click to show/hide)
near the end a guy tells Drake that he's pretty much a psycho murderer and massacred hundreds in just that day. They also explain why he's so acrobatic with an in-game conversation where Elena makes fun of him for being in the Circus when younger. Then there is the usual "I'm sick of all this damn climbing!" "oh, another ladder to pull down? just like the fire escape" and other lines like that.
It's not as bad as GTA4. GTA4 was hilarious.
U2's boss fight isn't a "fight" at all. The original's fit in more with way the game was trying to be movie-like. I've been reading that people found the U2 boss fight hard because spoiler (click to show/hide)
they didn't realize that you're not supposed to actually fight the guy. It did take me a few tries to beat him, mainly because if you stop running or are too slow to make a jump/climb, you get shot the fuck up. He was easy to beat once I got used to the running path; you just keep moving and run n' gun all the flammable blue shit. I also liked the brief running/jumping segment following that, plus the banter between the characters at the very end. Chapter 26 to the credits is the ending, and it was good in my book.
I hate the guys in the body armor who are immune to grenades and you have to headshot. Headshots in general feel fiddly and imprecise.
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if they start throwing yetis into the mix here I'm going to be very unhappy
So sick of the monastery. I want to quit :yuck
I hate the guys in the body armor who are immune to grenades and you have to headshot. Headshots in general feel fiddly and imprecise.
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if they start throwing yetis into the mix here I'm going to be very unhappy
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The yetis are there, but you won't have to fight them. :) Also when you come to certain points where you see the enemies furiously shooting, don't go near them and let the yetis take 'em out for you.
When you DO come to a point where it's you against the yetis later on, Uncharted 1 "zombie" fighting logic works here-- just run around in circles and shoot as you move. Thankfully the yeti stuff is kept to the bare minimum.
They aren't immune to grenades! I never even really head-shot those guys as much as I should have; I'd usually just keep emptying clips into them and killing them as their armor fell off. In the monastery area, for the most part, there's a lot of places where you can stay up high and shoot down/throw grenades from safe points. It wasn't too bad for me at all other than than towards the beginning, where you have to stop reinforcements from coming. For some reason, I kept dying when I'd use the turret, no matter how quick I was. Ended up just using it to mow down the laser-sight guys and the first onslaught, then running and hiding to take out the rest.
There's also going to be a part further in where you're up against spoiler (click to show/hide)
RPG and heavy armor guys, including some with chain guns.
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"It was raining. Your were unconscious and it was raining.
gr8 game. Better than the first. 9.4/10
I just can't believe the graphics the game is outputting. Holy fuck so fucking good. I've never seen a console game look as good as this, not even close.
I just finished the game. Amazing. Sorry Demon's Souls, Uncharted 2 stole the GOTY position. I'm going to do crushing now. Can't get enough of the game...
*Ending spoiler*
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I'm glad Elena didn't die. I was afraid she'd die. Good thing Chloe dumped herself. Hope she fell off a cliff.
This last bit
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I don't think I'll ever clear the game. Rewind to the blurb about being utter shit at third person games, this is a nightmare scenario. Dodge shots while making sure you shoot those things just as he passes. Fuck that.
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just run in a circle around the resin firepit and pop about ten of the big blue tree blisters when he's near them, as he chases you. it's the camera that makes this fight a fuck. just roll a lot if he nade spams.
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how did they get that ninety-year-old man across those thin beams
1. TOO MUCH FUCKING COMBAT. It's one thing if there are a million guys and it's another thing if the badguys are all supermen who take a ton of ammo pumped into them but when both those things combine in the last portion of the game it just gets lame. I loved the combat when the guys weren't all fucking tanks. In fact I think the Nepal section of the game has the best gun combat in any TPS. There's just so many ways to approach the situation and it's so much fun. But then by the time the game is at the Monastary until the end it's just fucking ridiculous. The end portion of this game feels like it has even MORE combat than Uncharted 1 >_< Anyhow the end combat stuff was still fun it's just way way overdone. Stealth was a great way to counter it somewhat by letting you avoid fights if you can take everyone out quietly, but the game needs some sort of MGS "alert over" because if there's 30 guys to stealth, the chance of making it all the way before 1 guy notices you is really small and if you've already stealth killed a bunch it's not worth restarting from your last checkpoint.
2. spoiler (click to show/hide)
Elena
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she dies in the 3rd one early on. Chloe was a much better voice actress.
3. Climbable objects only climbable sometimes. This might be me going crazy but I swear that objects you can climb when the game wants you to climb them are not climbable when just randomly walking around or fighting. This bugs me because it makes the platforming segments feel more forced since I can only platform when the game tells me. As opposed to normal games where if you can climb an object in one spot you can climb that object anywhere even if it leads to nowhere.
3.5 The final boss fight is half good, half bad. The design is fine, but it's long and there are no checkpoints and you can die really easily. Which kind of counteracts the rest of the game where it checkpoints all the time and you get to keep progress you've accomplished.
Now on to the good:
+Auto-checkpointing every 10 seconds.
+Telling you how long it's been since your last checkpoint
+Good achievements that actually give money to use in-game and get stuff
+Stealth is excellent and implemented very well. Really satisfying to sneak through an action sequence and stealth kill most of the guards
+Good amount of weapons. Weapons feel good. Nice use of rumble and subwoofer for heavy weapons
+Sound as a whole is just fucking awesome. Like Killzone & Infamous, good use of extra blu-ray space for high quality audio
+Graphics are great, textures are not as good as Uncharted 1 or some other games, but I'll take the tradeoff for worse textures but huge beautiful environments with tons going on
+Some really great sequences spoiler (click to show/hide)
helicopter across roofs, train level, jeep level, fighting in the rainy river, etc...
+Amazing length for the variety of the scenario. Without even touching the MP yet, I feel like I'm easily going to get 20-30 hours out of the SP. Plus it feels like I game I could replay every few years.
+Story was good, I feel unsatisfied about one thing, but I might've missed something so I won't knock it for that.
+First half is a great mix of platforming time & action time
Overall I thought it was an amazing game. 10/10 quality, but the flaws detracted for me and make it more like a 9/10. When playing the first half I was really really excited about replaying the game in hard mode because the combat was so fun and varied. But when I think about some of the checkpoints in the 2nd half and the final boss I'm not sure if I want to play on hard or crushing because I can see it being frustrating and annoying. >_< I look forward to checking out the online modes though and doing another playthrough on some difficulty.
Up there with Demon Souls for console GoTY 2009 for me. I think the game is a little better than the first Uncharted. I'm a big Uncharted 1 fan, but this one has a lot more diverse environments and the stealth stuff is nice so I'll give it the edge. I think the combat is paced better in the original, the platforming is better and I liked the story a bit more. Also Water Ski sequence <3 But Uncharted 1 had a terrible final boss so Uncharted 2 beats it there too.
Story question: spoiler (click to show/hide)
So the only thing I felt was left unanswered is the black teeth on the skeletons of Polo's crew. The game introduces it early on and we get that they drank the resin and became "something else" and killed each other........so ummm, why didn't the game let us see this happen to bad dude's crew? I mean that's normally how these stories work. In the end the bad dude's crew shows the effects and then you stop them. But like I have no idea what it did to them and why they killed each other. Either I missed something or it's a bit of a plot problem.
Also is the cursed cargo that Polo was talking about the crew themselves who had drank the resin?
Oh yeah, this thread.
Quick early opinion: Game is fun, game is beautiful, game is also stupidly linear with no creative level designs, platforming, or enemy encounters. I am also not a fan of the constant interruptions just to place the player in yet another set piece without any extended gameplay. Still a great ride but over hyped on the Bore and elsewhere. Huge improvement over the original though.
I'm only halfway through Nepal so the game can get much better. The foundation is incredibly solid though and like I said earlier; fun.
Eh, I feel the game is pretty non-linear in terms of the fight environments. It's basically MGS4 chapter 1 but smaller environments and less options. But you still have a lot of different ways to get through firefights. platforming->Shooting/stealth, stealth, environmental hazards, various weapons, etc... the fights seem very replayable because of this. I also felt the level design was very creative. But most of it has been done before elsewhere and Uncharted 2 just takes it and refines it.
I dunno, the later sections while being awesome gave me Call of Duty infinite respawn/legion of clones w/grenade spam vibe. I was fine when they gave you a lot of options to work through but there were a few parts where I felt you were REALLY limited and those got kinda annoying. I died a ton in the monastery. Almost started feeling like trial and error. I think the worst checkpoint in the game was in the monastery when there is this narrow bridge with a dozen guys and snipers up in the balconies and a guy with riot shield and you have like two places to take cover in a small room and that's it. The only way I could get through that was to quickly snipe the snipers, then the riot shield guy, run and grab the riot shield and then CHARGE while spamming pistole and hope I killed most of the dudes on the bridge. Oh and I had to drop the shield and run everytime I got grenaded doing that and then run back and grab the shield again.
Also I think two things made the combat less awesome than it should be:
1. The super armored guys with shotguns who take a lot to kill if you don't have good weapons or multiple grenades
2. The fact that shotguns are FUCKED UP in this game. GoTY best villian award really should have gone to SHOTGUNS. I've never played a TPS/FPS in my life where shotguns have been so deadly. Normal baddy with a shotgun who is like THIRTY FEET AWAY behind cover will put your ass in grey in 1 shot. Any nearer and you might be looking at instant death. Shotguns should be super powerful close up, but 30 feet away they should not be more powerful than the dudes with AKs or M4s or FALs. Almost all my deaths in the game came from enemies with shotguns. Hell spoiler (click to show/hide)
even the final boss just uses a shotgun!
The last 30% of the game throws a LOT of #1 and a LOT of #2 at you. In fact the amount of #1 gets kinda ridiculous. So yeah, I think the combat is too much in the last 30% of the game. I didn't want to play CoD Uncharted. And while Uncharted 1 was 80% combat, I don't remember it having annoying stuff like #1/#2 so the combat was always fast and fun.
The game is like 80% shooting and 20% Exploring/Platforming/Puzzle solving.
If you think that's a perfect ratio, then you belong to the ADD generation. And running around in the middle of the shooting sequences is not "platforming".
The problem is that it's so unevenly paced. The first half of the game is like 50% exploring, 50% shooting. The 2nd half is like 5% pure exploring and 95% shooting. In fact the only sections post spoiler (click to show/hide)
trainwreck that didn't have shooting dudes every room were the ice caves and the firey entrance to shambala with Flynn. The town walk too, but that's more like an interactive cutscene than actual gameplay