Uncharted : Drake's Fortune*

[ninzel]

I find the way the gun battles are structured is what gives it the replay value.
Judging by some reviewers comments, the long drawn out battles that come in waves is a love or hate kind of thing.
I love it ,and it reminds me of Bioshock in the sense that if you play this game worrying about dieing and just try to get by the gun battles instead of savouring them,you kind of miss the point of the game. Play the game on hard and it's an enhanced experience.

 

[Cornsnake]

You should definitely play this game on a high enough difficulty level. When your forced to change tactics because enemy fire, and they are forced to do the same when you fire thats when the game is at its best. It makes the gunfights very dynamic and gives the game its replay value because it never play's out the same way. Even the waves of enemy's ad's to this. They usually come from a different direction as the first one so the best places for cover change.

I beat it on crushing. Its a good challenge. I died a lot but I never got stuck. The bigger fights took about 10 attempts to get through. This game controls just perfectly and you really need to use all the moves to make it through.

I like the ending. Its not one of those that leave's the story open to make you buy the sequel.

 

[ninzel]

I like the ending. Its not one of those that leave's the story open to make you buy the sequel.

This story is self contained ,but there is a clear hint about sequels in a line spoken by the female lead. I can't remember the exact line but it's clear. Something about Drake owing here a story and him saying there are plenty more stories.

 

[Cornsnake]

Yeah they did say that. I hope most of the cast returns for the sequel. The voice-acting is just as good as Heavenly sword.

 

[Arwin]

Just played it until the demo section. I like it, though at times it's not running as smoothly as I'd have liked (just here and there though). Stand out section for me was the 'surprise' section, very nice and varied. It's really a classy title, that much is clear!

I also like the treasures. Not sure why, but they look cool.

 

[patsu]

To me, Nathan's walking is kinda limpy and slow (in between levels).

Yes, I like the treasures too. They are very well done, like real ones (Are they real ?). People were saying they should make the treasures into trophies.

I also agree with betan that the second half (2nd Jetski level, when the mercs appeared, ... until the end) is better, gameplay wise. The last puzzle was very confusing to me. I think this is the level the 1UP guys refer to as the "Goonies" level ?

 

[Acert93]

I'm not convinced. 102 minutes of HD movie, if you turn that into in-engine movies, are you sure you're going to save that much space?

Seriously, moving from HD movie media to realtime generated cutscenes is going to save a boatload of space. Why aren't you sure that it is going to save "that much" space?

There are reasons to do streaming prerecorded cutscenes (dev time, to hide loadtimes, etc). But with 100+ minutes of HD footage spanning 5GB-8GB you could do the same footage, in realtime, with significantly less space. In fact, if the cutscenes are all game locals to begin with you may be looking at a couple hundred MBs at most, and namely for audio.

 

[_phil_]

To me, Nathan's walking is kinda limpy and slow (in between levels).

Yes, I like the treasures too. They are very well done, like real ones (Are they real ?). People were saying they should make the treasures into trophies.

I also agree with betan that the second half (2nd Jetski level, when the mercs appeared, ... until the end) is better, gameplay wise. The last puzzle was very confusing to me. I think this is the level the 1UP guys refer to as the "Goonies" level ?

If 1up had some culture ,they'd call it the 'Piranesi' level

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I bought this and Mass Effect on friday and decided to play this first as it is shorter of the two. I just finished it on normal. Playtime was 8h 31m and I collected 32/60 treasures without putting too much effort into finding them.

High quality title from start to finish is at the top of my mind right now, PS3 owners shouldn't pass this by, if you ask me. The graphics are jaw dropping at times maybe even best I have seen, although I must say that the framerate drops under 30 very often, but luckily never really freezes. Lot's of screen tearing also. But on overall the techical side, including the sound is top notch.

The gameplay was good too, maybe there was slightly too much combat and the cover mechanics are implemented better in some other games, but this still offers very solid gameplay and the enemy AI was pretty good. This get's special credit for having useful pistol! The only game I can think of having a good pistol was Halo 1. M4 also rocked.

Naughty Dog still has little bit to improve for the possible sequel. The whole game was very linear. Even considering that most games nowadays are linear this one really felt like it. Lot's of invicible walls and all the paths especially in the platforming sequences are predetermined to a level that it started to bother me little bit. On many occasions Drake also dies if you for example go into water in a place that the developers didn't want to or sometimes a fall of one meter can kill you for the same reason...

The positives clearly outweight the negatives though. I still must play Heavenly Sword before I'll decide my PS3 Goty, but this get's 9.0 from me.

 

[Arwin]

Seriously, moving from HD movie media to realtime generated cutscenes is going to save a boatload of space. Why aren't you sure that it is going to save "that much" space?

Because of Metal Gear Solid, which, if I recall correctly, has all the cut-scenes in real-time. It still ate up a big chunk of a DVD disc though, and this was explained by that apart from all the textures and polygons, you need to have all the animation data for millions of pixels and so on. I'm sure you could save some data, but I remember having been surprised at how relatively small the difference was. I can imagine that as detail levels go up, in fact at some point in the future the actual compressed resulting 2d image takes up less space than the 3d calculated original. Though I'm sure we'll see all sorts of compression methods in 3d space before that happens though.

I may have remembered it all wrong though and maybe I'm just seeing things.

 

[joker454]

Finished the game yesterday.
After the first half I was convinced it was another overrated mediocre game with very good presentation, but what a ride was the second half. Almost everything excels.

I got this game free with a recent PS3 purchase so I tried it, but I wasn't impressed gameplay wise. Technically it looks nice, but I found Tomb Raider Legend played way better and gave me a better feeling of treasure hunting and puzzle solving. I was just about to Ebay Uncharted when I saw your post! I didn't get to the second half of the game so I'll give it another try, sounds like it gets much better later on.

 

[deepbrown]

I got this game free with a recent PS3 purchase so I tried it, but I wasn't impressed gameplay wise. Technically it looks nice, but I found Tomb Raider Legend played way better and gave me a better feeling of treasure hunting and puzzle solving. I was just about to Ebay Uncharted when I saw your post! I didn't get to the second half of the game so I'll give it another try, sounds like it gets much better later on.

It's a shooter. It's nothing like Tomb Raider.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Absolutley loving this game right now. It's like a breath of fresh air, shooter come puzzler come platformer... a shuzzformer.

Assassins Creed has been left to gather dust for this one!!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Because of Metal Gear Solid, which, if I recall correctly, has all the cut-scenes in real-time. It still ate up a big chunk of a DVD disc though, and this was explained by that apart from all the textures and polygons, you need to have all the animation data for millions of pixels and so on.

You don't animate polygons by recording pixels! Vector animation is incredible space saving. Just think for a moment what it would take to define an animation of a square moving across a screen. You'd need 4 vertices and a position vector (x,y). You could then either tween values from start and end points, or if you're being wasteful record every (x,y) position for every frame. Now compare that to recording every single pixel for every frame. Even with compression, you're not going to get anywhere near the small size of a few vector coordinates.

Worst case, the animations record every vertex position for every frame. If you did that for a 3D space without regard for occlusion, and everything was moving or you were just wasteful, then you could generate a lot of data. However, the principle of vector animation is tied very closely to economy of data. Think of Uncharted being played for 8 hours at 720p, 30 FPS. Or RnC at 60 FPS for 12 hours. How much data would that need in uncompressed footage to get the same quality and duration as rasterized vectors? That proves that vector animation is far more efficient! If you already have the assets needed for the cut-scene on the disc as game assets, the only extra you need is animation data. There's no reason for it to be gigabytes of data unless they're really going to town with the animation data.

Though this topic isn't really fitting here. If you want to continue, PM me and I'll break it off onto a BRD capacity thread.

 

[betan]

The gameplay was good too, maybe there was slightly too much combat and the cover mechanics are implemented better in some other games,

I'm curious, what other game(s) have a better sticky cover system with aim-only crosshair?

This get's special credit for having useful pistol!

Unfortunately pistol is the most useful weapon in the game. (Shotgun, M4 and Dragon Rifle also work well. )

I got this game free with a recent PS3 purchase so I tried it, but I wasn't impressed gameplay wise. Technically it looks nice, but I found Tomb Raider Legend played way better and gave me a better feeling of treasure hunting and puzzle solving. I was just about to Ebay Uncharted when I saw your post! I didn't get to the second half of the game so I'll give it another try, sounds like it gets much better later on.

Well I haven't played any TR since the second one, so with respect to first two, while there are some similar platforming in Uncharted, overall doesn't feel anything like them. Prepare for possible disappointment if that's what you're after.

Also In Uncharted puzzles are more like Indiana Johns puzzles, similar to, for example, Oblivion Knights of the Nine.

Platforming, pathfinding and puzzles are insultingly simple initially. Later it gets better, but never too complex, with too much hints and stuff, as if game is in a hurry to be finished and done with you.

I'm not a big TR fan, and never felt like treasure hunter in TR, but in UDF I did feel like playing an Indiana Johns wannabe movie with very good music score, acting and dialog.

 

[Arwin]

Think of Uncharted being played for 8 hours at 720p, 30 FPS. Or RnC at 60 FPS for 12 hours.

I'd be with you if either of those two consisted of all cutscenes, or if all the gameplay was cutscene worthy. But it's really not that simple is it?

Though this topic isn't really fitting here. If you want to continue, PM me and I'll break it off onto a BRD capacity thread.

No, god, no, anything but that. Rather make a topic on how much space cut-scenes take up in real-time vs in-game engine. I think this is a much more complicated subject than most people are aware of, and it probably deserves its own thread. I think I have a lot to learn, but it's not as simple as some people present it either.

 

[slider]

Just wanted to publically congratulate ND on their efforts with this. It's not perfect by any means but the faults are so small as to not matter.

I'm loving it, (especially the visuals which are stupendous - on an SDTV!) and a little sad that I've done 79% in only 3 and a bit hours.

Yes, before anyone asks this was on the easy difficulty...

 

[ShaidarHaran]

It's a shooter. It's nothing like Tomb Raider.

Are you sure you've played this game? I mean, I'm about half-way through it and I think it's fair to make a comparison to Tomb Raider in some respects. You can't just ignore the platforming aspect of the game.

 

[Arwin]

Well then you only have yourself to blame! I'm playing on Normal, and it seems right for me. If I liked it enough AND I get through the pile of games I still have to play through, I'll try Hard or Crushing ...

 

[wco81]

Uncharted might be this generation's Ico.