davv | (no subject)

Hooray, more stashing of drink.

Also, I've been watching these "movie" versions of the Uncharted games, and the limits of the Indiana Jones type plot are getting very obvious. For there to be any tension, the protagonists (your team) and the antagonists (the evil dudes) have to be just about evenly matched; the opponents have to be "nearly there" almost all the time. However, in reality, a treasure hunt probably wouldn't have this: one of the groups would gather more clues than the other and then leave the other in the dust.

Because gamers like accomplishing things, their group will usually be "ahead". Yet, because the two groups have to be close all the time, that means the evil group steals information from the good group... again and again and again. And since these games are, well, games with preset plot, there's nothing you can do about it. Welcome to the land of railroading!

Eh, I probably sound more annoyed than I should be. See my first paragraph for why. I did notice the railroading earlier, though.

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I hesitate to call them "games" really. They're more like interactive movies, which by itself makes me less inclined to want to play them ever again, but then the plot shortcomings you mention are further reasons of mine as well. :P I really, *really* hope Naughty Dog steps away from this platform and moves on to something more game-like.

I haven't actually played them, I've just watched movies of them, and even as movies... they have serious limitations. It becomes obvious quite quickly that the bad team and Drake's team are tied together by a rubber band for the sake of plot tension. However, that band itself robs the plot of tension, because you know that as soon as Drake et al get far enough ahead, some contrivance will lead him to spill the beans to the bad guys. The more dramatic the contrivance (which they use to further the plot), the more pointless it feels because you can't win.

Or so I felt, at least. It really did become too much when they rolled out the magic truth serum in numero tres.

Though on some level, all games are linear... so what's annoying about that? I think it's the nature of the beast. If you're playing an adventure game where it's just you and the story, that's okay; but if you're being opposed by someone who enjoys immunity from the rules of the setting... not so much.

The mark of a truly great game is the ability to stray from the primary plot at least every once in a while. Even the original Super Mario Brothers had the ability to warp ahead, or find secret passages, or just avoid everything. Uncharted does not seem to have any of this at all; the levels are designed to lead the player from one cutscene to the next, with limited genuine input. What few puzzles exist are generally either laughably easy or rely on the player to notice a pixel out of place on a painted bitmap; most of them are jumping puzzles, because Drake is apparently a monkey. This leads quite well into my next criticism of the games: The controls are wonky as all get-out. Drake's entirely normal movements make him feel like he took a couple swigs of Everclear before embarking; when you need to rely on precision - namely, the aforementioned jumping puzzles - he has almost none.

And that's just my complaints about the gameplay; my complaints about the plot contrivances could fill quite a bit of additional space.

Good point. I've been wondering why I don't get the same "arrgh" impression from adventure games, since both are pretty linear by nature... but even the old adventure games aren't that linear. (I actually liked adventure games when they were still around.) You can stroll around the world until you want to do what moves the plot along, interact with the characters if you want... and so on. I hadn't thought about it, but it is a good point indeed (in addition to what we talked about earlier).

And I don't know anything about the controls (since I've just seen movies of the games), but I do know wobbly controls annoy me. And the jumping puzzles thing makes me think of Broken Sword 3: while a generally good game, it would include Sokoban puzzles seemingly at random.

But at least there's Tibetan in Uncharted 2. That's got to interest you, no? :)