Vita and 3DS buying guide
Which handheld best suits your habits and personality, the Vita or the 3DS? Find out in my handheld buying guide on GameZone.
Posts Tagged ‘Sony’
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception review – a whole lot of sand and little substance
Each one of Naughty Dog’s games has earned a place on my list of favorites: Crash Bandicoot 2 was my first and most cherished PlayStation title, Crash Team Racing still holds my number one spot for kart racer, and Jak & Daxter surprised me when it evolved from a simple and easy platformer to a crushingly hard, mature trilogy with a clever third act to wind down with. Uncharted has been no exception, proving to be another superb inclusion on Naughty Dog’s resume, but the third game in the series—the final entry before the developer moves on to The Last of Us, which already has gamers hungry for more—didn’t hit quite the high note that Jak 3 or Uncharted 2 did.
Let me clarify: Drake’s Deception retains all the essential elements of a good Uncharted game, and in some ways it delivers much more. Uncharted 2 cemented the series as an action wonder that could serve up a good story, and the third game follows that mantra to a moderate degree of success. It’s got good twists and turns and delves into an engrossing backstory between Drake and Sully, a relationship that has always fascinated fans and left them curious about the duo’s old adventures. The game also presents a chain of incredibly involved and well-designed sequences that sends Drake scrambling through a burning building, navigating a sinking cruise ship, etc. Naughty Dog demonstrated largely with Uncharted 2 that it understands how to best build these scenes: that the key is the right mix of cinematic guidance and player control, one that tightly regulates the action but also instills a sense of frantic, unpredictable energy. That’s the kind of adrenaline that hooks players on Uncharted, and the brilliantly executed camera work, with its immense sense of scale (from Drake’s tiny figure in the desert to the vastness of the churning ocean waters), lends incredible value to the production and gives the journey its magnitude.
Naughty Dog’s crowning achievement in this department is undoubtedly the blazing French chateau scenario, which is impressively long and complex and much more creative than expected. It’s interactive storytelling at its finest.
But there are issues, and plenty of them. Oftentimes scenes won’t trigger correctly, or dialogue will initiate preemptively, before the player reaches a point of interest. What’s worse, occasionally to solve puzzles players must first talk to a character or zoom in on a section of the scenery, even when they don’t need to. This isn’t a huge hindrance, but it does have a common enough presence to be a problem.
While Nate is now more responsive to his environment—smashing pots against his enemies’ heads or pressing his hand against pillars and walls as he moves through his surroundings—this new feature, while likeable, also makes him terribly clumsy, a quality that’s certainly more comedic than disastrous.
Once again Uncharted adheres to the same system of combat: sticky cover and shooting with sometimes imprecise aim, depending on the gun. The zoom-in options for the better weapons are nice as usual, but the array of firepower has basically remained the same—and by this point, it’s a disappointment that they didn’t find ways to offer more. The developers did pitch in a grenade throwback capability, which lets Drake toss live grenades back at his foes, but sometimes Drake experiences difficulty in actually grabbing hold of the grenade when you want him to—and there’s no easy way to master this component other than to jam the triangle button as soon as a grenade lands.
Despite the fast-paced sequences like Drake’s escape through the burning chateau, Uncharted 3 feels the lightest on actual action out of the three. Particularly in the first half, the game focuses heavily on narrative—so exploring rather than maintaining ground in a gun or fist fight. And that’s another problem entirely: Without spoiling anything, the overabundance of one-on-one brawls in the game starkly diminishes a climactic moment later on, a scene that’s meant to satisfy gamers but doesn’t. Uncharted 3 doesn’t end with the same explosive action that Uncharted 2 does, and the denouement that wraps up the story isn’t nearly enough to give gamers that warm and fuzzy “the end” feeling. For a developer that prides itself on attentive storytelling, it’s perplexing as to what went wrong.
The game still achieves the same high-grade quality as the other two (better than most games on the market), and its puzzles are some of the coolest around. Still, it forces hints upon players even when they choose not to enable them, with the game concealing annoying clues in the way of dialogue. While working alongside Chloe, Sully, and the other characters deepens the experience by making it more of a collaborative, team effort, it does too much to help the player. Overhearing their dialogue while you’re stuck on a puzzle doesn’t necessarily make the situation transparent, but it does make it easier to solve.
Drake’s Deception disappoints in other ways, as well. In hindsight, many of the characters—including newcomer Charlie Cutter, whose sardonic personality and extreme claustrophobia made him a welcome addition—were snubbed in favor of the main trio of Drake, Sully, and Elena, who didn’t even receive the closure they deserved. The villain Marlowe turns out to be a joke, with the developers robbing gamers of a true showdown and instead relegating the most devious acts to her lackey Talbot, who does more damage than she does. But even he’s neglected, as his motivations and supernatural powers are never thoroughly explained.
Perhaps more inexcusable than any of these problems are the loading times, which stretch on ridiculously long when starting up the game.
Uncharted 3 is highly playable, full of breathtaking environments, and just as imaginative as the other games in the series, but it feels rushed in places and often poorly structured. The series will be remembered for its exhilarating cinematic moments, its beloved characters and storytelling, and its overall quality and contribution to the action-adventure and third-person shooting genres, but Uncharted 3 doesn’t close the curtain with as much flair and bravado as it should. The game tries to replicate the success of Uncharted 2—maybe not in the most obvious manner, since it does surpass the second game in some respects—but in many ways it fails—not in becoming more, but rather in maintaining its glory.
Rating: 8/10
Pros: Charlie Cutter’s comedic relief, the puzzles, the Old Adventures of Drake and Sully, escaping from various collapsing structures
Cons: No monsters, shafted characters and an inconclusive ending, unimpressive final battle
Top PSP and 3DS games of 2011
Besides being handhelds, the PSP and 3DS have one other big thing in common: Neither system is doing so hot. The long underused PSP is making its exit as Sony prepares to usher in the Vita, and the Nintendo 3DS debuted to much disappointment and disapproval. The past year has been a turbulent one for the handhelds, but not altogether fruitless. Check out the best PSP and 3DS games of 2011.
What the Vita Needs and What It Plans to Deliver
My latest article for GameZone covers changes and upgrades the PlayStation Vita needs to enjoy a successful launch. The handheld is showing signs of implementing some of them already.
Do you think the Vita will outmatch the 3DS?
Top 25 PS1 Games You Need to Own
I’m back with another five-day video game editorial on GameZone. The first one (here, if you missed it) was extremely successful, so thanks to everyone who read.
I’ll be updating this post with links as the week goes along.
Part 1: The Platformers (#25-21)
Part 2: The Fighters and Racers (#20-16)
Part 3: The Shoot ‘Em and Runs (#15-11)
Part 4: The RPGs (#10-6)
Part 5: The Special Mentions (#5-1)
Ratchet and Clank Land in the DC Universe
Wildstorm, the DC Comics property known for bringing video game icons to the comic book page, is adding the galactic Ratchet and Clank to their dossier this September.
After the defeat of Dr. Nefarious, the best pals zip off to the Solana galaxy for a quick vacation, but before they can enjoy some well-deserved shuteye, Qwark summons the heroes. The adventure pits Ratchet and his robot sidekick against a Markazian planet thief named Artemis Zogg. Writer T.J. Fixman and artist Adam Archer will be handling the six-issue limited series based on the popular Sony franchise.
[Via GameInformer]
Review: God of War #1
If you haven’t played God of War III yet (*raises hand*), or perhaps desire a little more god with your war, then die-hard fans will surely be interested in Wildstorm’s freshly released God of War limited comic series. But take it from this oracle: You’ve been warned.
Wildstorm immortalizes Kratos, Sony’s hottest poster-child for blood splatter, in an all-new limited series. Of course, by the time you’ve finished scouring these makeshift Greek tales, you’ll gladly seek refuge in the underworld.
In my opinion, when video games leap into comics, the two mediums should overcome that troublesome gap as seamlessly as the creators can forge that metaphorical bridge. Unfortunately, regardless of the labor’s intensity, the fusion tends to meet a sloppy end, and for all its might God of War #1 crumbles just the same. All the Spartans and Olympian gods could not salvage this mutilated comic, which—despite its flattering outward appearance and fair storyline—suffers from wretched oversight. Whatever research writer Marv Wolfman tapped fails to nudge this premiere issue in any glorious direction, and Andrea Sorrentino’s visuals only rub those vulnerable edges raw.
