When she's not busy blowing the heads off of enemies to get to the next level, she's usually playing video games.
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TheGameDame
Over the weekend, I went to Lackluster to see if there were any decent games worth renting. I was just about to give up, but something caught my eye behind the Wii version of the Pirates of the Caribbean game. What ho? A copy of Uncharted for the PS3! Ironic that I’d find a treasure-hunting game behind a pirate game.
It seemed like I’d heard that Uncharted was good, so I grabbed it, but I went ahead and grabbed a copy of The Orange Box too, just in case it wasn’t. I’m pleased to report that I did not visit with Gordon or his mighty crowbar until I’d seen the ending credits of Uncharted. Developed by Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter) and published by Sony, this game is filled with some amazing graphics, fluid controls, intriguing gameplay and an awesome story.
The trailer I posted is a damn fine preview of the Uncharted story, so I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of that jazz. It’ll be better if you experience it for yourself anyway. You play as Nate Drake – a GQ lookin’ fellow with a sense of humor. Is he the male version of Lara Croft? Almost. But he can’t be her equal until they balloon up his package about 8 times larger than normal and let him dual wield pistols. Anyway, you can definitely see that Uncharted follows the successful Tomb Raider formula. You’re looking for treasure in an uncharted territory. With help from a couple of quippy sidekicks (Elena, the reporter and Sully your awesomely crass, cigar smoking buddy) you’ll go through a mix of puzzles, shootouts and mini games to find the booty. You’ll be able to climb like a monkey, swinging across vines and jumping long distances. And you can fight like a badass with a plethora of yummy weaponry.
In addition to fluid movement and easy to grasp controls, there are a lot of nice touches in this game like how the weapon you wield makes a difference in how you navigate. For example, I couldn’t grab a ledge while I had my AK out. But once I switched to my pistol, it was no longer a problem. Sound also stands out in this game. In addition to being sprinkled throughout the game in the perfect places, it is also used for clues. In one puzzle, you’re walking around several statues and when you step over a certain section of grass, the sound of your footsteps change. If you aren’t listening you’ll miss out on the fact that the ground beneath your feet isn’t quite what it seems.
Now, as much as I loved this game and stand by its rent-worthy status, Uncharted is not faultless. One of the first annoyances was the occasional crazy camera spin. Now, in the defense of Uncharted, I’m not saying this is a flaw that only exists in this PS3 game. It seems like every game I’ve played on the PS3 has this issue at some point or another. Here’s the scenario: you’re standing there behind cover, waiting to shoot someone. You aim the cross hairs for a perfect headshot and … what the … wait! STOP DOING THAT!! The camera pans around in a 360 spiral and you’re stuck like an idiot for 5-10 seconds (and usually get killt). It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Secondly, you’ve got to deal with the occasionally insulting puzzle hint. When you’re taking too long to figure out a puzzle when playing on Normal difficulty, a little icon will pop up on the bottom right of the screen telling you to hit L2 for a hint. Sometimes these hints are super helpful and zoom in to show you something you might not have seen before. Other times the hint only shows you where to go like The Great Tower hint that zooms in on The Great Tower. Really? I’m supposed to be in the place we’ve been talking about for the past 30 minutes? Nooooooo. Ok. Thanks for showing me where it is. Now can you give me a clue on HOW TO GET THERE? GOSH! Also, you carry around a journal filled with clues and EVERY TIME there’s something that you can learn by looking in the book, Nate says “Waaaait a minute… seems like I saw this in the book.” And the “hit select to view book” comes up on your screen. By the end of the game, I was saying “Waaaait a minute” right when he did. (Granted, these hint issues are on Normal difficulty, maybe this doesn’t happen in the harder settings? Dunno. didn’t test it yet). Another noted annoyance was when you and Elena get on the back of a Jet Ski and tool around trying to get closer to the treasure. You drive as Nathan, but shoot as Elena. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Elena whips out some kind of badass rocket launcher-y gun with unlimited ammo. I kept waiting for Nate to say something like “BITCH! If you’d whipped out that gun in the last chapter, things could’ve been a lot easier! Thanks a lot, yo!” But nothing was said. In any case, my gripes are few and totally picky. So let’s carry on.
One thing I noticed in the trailer I posted is that Elena isn’t nearly as hot there as she is in the actual game. In the trailer she has mousy brown hair (:54 – :59). But in the game, she’s a cute blonde who looks like she just dragged a kayak up on shore to pose for an REI outdoor gear photo shoot. Here’s what she ends up looking like in the game:
The image above was included in a post by Rich Diamant, the lead character artist for Uncharted from Naughty Dog. And apparently, her makeover was tougher than you might imagine. “Doing the hair was a pain!!” Rich said in a post on Zbrush Central, “I think it took almost 2 days to get to look right. I ended up writing a mel script that helped a little with laying out and bi-railing all the strands. I used nurbs curves and converted them to polys after. Each strand I would lower accordingly. It wasn’t fun! That’s why [Elena] had a different hairstyle originally. I never got around to doing it right at that point.” A mel script? Nurbs curves? Polys? Jeesh. And I thought getting my hair to look right was tough.
If you want a little more behind the scenes info on what went into the other characters, make sure you check out Rich’s thread on Zbrush Central. The work he did to make these characters interesting and vibrant is incredible. Each character has something that makes them more real. Elena has her camera. Scully has his cigars and vulgar mouth. Nate wears a silver ring on a necklace. The shadowing of the jewelry and his subtle attention to it made me SO INTERESTED in what it represented. (And yes, you do eventually find out.)
Overall, Uncharted is short and sweet, but satisfying. It’s a perfect rental for an on-the-couch weekend. And if you’re into collecting stuff for points, there are plenty of unlockables you can go back for after you’ve won the main mission. If you didn’t grab it when it was released in November, make sure you give it a shot. There are talks of a sequel, but no official dates have been released.
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Sounds like a decent game!
I was in Dallas yesterday helping some friends of mine who are in a band. They played at The Granada Theater.
Too bad I didn’t plan better or I may have had some time to game with all the Dallas gamers I know.
Left by Daniel Lopez on March 8th, 2008