I must confess, I missed the first instalment of Uncharted, “Drake's Fortune”. I didn’t own a Playstation when it came out so I couldn’t get my mitts on a copy. So I wasn’t on the edge of my seat when I heard that its sequel had been announced. Sure, I saw the screenshots, which looked fantastic and I watched some videos of gameplay which looked scripted but still made the game look fun, but I’ve been burned too many times by games that promise the earth and fail to deliver, so I tried not to get too excited by it.
The game combines 3rd person shooter action with stealth as an option but not a requirement to progress through the story. There is a fair bit of Parkour – style climbing which reminded me very much of assassins creed and some puzzles which are so easy, they may as well not be there at all. Where Uncharted 2 really excels is in the mix of all these elements tastefully and in the right quantities so as never to bore the player with too much of one thing. The story was fun and kept me interested while the cut scenes were well acted, both by the character models and the talented voice actors. (Claudia Black especially) All of this is set against some of the most stunning backdrops I have ever seen. Clicking the images below will enlarge them.
The controls work well for a third person shooter. You will find soon after picking up the pad and learning how to use the pistol, that headshots are possible but made tricky enough to be extremely satisfying when you one-shot that evil henchman on the next rooftop over. The game combines 3 gameplay types together well in quantity, however it does fall down at controlling these 3 types equally well.
The Parkour running and jumping controls well enough, but I sometimes found that jumping from ledge to ledge felt rather scripted sometimes, like I was initiating a tiny quicktime event to jump across a gap, rather than using skill to judge the distance of the jump. This DID make the game play smoother but at the same time, made it feel a little linear, which is a shame because the backdrops were really, beautifully rendered. I want to feel like at any point, I can break away and go explore, at least a little bit.
The stealth gameplay was a particular sticking point for me. The stealth takedowns were very smooth when executed and I did try to stealth-kill where I could, rather than go guns blazing every time. However I did find that sneaking around enemies to get behind them was made more difficult because of Drake sticking to the wall at a crucial moment or perhaps jumping over the top of the wall instead of simply standing up behind it. I think this problem could have been solved by a dead-mans-switch method of duck and cover, i.e. if you aren’t holding a button down to hide, then the character doesn’t duck behind cover.
Controller woes aside though, the game is possibly the best game I have played this year. It really is beautiful to watch and to play. It never leaves you bored or frustrated and is impossible to put down. I keep thinking about Metal Gear Solid 4 as I write this. I think the comparison I’d draw is, while MGS4 is a classic that will be studied and praised for years to come, Uncharted 2 is an addictive airport novel of a game that you find yourself devouring in record time and then tentatively waiting for the next instalment. There no doubt will be a sequel to this game and when it is released, I’ll be first in-line to bag myself a copy. Oh yes.
Down the darkest alley of mankind’s possible futures, there is no apocalypse, no great war, no invading swarms of hostile alien forces... there is only Capitalism!
Jennifer Government by Max Barry is set in
The book is non stop action from the word go. It is full of black humour, mostly rising from the super-capitalist world by which the characters are constantly being thwarted and screwed over. There's just the right amount of violence and black comedy to make this one of those books you can't put down. I'd recommend it for anyone who sees themselves as anti capitalist. Fans of Bill Hicks would most likely dig this book too.
Also: There is a free online browser game called Nation States which is inspired by and based in the Jennifer Government world.
This weekend we had managed to get some free tickets to see the Cage Rage at Wembley arena in London. I’ve seen a few live fight events before, but never mixed martial arts combat, so I thought I’d give it a try. And, in the spirit of true romanticism, I brought my girlfriend along with me too.
I wasn’t too sure what to make of the Cage fighting. The rounds were over very quickly in most cases and matches all seemed to start off well, punches, kicks and lots of movement, but almost all of them descended quickly into the competitors lying on the floor hugging each other. A couple of the contestants looked like they had eaten one too many ice creams at the sea side and their match was the most boring one of all to watch. I’m sure they all train very hard to become cage fighters and they could all most likely kill me in their sleep. However, I found that the hype machine that was surrounding the event had brought my expectations about the fights to such a level where delivering a spectacle that would meet my approval had become impossible. There were a couple of high points which I’m almost but not quite ashamed to say, were the points at which maximum damage had been dealt to a fighter. We saw one guy get a knee to the face and one fighter had his knee snapped by a Japanese leg lock specialist. Ouch.
I don’t want to blog for bloggings sake. If live combat is your thing, I’d recommend boxing or watching some Thai kick boxing which is far more exciting. I won’t be attending Cage Matches after the internet goes down that’s for sure.
With a backdrop so gorgeous in its design, a fluid game play style and a sexy new monk\assassin
look for your main character, it is easy to see why Assassins Creed generated so much attention and hype prior to its release. For months, myself, colleagues, friends and the MOG Army awaited its release with anticipation and delight at the thought that one of the classic gaming genres, the assassination game, was about to get the 21st century makeover it so rightly deserved.
The genre already had many gaming gems, including the “Tenchu” stealth assassin games and the fabulously brutal and complex “Hitman” series that had both set the standards high in graphics and game play. It seemed obvious from the day the titbits and teasers for this title were released onto the internet that the game intended to not only compete with, but totally reset the benchmark for the third person “stalk-and-kill” game play style.
I got the game on for the 360, my console of choice for the time being. (I may have to write a blog about the trials of choosing between the three big consoles some day.) Got myself comfortable, made sure there was a readily available source of snack food and alcohol nearby and began to play.
As soon as the game play starts, you realise the potential of the game, the movement of the character, the free running style he uses to move between buildings. The story allows you to quickly sample all the weapons and puts you in a friendly start area to allow you to learn the basics of movement, combat, sneaking and escaping detection.
Just as I'd hoped, the game is easy to pick up and learn with an intuitive control system and fluid character movement. The ability to clamber up onto almost anything in the environment and stylishly jump, flip, wall run or swan dive off it again still hasn’t gotten boring to this day. The character itself will seamlessly interact with the buildings and I saw no clipping or strange collision bugs. The NPC soldiers have an annoying habit of being able to climb buildings almost as well as the assassin can, although they are not nearly as graceful when doing it. I felt a sense of smugness when, after brutally killing a guard, citizen or beggar I managed to perform carious acrobatic escape manoeuvres, ending in a leap of faith into a bale of straw and off the guards radar.
Sadly the beautiful backdrops and fluid movement of the character don’t make up for the games lack of real game play and, once you’ve assassinated a few people, you’ll begin to realise that, not only are you completing very easy sub missions but they are all in fact exactly the same. Even the script for the NPC’s is identical in each city which completely bemused me. They have DIFFERENT voice actors, but the NPC’s all say the same thing!?! Not good.
The combat system is fantastic, especially the counter moves which offer you the ability to dispatch your enemy in a number of stylishly brutal ways, think Dead Or Alive 3, which offers a similar system for countering attacks.