Charted

For any of you who may not know me in a real life, I'm a bit of an anal-retentive completionist. While it's not as bad as it could be in the era of achievements and trophies, I have this powerful need to finish every game I start. The only exceptions are usually games that I deem to be so terrible as to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever or games in which the genre in question bores me to tears. Of the top of my head, I can only think of one game in recent memory that fit ones of those categories: Heroes of Might and Magic V. Of the two, it falls into the latter category, although it definitely had some redeeming qualities; I may revisit it some day.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, shortly before buying my PS3, my good friend TheShums let me borrow a handful of his games. Among those was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This was around the same time that the second game came out and everyone was falling over themselves saying how good it was. It was supposed to be similar to the the first game but better. I decided that I would play the first one in preparation for eventually playing the second one.

The game started out well enough. Right off the bat, I was blown away by how good the voice acting was and just the sound in general; it sounded like I was getting surround sound from my stereo TV! For the first handful of chapters, I was quite pleased, the game was basically Tomb Raider-like with a relatively likable male character. Soon though, I got my first real taste of combat.

Combat in Uncharted is often compared to Gears of War. Having never played Gears, I have absolutely no idea how apt the comparison is. All I will say is that if that's what Gears of War plays like, I'm NEVER going to play it.

The combat is laughable in its ridiculousness. With few exceptions, the enemies appear in what I've heard referred to as "arenas." Basically, they are areas that have obvious cover points (pillars, waist high walls, etc) with enemies at the far side. You enter the arena, find cover, and pop up and slowly shoot each and every enemy. Most areas have 1-3 respawn triggers too, meaning that after you kill the initial batch of enemies, more of them appear. Kill that batch, you get a third batch. The combat felt like I was entering a shooting gallery. I just waited for the man looking thing to pop up or out from behind its obstacle and then proceed to shoot it.

The painfulness of these encounters was further exacerbated by the console controls. If I had been playing this with a mouse and keyboard, I'm quite certain that although it still would have been terrible, it wouldn't have been quite as bad.

Let me just step back for a moment. You may be thinking that I just don't enjoy console shooter and/or platformers. I may have thought you were right, but I was a huge fan of the most recent Tomb Raider games (played them both with a gamepad) and I also sunk quite a few hours this weekend into Army of Two on the PS3 which I enjoyed quite a bit. While I'd like to say that I'm merely opposed to this type of game, I don't think that's it. I'm opposed to the type of gameplay that is contained inside of Uncharted. While the cover/pop/shoot system is perhaps a matter of taste, I don't like it, I don't think it's fun, and it absolutely ruined this game for me.

So what about everything else? Uncharted is surprisingly well written. The story makes sense for the most part, has a mild twist or two, and allows you to visit a pretty big handful of interesting locations. Platforming is serviceable at best and maddening at worst. The save points were nearly always way too sparse, forcing me to replay large platforming sections or spend multiple attempts in the most recent enemy arena.

I really, really wanted to like Uncharted. In fact, I disliked it so much, I felt like I was playing it wrong. After I initially started the game, I stopped playing completely about 5 chapters in as I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. I didn't touch the game for a month or more, then the completionist in my kicked in again and I decided to power through and finish it. After spending the better part of a morning with it, I learned I was still nowhere near the end and quit again. I probably would have never touched it again, but TheShums and I started talking about it, and I actually found myself feeling guilty for not finishing it. One more weekend later and I managed to get all the way through the game.

I'm unsure why I kept coming back to it; I just didn't enjoy the core gameplay. I don't know if it's because I'm a glutton for punishment, a gaming connoisseur, or just a little stupid. Probably all three.

I suppose I can see why people like the game. It tells a great story and is very well put together. I don't think I'd ever recommend it to anybody though, because unless you enjoy the combat (and I suppose some people do), the game falls flat. The best voice acting and story in the world can't save a game that just isn't fun to play.