Extra Punctuation: Uncharted 3 Should've Tried Harder

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Uncharted 3 Should've Tried Harder

Uncharted 3 could've made Nathan Drake interesting, but made him a hero instead.

Read Full Article

 

[Roserari]

For once, you and I are completely on the same page. I just couldn't grasp how Drake could have pulled that off in the desert village. Especially after floor collapse number 425.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

I like it this way, Drake is in essence the idealistic counterpart to Laura Croft.

 

[Andronicus]

I must admit, through the haze of adoration, I did in fact pick most of these points up, though I essentially just cast them to the depths of my mind to continue playing. To be brutally honest, I was somewhat disappointed with Uncharted 3. I still believe Uncharted 2 was much better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It would've been nice if they gave Drake the "great pretender" arc that the game was kind of steering towards. Just a useless little street punk who measured himself a fake persona to gain respect and meaning to his disposable life.

But alas...

If you would imagine Uncharted 2 to be a vase, then Uncharted 3 is that same vase only smashed into pieces and then ducktaped together by a blind man.

 

[Fasckira]

Verisimilitude, what an awesome word. I like it, I plan to use it more in day to day conversation.

 

[Therumancer]

You know Yahtzee, you might as well just come out and say you love Uncharted and everything about it. I've been observing this for a while now, and it seems like you trot out all these same complaints every game, but in the end still wind up playing these games through to their conclusion, one after another, where major releases of AAA titles you genuinely loathe seem to be delayed for crazy amounts of time or simply "forgotten" entirely, sometimes with you mentioning it specifically in text in your videos.

Perhaps it's that your ashamed because it's the kind of Cheeseburger and Coke gameplay you claim to hate, or simply that the Joss Whedonesque quippping is exactly the kind of gimmick that you yourself practice and you feel it steals your thunder. Drake sort of being like your Trilby character gone AAA with a better budget (and honestly given that your a guy who has made games about a thief, I've wondered at the criticisms of other games basically about thieves).

I'm not an uncharted player because I really don't get into shooters, but looking at this and your complaints it seems well... like you as a smug bastard should like games about a smug bastard but feel obligated to badmouth them. Or simply "thou dost protest too much".

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

I'd probably like Drake more if there was a moment when we saw him going to the toilet. But he wouldn't do that unless there were diamonds in the cistern, and then a thug would burst in the window and Drake would have to garotte him with his underpants elastic.

That last paragraph made me literally laugh out loud. And while my family may think it's silly to laugh at a computer screen, judging by the way they are staring at me all cockeyed right now, I gotta say thanks for the giggles.

 

[Dastardly]

Extra Punctuation: Uncharted 3 Should've Tried Harder

Uncharted 3 could've made Nathan Drake interesting, but made him a hero instead.

Read Full Article

It's exactly what made the latest Die Hard movie awful, whereas the first was genre-defining. In the first movie, it's about your basic hard-luck cop put in a bad situation and toughing his way through it -- he's tiptoeing across broken glass, bleeding all over, feeling real pain. And in Live Free or Die Hard, he takes on a damned fighter plane with a truck.

The likely cop-out is that it's not "fun" to play a scene in which you're a captive, or to fight a losing battle. So when you get through the desert, you're back in fighting (winning) form, rather than overtaken by superior non-dehydrated numbers. But other games and stories have done it, and done it so well.

A moment of weakness, a momentary set-back, it's a chance to build the character by showing he's more than just dumb luck -- he can fight his way back to the top when knocked off. What's more, it allows you to continue progressing the story without the "hero inflation" most series find themselves slave to. You can dial things back a bit and progress (again) from there, but with a slightly more humble, slightly wiser protagonist.

But that's the problem. Nathan Drake isn't a character. He has no personality, no psychology. He's a costume with no one in it.

 

[ACman]

Hooray! Yahtzee wrote an article with a single coherent theme.

takes on a damned fighter plane with a truck.

That's more of an escalation than a demonstration of valour. Mclane's flawed; it's just always the same flaw: "I'm estranged/separated from my wife/daughter".

The problem with Nathan Drake is that he's so damned pleasant in person but then murders half of the universe to get where he's going. It'd be nice to have something to explain his complete lack of an aversion to killing, like maybe he's an Ex-French Legionary or that he was bullied to much in his youth.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Being honest, I've played through only part of Uncharted 1. I haven't really got why this game is so popular, other than the new-age Indiana Jones idea. For the most part the game itself is pretty easy to guess where/when major action sequences are going to take place, there's nothing to the Prince of Persia/Assassin's Creed style wall climbing (except that in PoP and AC it was actually fun and not boring as hell). The only thing I've actually liked about the game so far came from the 30 minutes I spent playing the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta. The one level I played was the one where you chase down an airliner then battle for the airport area. Having a scripted event was interesting and added a new element to deathmatch I didn't honestly think would work and was pleasantly surprised.
But as far as plot and gameplay for SP goes, I find myself unable to really identify with Nathan Drake. Despite his resemblance to Nathan Fillion, he's no Captain Mal. Really he's kind of annoying. Gasbag ego characters who act like they know everything about whats going on that you don't is sort of... well.. annoying. I just don't find myself rooting for him in any way. Only reason I even play the game is because my wife got it and the 2nd one for us and I want to at least finish them so I don't make her feel bad.
Sorry, but as nice looking as Uncharted is, I don't get why its been GotY for some people, or why people latch onto Drake as if he's some awesome hero-type, other than the Nathan Fillion complex, which as I said doesn't really fit.

 

[Casual Shinji]

But that's the problem. Nathan Drake isn't a character. He has no personality, no psychology. He's a costume with no one in it.

No, the problem is that he doesn't have an arc.

He has a personality, it simply remains status quo all throughout the games. I would say it's the problem with nearly every Uncharted character. Naughty Dog doesn't seem to be able to write a witty character that can be shaped and molded by the meriad of events he or she's been through. Which is odd since they also made the Jak games.

 

[mjc0961]

Yeah, all that stuff about Drake just being able to magically fight just fine when needed bothered me about Uncharted 2, even. As mentioned in the article,

Spoiler: Uncharted 2 spoilers

He gets shot and is in a train wreck, and then has to climb out of the train wreck in cold weather without proper clothing on. You're playing as him and he's slow, stumbling around, obviously suffering from the gunshot, blood loss, and cold. In fact, as I recall, he sits down against some broken train car because he can't keep going with all his injuries anymore, but then enemies show up and suddenly he's perfectly okay again! You fight them all off with ease, and then suddenly it's back to weak Drake. Then he keeps walking for quite some time before eventually passing out. But some guy finds him immediately (how convenient) and helps him out. Drake's in bed for a few days and despite being shot, losing blood, and almost freezing to death, they give him a coat and now he's completely fine again, as if he had never been injured in the first place.

Same thing earlier in the game too. Drake gets sent to jail for, what was it, 6 months? I think it was six months. And I recall that he describes it as just being stuck in that cell going to the bathroom in a bucket the entire time. And yet he's still just as fit as he ever was. Shouldn't being stuck in a cell with nothing to do for that long cause him to be weaker? Bah.

See, the slogan on the back of the box for Uncharted 1 was "one ordinary man, one extraordinary adventure" and in Uncharted 1, he really was just an ordinary man. But then in Uncharted 2, he's not. I once joked that "They might as well have changed Nate's name to Clark Kent for all the times he should have been dead or at least weak" and "I think Drake will be able to fly and shoot laser beams from his eyes in Uncharted 3" because of all the times Drake just randomly was okay despite injuries in Uncharted 2. It's really disappointing to hear that while he still can't fly yet, he's gotten closer to being able to do so since Uncharted 2.

 

[meromero]

the bigest problem i have with this game (besides being son scripted i don't know why the bother making this a game) is the friking motivation.....theres is NONE!!!

in the first one they motivation was to escape, drake himself said that the treasure wasn't worth it at some point, in the second one he has to save that chick i always forget her name....but now?? there is absoluty fucking NOTHING to kill so many people for....we KNOW he wont get al the treasure and live the rest of his life as the richest man on earth. So why the hell does he risk his life and the people around him? he also doesn't care at all for archeologic research, he basically cleans his ass with a 400 years old map, and destroyed THE BIGEST archeologic discovery ever by human kind

 

[castlewise]

Verisimilitude, what an awesome word. I like it, I plan to use it more in day to day conversation.

Yeah, the article was good enough, but verisimilitude made it all better.

 

[Graham Farr]

I don't get this complaint at all. It's the hero of the game, you're supposed to feel strong and powerful. That's why I didn't like the end of Shadow of the Colossus, because you spent the whole game killing huge monsters and then you get this helpless sequence where you're sucked into something. It's the same reason I didn't get your complaints on MW3 either. In a game, you're supposed to, oh I don't know, win? You're supposed to be stronger, tougher, and snarkier than your enemies. Making sequences where you're weak aren't fun. In Alan Wake, when you were weak you moved slower, that didn't make those parts more fun. In Mario, when you get hit you get smaller, and that's not more fun either, no, the most fun parts are when you're invincible and can crush every enemy in your path.

 

[Drake666]

I don't get this complaint at all. It's the hero of the game, you're supposed to feel strong and powerful. That's why I didn't like the end of Shadow of the Colossus, because you spent the whole game killing huge monsters and then you get this helpless sequence where you're sucked into something. It's the same reason I didn't get your complaints on MW3 either. In a game, you're supposed to, oh I don't know, win? You're supposed to be stronger, tougher, and snarkier than your enemies. Making sequences where you're weak aren't fun. In Alan Wake, when you were weak you moved slower, that didn't make those parts more fun. In Mario, when you get hit you get smaller, and that's not more fun either, no, the most fun parts are when you're invincible and can crush every enemy in your path.

You see, there's a reason why some people don't want to be superman (or don't like the idea of superman): when a protagonist is unbeatable, where's the drama, where's excitement ? It is not fun playing a game with the cheat code on and neither it's fun having the impression that the cheat codes are still on for the story/cinematic/cutscene...

Sometime, for a game to be fun, we're suppose to lose... think about some of the best game you ever played... Aeris died, JC Denton was captured, Alexander and Graham in KQ or Guybrush Threpwood were put into jails, Max Payne is unconscious more or less 3 times per game, your guy(s)'s got blown off by a nuclear bomb (or a bullet in its head) in MW, etc. Sometime, you can be something else then a all-vengeful god of destruction you'll see, it's fun

 

[dnose]

Yahtzee, you may be right about everything that you say but to be perfectly honest, I don't give two flying s**ts. The Uncharted games are FUN games with FUN stories and FUN characters. And that's what video games are all about...FUN. Sometimes I think you lose sight of this fact. Either that or you pretend to lose sight of this fact when it comes time to nit-pick.

 

[Spud of Doom]

I skipped the whole article and jumped to the comment box just so I could say thank you for the spoiler warning. There is nothing worse than having spoilers thrust upon you unprepared.