You mean you’re fine with being both annoyed and loving the game at the same time? That’s a very zen attitude I guess. Maybe I should try to finish the first game with that attitude: annoyance is a good thing. Embrace the annoyances.
What annoyances? I loved the first game, including the sticking point for most people, the waves of combat. Sorry to hear you didn’t. I vaguely remember one of the later watercraft levels where you go up a river to be a tiny bit annoying, but that was it.
If Naughty Dog had decided to reduce the combat and introduce more exploration and puzzle solving I would be equally happy. Instead, according to the IGN review, they amped up the stealth. At least with some of the fights you can spend time taking the men out one by one, finishing them off before they call for reinforcements.
It’s a lot more fun if you have a headset and are playing with people you actually know.
The beta/demo will be available to everyone today @ 11AM PST
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/09/uncharted-2-multiplayer-demo-open-to-all-today/
Playing the multiplayer demo now. How do I get boosters?
You buy them with cash that you earn by gaining levels and medals. There’s a store in the lobby.
After trying all the modes, this game is FUCKING amazing.
And I still need to buy Batman and MW2.
My wallet aches but it aches for love.
Hrmmmm, I have to say… I fall into the crowd who didn’t see anything special in the first Uncharted game, and quit about halfway through it. Long story short, I thought it was a typical mix of Tomb Raider and Gears of War, with nothing particularly great or fun about it. I also didn’t like that every area was really just a long straight hallway disguised with trees, very linear. THAT SAID, I’ve now pre-ordered the second one, and I am quite looking forward to it. The reviews that are saying “it’s leaps and bounds better then the first game”, are giving me hope that I will enjoy this game!
-Chris
Wow, that really makes me wish I could enjoy shooters with the PS3 controller. Damn it, I’m going to be missing out on something really special, it looks like. Well, technically I won’t be missing out on it, since I still plan to play it.
But something happens when I play on the PC or 360: I don’t think about the controls anymore. I just enjoy the experience for what it is. The controls have become so natural now that unless they’re done poorly, they just fade into the background, and I am able to just experience the game without constantly thinking about to do with the controller. And that’s what happens to me in a shooter on the PS3, so I can never really enjoy it on a level that I can enjoy shooters on PC or 360.
I guess what this means is that if I want to really experience Uncharted 2 and understand why it’s so goddamn special, I’m going to have to buy some kind of 3rd party controller for the PS3. Joystiq had a review of one recently, but they said it worked horribly for uncharted because Uncharted uses the L1 and R1 buttons a lot, and those buttons were horrible on this controller, which otherwise was very much like a 360 controller.
I’m kinda in the same boat as you on the PS3 controller Rock8. I’ve picked up a number of shooter games for PS3, and I very rarely want to play them due to the disconnect between me and the controller. It’s always there, fighting me. On the 360 I could just be there thinking what I want to happen and it would feel the same, I never even notice I have a gamepad in my hand.
As awesome as this game sounds, it’s just gonna have to take a back seat to shooting stuff on the 360 this fall, given how many games I want this season.
Sounds like a silly rationalization to dismiss a game. Controls are about acclimation. The DS3 isn’t a torture device, just a minor change of inputs from the 360’s pad. I’ve loved games on just about every major console from NES to iPhone and controls were never bad enough to make me pass on an excellent game. The hardest time I had getting use to controls was with Quake 1 on a mouse & keyboard. Glad I stuck through that one.
Yeah, I got used to the PS3 controller for shooters easily. It’s mental. Just forget about it, and you will subconsciously get used to it.
I don’t want to give the impression I am totally dismissing Uncharted. With limited time and money and so many games coming out, my dislike for the DS3 is starting to factor into my decisions.
I understand you can acclimate to a DS3, but the 360 controller has such good ergonomics that I just greatly prefer using it.
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. Plus I’ve played a lot of shooters with the Dualshock on both PS2 and then PS3 before I started forming this theory about the Dualshock. I used to think that game designers just didn’t know how to make a good control scheme for the Dual shock, which is why it never felt right. It’s only after I played game after game after game where I didn’t like the controls that I finally came up with the theory that maybe it’s not the fact that all these game designers suck. Maybe I just suck at using the Dual shock, with it’s analog sticks that always want to go too far.
There are ways around that problem, of course.
For example, if Crackdown had a PS3 port: that targeting system wouldn’t have any problems on the Dualshock. It’s only when precision is required that I have a problem.
Also, Infamous came up with a really cool way around the problem too: your default weapon is a pistol (lightning) with infinite ammo. So you can miss all you want, and keep making adjustments, and it doesn’t cost the player anything. It doesn’t penalize the player for missing like the first Uncharted does, in which you have limited ammo, so every shot that’s not a head-shot deprives you of more ammo. And being a poor shot with the Dual shock actually hurts.
That said, maybe this will be the game, right? This is finally the game that proves my first theory right. Most designers just suck at using the DS3 properly! Check out this section from Adam Sessler’s review:
So there is hope for the first, original theory yet! :)
I prefer the PS3 pad, on the other hand - the sticks are looser, so they’re easier to use if you can do it in the first place. You can clearly get used to both, unless you have incredibly painful calluses in the exact shape of an R2 button or something.
I would say the truth is that the DS3 is just a shitty controller, same as its predecessors. The analog sticks are horribly imprecise and positioned in such a way as to make compensating for that imprecision extremely difficult. They don’t travel in a smooth circle when rotated, they have a huge dead zone, and while the DS3 is an improvement over the DS2 as far as sensitivity of motion goes, it still doesn’t seem to have the nuance of the other analog sticks on the market. Also my fingers tend to slide off the incredibly badly shaped triggers.
So I don’t think developers suck at using the DS3, I think it’s just very difficult to work with a controller with so many glaring flaws. Naughty Dog has basically fine tuned Uncharted 2 to the point that you don’t really notice the deficiencies anymore, and I hope they share their revelations with the world.
Squishy triggers. :(
The triggers are the only part of the PS3 controller I don’t like, and I’d say that’s less of a strike against it than the 360 D-pad (especially as you can use those little attachment things to fix them). The rest is pretty much down to what we’re personally used to.
Uncharted uses the L1/R1 buttons rather than the triggers for shooting, which is definitely the way to go.