It's time for a break in the normal playthrough for another Bonus Round! This time it's a discussion about two popular modern games that were lent to me by the ever lovely Andy Isaacs. So let me begin:
Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves
Released on: PS3
Played on: PS3
Release date: 2009
Heavy Rain
Released on: PS3
Played on: PS3
Release date: 2010
When I started to play these two, I actually began with Heavy Rain - but I'm going to talk about Uncharted 2 first. This may appear to make absolutely no sense to you at the moment, but bear with me, and hopefully by the end you'll realise why.
These are both PS3 exclusive games, and for ages I didn't have a PS3, as we had an Xbox 360. Just to clarify, I'm not a Microsoft lover or a Sony hater or anything like that - it's just that the vast majority of games that came out for that generation were multi-platform (certainly the ones I wanted to play) - and therefore we picked an Xbox 360 because we got a better deal on one.
Also, the controller is better. There, I said it!
But I finally got a PS3 recently, so it's time to start looking at what I missed...
So, Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves. The Uncharted series is one of the most popular series' of the current generation...
Oh wait. The PS3 is a LAST generation console now, isn't it? It's officially old news.... well there's going to be an Uncharted for the PS4, so the game series is still current, right?
*Watches Tumbleweed roll past as I realise I'm the only person who cares about the definition. Smiles and carries on*
Uncharted is one of those games that is described as "Action-Adventure" which is brilliantly non-specific. However, in my experience of games, it is quite like Batman: Arkham Asylum with extra guns. Or Resident Evil 5 with fewer zombies. Or...
You get the idea. It's like most current popular games that aren't a first person shooter. You take control of Nathan Drake - an Indiana Jones-wannabe with less scruples than Dr Jones but the same awful taste in sidekicks who you know will betray you - and you run around, jump, solve puzzles, sneak and get into gunfights in pursuit of a treasure of some kind.
Make sense? Good. Because that's about all I can tell you about the plot! The game starts with you injured and climbing up a train that is half-off a cliff in some snowy mountains, and then slowly but surely you see some flashbacks before jumping back in time four months for the second level.
Most importantly, however, it's fun. Lots of fun. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the best at modern games, so I found it quite hard going, but it's forgiving and if you die, you just automatically restart at the start of the section you were doing, which is great for me.
However, this had something in common with my previous blog - there are cutscenes galore. Lots of cutscenes in which vital parts of the plot are stated... but it turns out, I just stop listening. And that's the problem you get with cutscenes - if I don't know or care about the characters, then I just stop listening - and I found myself doing that more with Uncharted 2 than with Kingdom Hearts 2.
Maybe it's different for those people who played Uncharted (the original) - maybe you are more invested in the characters we see - but for me this highlights the problem with starting mid-adventure and telling your story non-linearly - you need to make sure the audience care, and it just doesn't quite pull it off for me here.
Discussion of cut-scenes leads us neatly to Heavy Rain - a game that is almost entirely made of cutscenes and quicktime events.
*Sees you all getting up to leave*
No wait! It's not like that! It's not a bad game. Although I'm not entirely sure game is the right word...
For those of you who don't know, Heavy Rain is an interactive drama that feels more like a film than a game. The graphics are gorgeous, and the plot is intriguing (if really rather depressing). You play as four different characters and it's all tied into a serial killer known as the origami killer...
"What the hell is an interactive drama?" I hear you all ask
It's a game that is more interested in telling it's story than giving you lots of gaming mechanics to master, and that should be one of my worst nightmares. But it isn't. The big selling point is that what you do early in the game affects the results of the story later in the game and that sort of thing is hugely intriguing for me.
As a game, it's really quite clunky. The controls for moving the characters are the modern-day equivalent of Resident Evil's notorious "tank" controls, and the "action-packed" sequences that involve quick button pushes would be fine, if my brain would remember which button was where on a playstation controller!
So to sum it up, I don't know why I enjoy Heavy Rain, but I do, quite a lot. It's not a game, but it is interactive entertainment, and I don't know how better to describe it than that.
Unfortunately my experiences with both of these games has been affected by the nightmare that is a Playstation 3.
Now I know many of you out there have a PS3 and use it as a primary gaming console, and I've got no problem with that. In fact, when I got mine I was excited. And then I discovered how often it downloads updates, then installs stuff, and then crashes and demolishes it's file system! It seems to be more sensitive than ... *searches desperately for a metaphor, before failing* - basically it's just ridiculously sensitive.
I've had to recover the hard drive three times in a month since I got the PS3, and I've now taken to backing up my save data on a memory stick every time I play. Sadly, I didn't do this for Heavy Rain, so I've played the opening twice, and then lost the save file both times... which means I am much less excited about playing it again to see where it goes!!
Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves
Rating: 7/10
Time played: 1 hour 10 minutes
Would I play it again? Yes, I think I will . The story may be dodgy, but the gameplay is very solid.
Heavy Rain
Rating: 7/10
Time played: 1 hour 30 minutes (roughly)
Would I play it again? Yes, if I can stomach playing the opening for a THIRD time (Damn you PS3!)
Next time - We're going back to the 80s and to the 8-bit era....
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