Uncharted 2, Joe Danger, and MAG

Over the July 4th weekend I was able to hang out with a friend and play some PS3. I don't own a PS3 so it was nice to have the opportunity to put in time with a bunch of games I haven't tried before. The two big ones would be Uncharted 2 and MAG, with a little Joe Danger on the side.

Joe Danger

Joe Danger is a pretty sweet little game that looks simplistic at first. Of course, the longer I played it the harder it got to quit. It doesn't take long before all sorts of objectives are getting thrown at you. I'd say it's something like Excitebike and Trials rolled into a platforming stunt game. The best part I found is attempting to keep a combo going throughout the entire stage. It's not too difficult since you can pop a wheelie and save yourself at any time. The trick is not getting carried away and wrecking at a bad time. I have a problem of trying to pull off too many flips with not enough height and driving Joe Danger's skull into the ground.

The music can get a little annoying after playing for too long. There's probably a total of three actual songs that like to loop over and over again. And some of the stages get obnoxiously long. Like they keep going on forever and ever. Still, it's a damn solid game. One of the best parts of it was all the little nods to older games in level titles. One stage is called " The Klobb" for no reason whatsoever. Another stage is called " Green Shell" and there are a couple others too. I didn't get into the level editor but I can imagine all the insanity you could get into after playing around with it for awhile.

Uncharted 2

Unsurprisingly, this is a bad ass game. I played a little of the first Uncharted and though it was okay, but after trying the first two stages in Among Thieves I ended up playing through the whole game until I beat it. Nolan North and Claudia Black have never been so entertaining before. My favorite part of this game would be the train stages. This game has one of the best train levels I've ever played. It's a real Indiana Jones vibe jumping from car to car, fighting on top inside and making use of vehicles on flatbeds. The voice acting only makes it better especially with Drake's laughter after he scrapes by an insane set piece to fight another day. I was surprised to find that fist fights were fun instead of something you'd never rely on unless the game forces it on you.

One of the best parts is the optional stealth sections that pop up here and there. My friend told me about areas of the game where you can get by sneaking around and killing dudes ninja style without being seen. After he demonstrated, I was pretty set on playing through as Ninja Drake as much as I could. The animations for grabbing a guy Splinter Cell style and tossing him from moving trains, ruins, or buildings never got old. Choking a guy out or dragging him over a box to punch him stupid is as much fun as getting into a huge gun fight. It helps that this game does blind fire better than Gears of War did and you can actually kill a guy with enough spray in the right direction.

I've never seriously considered buying a PS3 until playing this game. I don't know if I ever will, but Uncharted 2 is a serious argument in favor of it.

MAG

The massive action game FPS where you sign up for a faction and do dirt across the world. I've probably put in way too much time with Modern Warfare 2 to ever get into this, but my friend was having a blast. The main draw seems to be leading squads against certain objectives with team chatter and so on and so forth. But that seems to be the main problem of MAG. Even when a dude was doing his CO thing and telling guys what to go after, all he got was a load of backtalk and crude one liners from the rest of the team. I don't think the majority of FPS players are mature enough to take advantage of the scale in this game, or understand that the guy who has played enough to get a leadership position probably knows more about what's going on than a fresh recruit.

My friend picked the Valor PMC to roll with. I'm not sure which faction I would have gone with. They're all okay I guess. Probably S.E.V.R. if I had to choose because I have a fondness for Russian weapons. The shooting is a lot to adjust to since it takes a lot more than a few shots to kill a guy. Even with a Light Machine Gun, you really have to dump bullets into a target to kill one. We rotated after two deaths, and the majority of my EXP gained was assists. I'd start killing someone, and someone else on the team would finish it. It seems like a really slow burn to gain enough EXP for points to get new guns and attachments... but that's probably because I didn't put in a lot of time with it and played pretty awful. I wish we could have played the game type where you hijack vehicles, that sounded interesting.

Also, I don't know about you guys, but the Comms Market is pretty hot property in MAG.

Joe Danger

Uncharted 2

MAG

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