Uncharted 3's Mediocrity And A Dilemma Between P3FES And P3P

Remember that blog I did a while back and said that I was going to try and make it a more regular occurrence in an attempt to start completing games? Well, here's part two of (hopefully) many! Still not sure when and how often I'll be able to do this but I'll eventually get the ball rollin'.

UNCHARTED 3 SPOILERS IN THE PLOT PARAGRAPH. You'll know it when you see it.

Uncharted 3

If you've ever heard me say anymore than half a sentence about the Uncharted series, then you know that I think it's a fairly mediocre third person shooter with some occasionally witty dialogue and some pretty graphics. And Uncharted 3 does... absolutely nothing to change my opinion.

So where should I start delivering my thoughts on this game? Well, what about the good stuff? It's technically astounding that this game runs on the PS3 at a generally good framerate. It's quite a pretty game for a console game, and it's just full of stuff to gawk at. Well, it is if you've never played a PC game. You're right, I'm going there. Compared to the PC games that I played for quite a while before suddenly jumping interests to JRPG's, none of this stuff really made me go “wow, that looks good”. It always came with that “for a console game” qualifier”. Back to good stuff – the set pieces are often very exciting and interesting, at least until you leap off a ledge you thought was the right one but wasn't because the game sometimes doesn't do a good job of directing you where you need to go when you're being chased/chasing someone. Or maybe until you try to make a jump but don't quite make it and think that you're supposed to go somewhere else, only to find out that the original jump was the right one and the game just decided to let you fall that time just to be a dick. Or maybe you weren't entirely sure which ledge to leap to because some look like they can be jumped on and some can't. All right, all right, I said mediocre and not bad! The dialogue is mostly well-written and good enough, and the characters are generally consistent and likable. Except... I'm kidding, there's nothing more to say on that front.

So what about the bad? Well, nothing really strikes me as actually-bad, just plain mediocre. The shooting controls (as compared to other console shooters, not the mouse) feel awkward and unrefined, for one. They're OK, but popping off headshots feels like an exercise in luck and frustration instead of honed skill and precision. Considering that some enemies have nutty amounts of health unless you put lead in their craniums, that can be quite frustrating. Lucky me, I played the game on Very Easy and didn't have this issue – but I know it's there! It's really not hard to tell that on higher difficulties, this game's balance is completely fucked. Shotgun dudes and riot shield dudes might just be “a bigger nuisance” on the lower difficulties but if they're anything like they were in Uncharted 2 – which I did beat on Normal – then they just feel cheap and unfair, not refined and well-balanced. The actual meat of this game's gameplay simply isn't very good.

I've already gone on for what I feel is too long, but there's one more thing I want to talk about – plot. The plot here is something of a mess. Threads are brought up and dropped without explanation on occasion. Talbot, the secondary bad guy, keeps disappearing in street corners and gets shot at least once without any repercussions, which is brought up several times but never resolved. Marlowe, the Big Bad, pulls a card that says “tower” out of Cutter's jacket and says something along the lines of “I knew this would happen! The cards say so!”, as if she had some way of predicting things, just before trying and failing to kill him. Some middle eastern guy who talks about a genie shows up to rescue Drake out of nowhere and is barely characterized. You spend the first half of the game with Nolan North, I'm-too-old knockoff Danny Glover, Niko Bellic, and that chick that got eaten in half in Pitch Black, and those latter two disappear completely for the last half of the game. It just feels like something that was cobbled together from notes and haphazardly thrown into some sort of sensical order. It's not without sense and I was never at a loss as to what the main plot thread was about, so as far as video game plots go you might even say it's a good baseline – but captivating fiction this is not.

Persona 3 FES vs Persona 3 Portable

Well, here I am stuck with a dilemma. I have had P3P for a long time but when I last started it, I dropped it in favor of something else. Two weeks ago, while playing Nocturne, I picked it back up and decided that I wanted to play it on the big screen in HD on the PS3. So, naturally, I bought it there, knowing that I would have at least one major issue with it.

The PSP version has a trimmed-down “real” world setting, where instead of running around and seeing people, you see a static image and move a cursor around it. It's essentially a very advanced image map. Sort of. In concept. Anyway, all you get for characters are static images and there are no anime cutscenes, two things that take a lot of personality away from the game after playing FES. I tried to go back for reasons that I will elaborate on in the next paragraph, and all I could think of was the aimless running in circles while I decided what to do next and seeing the surprisingly good animations for a PS2 game and then those little anime shorts and those crazy emoticons which added some character to the, uh, characters as well as the game. They do a fairly good job of delivering the story to you on the PSP but it's often obvious that this is not the way the game was originally meant to be played. Sometimes it's even hard to know exactly what's going on in certain scenes because the action itself is heard and not shown.

So why not play FES? Why would anyone pick the PSP version over the PS2 one? Because FES includes the completely baffling decision of not allowing you to control your entire party, at least not in the traditional JRPG menu way of “here's your characters skills, pick which one you want him to do”. Instead, you've got “tactics” that you can set – rather ill-defined tactics, I might add, and not really much in the way of customization – and this just doesn't make up for the ability to say “Main, do this; now Junpei, do this; now Mitsuru, don't freaking cast Marin Karin, Diarama Akihiko because he's nearly dead again.” It ends up in this scenario where you do one move and then you watch the rest of the game play out in front of you instead of doing anything yourself. The PSP version was completely rebalanced to allow Persona 4-style “control your whole party” to even out the visual novel-esque telling of the rest of the story and the fact that part of me wants to drop the 25 hours I've put into FES just to do this reveals how much I wish I could control my whole party. Now that I've said all this, I must be completely frank – the teammate AI generally does a good job of things and it generally helps me instead of hinders me – but “generally” here means “it occasionally screws up in a way that I never would have”. Not that I don't screw up but I have never knocked a game for my own screw-ups.

Do I recommend that you play Persona 3? Absolutely, without a doubt. It's original, it's interesting, and you should absolutely check it out when you've got the chance. I just think it's such a shame that a version that includes both full party control and the “real” world isn't available; you'll have to pick the issue that you would rather deal with, and to be honest I kind of wish I would have stuck with the PSP version. There's no turning back now, though, and I don't regret my time with FES.

An essy way to deal with the P3P/FES question is this

Do you as a player care more about story or gameplay

Story: Play FES

Gameplay: Play P3P

Unless you really care about both almost equally because both are pretty damn good?

Uncharted 3 has the best horde mode in existence and a damn good campaign. That said it's not as good as Uncharted 2 for similar reasons you could hold Arkham City inferior to Asylum (though City is technically superior in many regards; Uncharted 3 is not except for the multiplayer)

Well that's a whole other set of problems. :P

But I want to me the little girl and P3P lets me.

P3P only because you can control your party, that's about the main reason I played that one a few months back

Let me throw something else into the Mix.

P3 and fes (and persona 4) over here in Europe run in 50hz. p3p runs at full speed. I can't stand to play anything in 50hz. Its excruciating. It's like getting kicked in the bollocks over and over and over again.

Therefore I prefer p3p.

If Uncharted 2 didn't do it for you it's no wonder you didn't like 3. Uncharted 3's single player is ass compared to the 2nd game in every way. That said if you didn't enjoy the previous 2 games all that much either i wonder why you even bothered playing the 3rd one. Maybe you hate yourself?

FES is absolutely fine. You don't have direct commands, but you don't need them. Tell Mitsuru to heal, Akihiko to knock down, and Aigis to go into orgia mode and do damage. It's seriously not a big deal. I beat it on normal with very little frustration. Every once and awhile, Mitsuru will cast buffs when it'd be more beneficial to use bufu, but it's never changed the outcome of a fight for me.

P3P is... totally disappointing after seeing how P4:G turned out. After finishing FES, I did pick up P3P and started playing through as the female main character. There was so much potential wasted. There's an event in P4:G where you attend Gekkoukan High, and seeing how great P3P for Vita could have been actually managed to piss me off, it's such a missed opportunity. I believe companies shouldn't focus on making portable re-releases of games until the tech is available to deliver an experience that's on par or better than the original, and P3P just can't pull it off- it's worse in every way except for combat (WHICH ISN'T EVEN REALLY AN ISSUE BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THE GAME WAS DESIGNED TO BE PLAYED IN THE FIRST PLACE). It seems like you're the type of person to play through games on the easiest settings anyway (as you mentioned with Uncharted), so I wouldn't even consider P3P.

In the perfect world we'd have the Super Persona 3 version that combines the extended story FES and the features of P3P.

As for Uncharted 3, there is some evidence that parts of the game were edited/cut/trimmed for multiple reasons which left the game in a somewhat swiss-cheesed. I like the setting they slow down because this was crushed where one of the worst things they can do for a game like this is "annualized" it. I want to see an Uncharted 4 on PS4 but don't rush it!

I started P3P on hard and yes, I enjoy difficulty. I just didn't enjoy the tedious and unfair difficulty of Uncharted 2 so I knocked 3 right down to easy.

Several reasons. For one, I felt like it was time to take a break from all the ever-present numbers in JRPG's. For two, I wanted to actually finish a game over Spring Break. For three, I needed something more for a blog than "I had some trouble picking between Persona 3 versions" - I'm trying to get a blog out on what I've been playing on some sort of decent schedule, like once or twice a month or something.

I don't regret my time with Uncharted; at the end of the day it was a big dumb action game and that's pretty much what I needed on the day I played it. I just don't think it's a particularly noteworthy big dumb action game.

As someone who loves both Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Among Thieves, Uncharted 3 is without a doubt one of the most disappointing games this generation. The Persona series in general I've always found it hard to get into. I love the gameplay of it all and design behind managing your character's social life amongst the more traditional turned-based fights, but the characters are so fucking annoying. Persona 3 especially, I eventually got bored because I couldn't stand any of the characters. Terribledialogue and generally subpar voice acting from the sort of cast who pretty much do nothing but dub anime.

Persona 4 is the same too. I've of course watched the ER for it, but for most of the characters it was all down to Jeff and Vinny's commentary that saved a lot of them. Like how they turned Dojima into this exaggerated drunkard. I liked Kenji at least, and Adachi too if only because of how absurd he was. But yeah, the fandom for the Persona characters leaves me about as perplexed as you are regarding the love for the Uncharted series.

Wait... the Resident Evil guy (that's you, isn't it?) is complaining about terrible dialogue!?

I actually think that Persona 3 has been, thus far, pretty well-written and the dub has been fairly good, but in an off-beat self-aware sort of way. I like the characters, I'm curious about the story, etc. It just seems like we just have different tastes.

@believer258: But I've never once claimed that the Resident Evil games have good dialogue. I mean they don't of course, but it's all so bad in a funny kinda way. The Persona series, however, often tend to take themselves very seriously and attempt to tackle a lot of serious themes, but the delivery is usually so off-base. Persona 4 in particular looked like it spent about how of its time spouting out exposition, which they keep reaffirming like every 10 hours later into the story like they hafta make sure that what the Hell is happening (and has happened) is firmly glued to your brain.

It's been a really long while since I've played Persona 3 or watched the ER, though, so I can't exactly throw some direct references as to why I don't like the writing. It's no doubt because I also find most anime shows have crappy writing and awkward voice-acting too, so yeah, different tastes and all that.

I've been watching the P4 ER and yes, it does repeat itself a whole hell of a lot - which is a big part of the reason why I'm wondering if I actually want to play it or not (the other part being "I'm already watching the ER")

Persona 3 doesn't do that at all, unless the recaps are just completely passing me by.

As for the Resident Evil thing, I just thought it was odd that someone who really likes those games said that Persona's dialogue was terrible. I feel the exact opposite way about the two games - RE plays it more straight and Persona is at least a little aware of how off-beat its story is.

If you've played Persona 4 it's hard to go back to Persona 3, whereas P3P implements some stuff from 4 making for a better battle system.

I don't know man. I have a PC that can max any current game and I still think the dock level in Uncharted 3 looks incredible. Not to mention it came out a while ago and at that time, it was just mind blowing.

@believer258: I wouldn't know, as I only put in like... maybe 12 hours. Which is perhaps a lot for someone who doesn't care about the why of anything happening in the game, but as I said, I think the gameplay is great. As for Resident Evil, c'mon, you've played RE5. There's no way that game was going along without a slight wink and a nod. Given that Capcom are undoubtedly some of the worst storytellers in the industry, though, they have little choice but to add a layer of absurdity to their stories and writing to make up for it all.

At best I've found the dialogue in RE games to be passable, sorta generic horror media dialogue (''and it turned into... a Nightmare!'') and the older ones in particular obviously aren't nearly as talky as a Persona game. Point is criticisms towards the writing obviously stands for an awful lot more for a potentially 100 hour long RPG than your average 3-12 hour RE game.

Again, though, the strong anime influences in Persona 3 are no doubt the biggest detractors for me. I may actually give it another shot sometime, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I could play it like I did Valkryia Chronicles and just sorta coast on the story and characters and focus my attention purely on the time-management and RPG gameplay.

I disagree, Uncharted 3 is the best Uncharted game.

I read literally none of the blog or any of the comments.

I just showed up to say that.

I will voice my controversial opinion on this subject UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

I \need to complete Uncharted 2, but I thought 3 was pretty damn fun. I throughly enjoyed the campaign.

Having access to the FeMC route in Portable is why, for me, P3P is the best version of that game. It provided so much new content and the new S.links are amazing -- the romances with some of the dudes are far better and have way more emotional depth than anything the male protagonist gets with any of the girls. I have played all 3 versions of Persona 3 (the original P3 release, FES, P3P), and P3P is definitely my favourite. I know that the cutscenes are a significant loss, but there is a lot to gain there as well. Also, holy crap, having to run through all the environments and not having a quick travel option in P3 and FES drove me nuts.

I disagree completely with the enemies being even bigger bullet sponges on higher difficulties. I've beat Uncharted 2 and 3 on the absolute hardest difficulty and it feels like the health is exactly the same, the only difference is their accuracy is higher, they spam grenades more to flush you from cover, and they deal considerably more damage. Yes they do take a lot of damage, but that's a constant among all the difficulties. Especially with armored characters. They have to have the enemy that you see and think, "Oh fuck. I need grenades and a shotgun. Now." Maybe before attempting to criticize that you should play it on something other than Very Easy which pretty much makes you invincible to gunfire and holds your hand through the entire game.

I'm not saying that Uncharted 3 is flawless, because it isn't. It's incredibly scripted. I played through that Syria level and got to the same part that they use for multiplayer. The game makes it seem like you can full stealth through it, which I did, but you can't. You absolutely HAVE to trigger a combat situation with waves of enemies. It's a pretty game that has some bad design choices at times and a very average story in comparison to it's predecessors. When it comes to Uncharted 2 though I think you're insane. Certifiably insane.

@yummylee: Just to clarify, I really liked RE4 and 5, and I'm anticipating the PC, PS3, and 360 re-release of Revelations.

I always kind of liked FES' battle system. It was designed to make your party seem like actual characters with their own combat quirks and strategies, rather than just guys you order around absolutely. I think it adds to the characters and the whole point of the game. Once I got the tactics system down I rarely had any problems. (Save for the final fight which is designed to take advantage of the system)

I thought that too, but you can stealth all the way through. To finish off the last guy looking out from the door you chuck a grenade from where he can't see, and you don't trigger the attack. Saw it on youtube. Never been able to do it myself. Not good design. But, it is possible.

People play on the PC so that they can pirate stuff. Yeah, I went there too.

Anyway, my problems with Uncharted 3 are the awful illusory 'stealth' segments, the ship scrapyard and cruiser section (although technically impressive, it is a pointless and boring diversion) and the removal of single player bonuses like costumes, weapons and special modes.

Apart from that, I think how they explored Drake's and Sully's friendship was really good. The desert section was mind blowing and the final levels were beautiful. I have always admired how Uncharted 2 and 3 brought some sort of rationalization to ancient myths, 3 moreso than 2. I really do hope they bring out more Uncharted in the future.

Honestly I felt like Uncharted 2 and 3 were pretty much the same games. The set pieces were cool but I kinda got tired of the "Oh jump on this ledge only to have it break off and Nathan catches himself somehow" business.

I couldn't call Uncharted 3 mediocre, but there were definite points where I was close to having no fun. I hit some points throughout the game where I felt I was being unfairly overwhelmed, something I have seen echoed in many places and at the same points.

I also ran into a bunch of problems during a couple of the scripted sequences forcing me to restart. There is nothing worse than having the part where you run away from the burning building break and getting trapped inside some of the planes cargo to make all of the fun disappear. Luckily the sand-walk, the horses and the exciting on foot chase sequences make up for it, but that has and forever will be at the front of my mind when I think of the game.

If I play Persona 3 again, it will probably be portable. The AI controlled characters did what I didn't want them to just a few too many times for me to not miss the full control of Persona 4. Plus I really dislike the animation cutscenes in Persona 3 proper. The characters all look like lanky-poorly detailed junk.

Uncharted is easily one of my top-5 franchises this generation. I just wanted to say that. Among some others are Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I think I put a lot of focus on the characters in the games I play, and the characters and the environments in the Uncharted series are amazing. I just really liked hanging out with them.

I agree with all of this. It can't be said enough how much better the new social links are in the lady mc route. I don't know if it was a different writing staff or what, but there is an obvious improvement in the writing.

This brings back nightmares of the end boss.

@nictel: You had trouble? I beat it my first try. I might have been slightly overleveled, but leveling goes quick in that game. Spending an extra hour in the tower was really all you needed. Mitsuru was good to me.

@toowalrus: TWICE. SHE HEALED THE END BOSS COMPLETELY TWICE.

@nictel: heh, I didn't even realize that could happen- was it like a mind control thing?

@toowalrus: Yes she gets charmed and casts Diaharan (I think, the one that heals completely).. Which basically means you have to do the entire battle over again.

@nictel: That would potentially happen in P3P though too, eh? I'm not sure the auto-battle has anything to do with this.

Good Lord gamers have become a bunch of divas. When you're at the point of calling Uncharted 3 a mediocre game, that is. Just wow. Let's skyrocket those standards so we'll become a bunch of never-satisfied grinches!

Well in theory but chances are slimmer as when you have complete control you can use all other characters to counteract the charm.

Sorry if this sounds a bit insensitive and unreasonably harsh, but does anyone else think that the Uncharted 3 criticism comes more from a subjective, frustrated reviewer as opposed to an objective review with his/her mind set on evaluating the game as it is? Granted, this is a forum post, and I realize that some subjectivity is going to be present in such a place. However, the review sounds whiny and childish, with the logic that, "I hate the platforming, and everything else sucks too".

I enjoyed the Uncharted series on the PS3, and I really did enjoy the Hollywood-esque script and set-pieces, even with some of the problems the reviewer mentions. Obviously, this is my opinion (and he has his own), but I think he could have made his point much more succinctly with a more balanced and objective review. I'm not sure if the review was supposed to be helpful, or simply an outpouring of criticism, but it was more alienating than inviting.

Your opinion. I hate it.

I get not liking some parts of the structure in Uncharted or how frustrating it can be to have a game over during a set piece, but I honestly can't think of a single game that approaches the cinematic splendor of the Uncharted series. Maybe Mass Effect, from time to time?
I also cannot comprehend why people in general prefer the combat of games like Gears of War over Uncharted. Why people gush over clunky tank controls and ridiculous bullet-sponge aliens is simply beyond me.

I feel exactly the same way, and I chose to play Persona 4 without direct control because of that reason. It adds another layer of personality to the characters.

Uncharted 3 was a terrible game. The story was awful, the enemy encounters were poorly designed, the melee combat was a disaster, and the allied AI was a joke.

That's fine.

It's not my best piece of writing, I'll admit, but I meant to make a blog where I post the thoughts of the game that I'm playing in a fairly informal manner (not necessarily a "review"). After re-reading it, I'm definitely going to try harder next time, but I don't think that my criticisms for Uncharted would go much differently in a better-written piece.

That's the thing, though. The "cinematic splendor" that you speak of didn't do much of anything for me. It was all crazy movie-like set-pieces that I was sort-of participating in, and by that I mean that I was pushing the analog stick in the right direction and tapping X at the correct time. You could say that Mario is the same idea, but those parts didn't feel like much of a game to me. It was just "here's this cool thing to look at" and if you'll remember, I said that looking at this game didn't do much for me. For most of this game, I feel like I could watch a Hollywood action-movie and get the same thing, which is fine for Hollywood action movies but that's not what I'm looking for when I play a game. And the game part of this game didn't satisfy me at all.

lol wut?

The cut scenes couldn't possibly have been that big of a deal. And "The Answer" was so improbably idiotic, that I felt embarrassed that I watched that ending, it really was that awful. After trying out some of FES, I could never play that version over P3P, no way. There's no "question" here, P3P has both storytelling and the gameplay and pulls off both with flying colors.

@believer258: Hm I have to agree with "bgdiner" Your write up of Uncharted 3 felt resentful more than anything. I feel it's far weaker than 2 in every way but it just sounded like you wanted to stick it to everyone who enjoys the series.

Gaming genre's are so deeply divergent from one another I don't expect people to be a fan of everything. If the main gameplay pacing and visual spectacle don't create an experiance you enjoy, that's fine. It's when you dismiss those elements as not relevant and just complain about shooting mechanics that I think you're just not into that kind of game.

Oh man, you totally nailed my problem with Persona 3 as well. I have both FES and Portable and it kinda makes me want them to release a Vita version of Persona 3 or something. I dunno. Playing Persona 3 with normal graphics and great gameplay would be nice. But I guess playing as a female character in Portable is a good trade off?

I did reply to him and say that yes, my writing on this is weaker than it should have been. But what's done is done. I don't resent the game - I didn't have any reason to hate it - I just didn't think it was anything special. I'll definitely try harder to write better next time.

Also, I do really like that sort of set-piece heavy type of game. I can easily count Call of Duty 4 and Dead Space 2 as some of the best games of this generation. But instead of being the reason that I played those games, the set pieces were more like very good icing on a delicious gameplay cake - Uncharted 2 and 3's gameplay were what came across as a little sour to me. Not terrible, just kind of sub-par.

But there are times in P3P that I wasn't exactly certain of what was happening. For instance, during the first full moon, when Junpei runs ahead to the next train car - all you see is text and a static background screen and you hear some noise. You can put together what happened, yes, but the game itself doesn't make such a basic action particularly clear because its story is presented as a visual novel. I didn't get much farther into P3P so I don't know how often that sort of thing happens, but for me the ability to see my characters in things other than the dungeon and battles added some nice character and a bit more style to the game. That's not to say that P3P doesn't have those things in spades - it's an Atlus game, it definitely does - but it's not quite the same.

Both are fine ways to play the game.

No Uncharted 3 just looks great. Not any of that for a console bullshit. Uncharted 3 is simply a good looking game no matter the platform.