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Can Uncharted 3 exceed the new Tomb Raider?

By Overwatch December 9, 2010 71 Comments

I don’t think so. And I think that Tomb Raider: Underworld is a better video game than Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Right. I said that. And now, before you kill me, let me explain myself.

A little bit of background

Tomb Raider

But for starters, a small disclaimer of what I played - I enjoyed the very first Tomb Raider immensely. Second one was great too and third one was acceptable. Then the whole Tomb Raider franchise went down to hell and Tomb Raider was over for me. Even positive reviews of Tomb Raider: Legend didn’t convince me to play it. I picked up Tomb Raider: Anniversary (mostly because memories and nostalgia) and I thought it was very good. And then came Tomb Raider: Underworld, one of the best Tomb Raider games in the whole series.

I wonder if that in-game self advertising on that bow will make it to the final game.

Uncharted

Now for Uncharted, I honestly don’t think that Drake’s Fortune was particularly great. Sure it wasn’t bad, but in my opinion it was just mediocre action adventure with a handful of wow moments and nice presentation. And mainly because of boring design and bad shooting, I didn’t finish it. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was a different story. Developers at Naughty Dog really learned their lesson with Drake’s Fortune and fine tuned a lot of things for Among Thieves, which was a drastically better game, than the first one. I finished Among Thieves and I was really confused by those perfect scores in reviews. No way that game deserved that.

What's wrong with Uncharted?

Let me focus on the second game for a while, because I think that Drake’s Deception will be very similar. What’s wrong about the second one? A lot of things. But mainly diversity in game design. There were moments when I really didn’t understand designer’s decisions. For every single great, awesome and jaw-dropping moment Among Thieves had, there were at least two horrible and not so greatly designed sections. Everything in between was just a little bit above standard triple A video game stuff - sometimes nice, sometimes boring, but always looking good.

Wow!

Super fingers!

Let me give you few examples. When some friends came over and wanted to see what PlayStation 3 could do, I would boot up Locomotion every single time. And my friend’s jaws were down every single time. Or I would show them some sections in the early jungle levels (“Dude, those wet clothes look cool!”), or something in snow (“Dude, look at those foot steppes!”). Or that awesome hotel view with pool on the roof and collapsing building (“Dude, that’s sick!”). Or... Oh, wait! That’s about it. Those things I remember. The rest of the game? Forgettable.

Not so wow...

According to this design document, no Yeti should attack us for the next 30 seconds.

Well, I didn’t forget the rest of the game, but these aren’t the nicest video game memories I have. For example, why there had to be those Yeti-like monsters? Why, Naughty Dog, why? Oh I know - you had to extend the game time somehow and the schedule was tight, so just throw there some imbalanced things like that. Sure, why not. Oh God, what would I give for more realistic enemies? Give me bears or some tough Himalayan tribe any day.

Almost every shooting passage dragged Among Thieves in my eyes down. And closer I was getting to the end, the worse it got. I absolutely loved characters (Chloe and Sully were great, the rest didn't impress me), cut scenes, climbing and stuff like that. But more and more shooting towards the end didn’t make things better, despite much better shooting and cover mechanics compared with Drake’s Fortune.

Pen > Sword

So, how should Naughty Dog improve that in the future? In short: make it much shorter and more like Tomb Raider. I think that (well, at least some) Tomb Raider games knew their strength very well. And no, I’m not talking about Lara’s chest. I’m talking about less shooting, more tomb raiding. And I belive that is exactly what we need to see in future Uncharted titles. And of course more story with more cut scenes, because acting in Uncharted is really great.

I love all Uncharted’s characters and I would love to see them interacting more with each other. I don’t want to crouch with Drake behind some badly arranged wall/fridge/car, shooting waves of enemies. And I’m afraid we are getting there, according to this quote from Naughty Dog’s co-president Evan Wells for Entertainment Weekly:

Who doesn't hate campers?

“We want to take on the big boys of the multi-player genre. It has become something here at Naughty Dog that will become an important part to all our games.”

And guess what - you have to have awesome shooting mechanics in multiplayer, if you want to approach the big boys (Call of Duty, Halo and others). And if you have those great mechanics in multiplayer, it would be foolish not to use them in singleplayer. More shooting in Uncharted equals less fun. At least for me. I don’t want Uncharted to became another shooter franchise. We have got plenty of shooters out there.

Are we there yet?

Ok, we got rid of shooting. See? That wasn’t too bad. It’s been done (again, some Tomb Raider games had very little shooting). Now, we need to do something more radical. Something, that has never been done before. At least not in the blockbuster triple A game sector. Let’s cut game’s length by a half. Surely you don’t want to play eight or ten hour game, do you? I bet you don’t. Now I don’t want to play the smart one here so I’ll give you another quote, by someone much smarter than me - Randy Smith from his Edge column:

"Why is the 12-hour-or-longer game the industry standard? Because consumers demand it. They would rather have a company expend their effort unnaturally stretching a three-hour concept over a dozen hours than have them really focus on making those first three pre-exhaustion hours, the ones you are actually going to play, as perfect as they can be. Isn't that weird?”

There’s not much I could add to this. I would love to play three or four hour games. Think how much time you lost in all those Bethesda’s games or in MMOs doing nothing or traveling. A ton. And now, how much time did you lose doing nothing or traveling in Portal? None. But that’s for another discussion. I think that Uncharted is absolutely perfect game for this three hour games idea. And if you would cut out all those boring, annoying and mediocre passages in Among Thieves and keep those awesome ones, I think it would be truly phenomenal video game.

Let's raid some tombs!

So yeah, like I said in the beginning, I think Tomb Raider Underworld is a better video game than Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I am perfectly aware that Uncharted 2 has absolutely exceptional animation, graphics, set pieces, acting, voice acting and better production values. I wouldn’t show any past Tomb Raider to my friends or my family. They wouldn’t be impressed. Uncharted 2 beats Underworld in almost every aspect. But for me, personally, Underworld was a better video game. Uncharted 2 was years ahead in presentation, staged action and in overall cinematic experience. But it wasn’t a better video game.

I’m absolutely looking forward to Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and I truly belive it will be awesome and jaw dropping. But I’m afraid that it will be too much shooter heavy than I would like it to be. That’s probably fine for most players and that’s perfectly ok. But my excitement for the new Tomb Raider is much, much bigger than it is for Uncharted 3.

Come get some!

I realize that we know next to nothing about either game, but just from that basic premise of both games, I know my pick. If I’d have to choose which one would I want to play first, I’d pick the new Tomb Raider. And after finishing that, I would jump to Uncharted 3 right away. God, I'm looking forward to that choice.

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