Raptr and Mirror’s Edge

So, I had a friend heckle me yesterday about my Raptr updates. Specifically, Raptr was updating my Facebook status with information about the game I was currently playing. It’s what I thought I wanted out of the service.

But, as it turns out, what I actually want is for Raptr to send updates via the Raptr application so that friends can “hide this application” if they don’t want to be spammed with what I’m gaming.

Until Raptr plays nicely with my Facebook status feed I’m going to have to disable the real time updates. Well, sort of. I’m sending real time updates to my Twitter account and will try nightly one-time status summary updates to my Facebook account.

This actually ties directly into Mirror’s Edge because the specific friend who heckled me was wondering what kind of masochist I was to have put so much time into the game.

I was profoundly affected by the question because normally I stop playing games that I don’t consider engaging and fun (unless I’m doing research on a competitor – which I’m not in this case). And I really was not enjoying Mirror’s Edge despite being 75% of the way through the single player campaign.

Several key issues emerge. I feel kind of weird talking about this game so long after its release. And I feel kind of weird making some of the exact same comments that I’m sure others have made.

The main issue is that I never once, not even for a brief minute, actually felt like I was engaging in cool and flowing parkour. Even after hours of playing I felt like:

• Every hop, jump, and roll was activated by an uncomfortable controller input motion.
• Every free run sequence felt like it had to be replayed dozens of times because of blind leaps to my death.
• Every combat encounter (even after ratcheting down the difficulty to “easy”) made me feel incompetent.

The two experiments that I (and I’m sure lots of other folks) would like to do are:

• Compare two sets of controls. The current set (where Triggers and Shoulder Buttons performed key actions) and an alternate set where Face Buttons performed key actions.
• Compare two cameras. The current camera (first person) and an alternate third person camera.

That said, I do not think that the core of the problem is either controls or camera.

I think it is one of progression. The level of mastery required to make the game “fun” to play was unsupported by level design and progression goals. I’m absolutely convinced that this is the kind of game that shows extremely well when experienced players demonstrate cool ways to navigate the world and complete objectives.

Unfortunately for the new player, the game did not have a default path that encouraged the player to progress, grow, and master core skills in order to complete new challenges.

• There were no real opportunities to just “free explore” levels in order to get a sense of the lay of the land and what kinds of ingress and egress routes were available.
• There were “skill challenges” that encouraged players to try to solve a range of basic and advanced problems like a skateboarding game would.
• Combat opportunities were too spaced out at the beginning of the game for players to understand and master it. Yes, you mostly could avoid combat – but combat was required at certain points in the game and the experience was frustrating (even on easy difficulty).

Ideally, default mission flow would have encouraged players to familiarize themselves with the world, learn new tricks and techniques, and advance their martial ability using a progression of: Problem introduction, practice with feedback (and non-penalizing failure conditions), technique mastery, and then task discrimination (learning when to use this versus other techniques).

Less ideally, there would have been additional game modes included that provided players with fun and increasingly challenging ways to practice and master techniques and learn about the environment. The Time Trial mode did not fit this bill.

In the end, I really wanted to like both Mirror’s Edge and Assassin’s Creed precisely because I love the fantasy of performing parkour moves in a video game. Yet neither of these games provided me with the same level of enjoyment of other action-adventure/platform games as Tomb Raider, Drake’s Fortune, or Ratchet & Clank.

The common denominator in my mind seems to be suboptimal controls (I found both Assassin’s Creed and Mirror’s Edge control schemes to be overly complex and unintuitive), frustrating combat (unforgiving one vs. one dueling in AC and ME), and in-game progression schemes that allow me to go off the rails and try to advance before I had mastered the core components.

In some ways, I’m just not good at dealing with crushing failure. I don’t like to try the same thing over and over again and I don’t get the hint that the game is sometimes just trying to tell me “go do something else for a while – you’re not supposed to be here yet”. I’m sure this is why I tend to prefer scripted, story based games in general over sandbox endeavors.

Moar Demos: Wolfenstein

I’ve been playing a bunch of XBM demos lately. Time to update my blog.

First off: Wolfenstein. The difficulty selection screen took me back about 20 years. Yes, it’s true that the first person shooter is a hard core genre. It’s very unlikely that a noob to the genre would have picked this game up without having played many previous shooters (including previous W games). So I won’t make my standard “why the pejorative ‘Can I play, daddy?’ label for Easy mode?” comment.

What I ask, on a much deeper level, is why include Easy mode at all. If it’s clear you despise and disdain noobs and don’t want to have them play your game, then spend the time and money refining default (Normal) difficulty level and making sure that the harder difficulties are correctly calibrated to the kinds of challenge that these folks want.

Side note: I’ve been paying more attention to cinematics controls lately, and Wolfenstein adds a new wrinkle: Pressing A calls up a bottom of screen text hint: “A to Skip; B to Pause/Play”. Very elegant in that I learn that A-A quickly skips me ahead. And you get the bonus feature of pausing it if you actually want to watch the cinematic, but just need to get up and grab a soda.

On to the more important stuff: Initial experience. After the quick reprise of Halflife and Halflife 2 (start in a train car; run past authoritarian guards who are interrogating civilians) it jumps quickly into a learn-as-you-play tutorial.

I managed to fail the tutorial pretty much right away when I was trying to complete the “Use the veil to pass through the wall task”. As soon as I started to walk through the wall I received a “press down on the dpad to exit the veil” prompt. Whoops. I exited the veil while I was in the middle of a wall. Death and restart. Last checkpoint could probably have taken me back to the underground sewer as opposed to the train car at the beginning of the level.

Otherwise, the “basics” tutorial was pretty good. I’m still not sure what “veil pools” are (vs. all the water and water runoff I see all around me in the sewer) but the learn-to-play mode covered basic navigation and exploration in a straightforward and non-intrusive manner. No interruptions to game play for modal billboard text, just navigate through the sewer and learn a few of the basic functions (walk, run, open things, climb ladders, jump, crouch).

I kind of missed the introduction of my next “magic” power because it was in the middle of a mission briefing and being handed a bunch of standard weapons. It looked like I picked up some sort of cool item, but I wasn’t really sure what it was.

Then came combat.

The “Mire” ability seemed pretty cool in terms of visual and game play effects. It’s fun to send bodies flying. It’s nice to have a combined slow time/detective mode ability when I want to take out a squad of enemies single-handedly. The standard MP40 had a satisfying sound and feel to it. The grenades, however, were lacking. Most importantly, there was no visual, sound, or rumble feedback to let you know how long you could “cook” the grenade for prior to throwing it. This is a problem given that your “use grenade” prompt basically tells you to hold the LB to burn through the timer. Needless to say I made a mess of myself.

In terms of combat feedback, there were a couple of things missing. First, there was no “tango down” equivalent when an individual enemy was finished off. I realize that this is much easier to do "within the fiction” with more futuristic games (like in Halflife 2 when you hear the flatlines), but even so it’s something that I find I miss when it’s not there. Other games use tell-tale vocal screams or grunts that accomplish the same thing. That said, there could have been an intentional decision to NOT provide this feedback in order to encourage players to use their weapon sites to visually confirm each kill – and punish players who throw caution to the wind. However, I would have expected that approach more in a survival/horror kind of scenario instead of a squad based tactics scenario.

The second part that was missing was the “end of sequence” feedback. I mostly knew we had killed all the local baddies when my squad mates moved forward and/or my objective changed. I guess I’ve just been playing a number of games that had dynamic music lately -- and other games that provided a dramatic cinematic of the last baddie’s death – which provide a nice sense of closure.

After a few standard combat encounters, the game got… weird. But in a good way. It was kind of like a combo of Bioshock, The Darkness, and Call of Duty all in one. I like a dose of sci-fi in my action adventure, especially if it makes for interesting puzzles, combat, and upgrade paths. I really enjoyed Bioshock and The Darkness for the story components and gritty upgrade paths. I missed out on fun combat for the former game because I set the difficulty level too low (I wanted to blow through the content) and never really found combat in the latter to be fun (even though I liked the powers and upgrades).

The Call of Duty experience (at least the first couple) was much more about the combat sequences. They felt polished and balanced (except in a few cases) and even though I know they were scripted and I was getting lots of cheat-y help to propel me through the levels, the game play was viscerally exciting.

The Wolfenstein demo ended shortly after I received my first sci-fi weapon (and met the upgrade vendor). Even though I was interested in continuing, I was left to wonder whether the game would be able to deliver the elements I like in a sci-fi action adventure game in satisfying ways? Specifically, will the sci-fi abilities and weapons be viscerally satisfying, make for tactically interesting exploration and combat, and be fun to upgrade? The demo didn’t really answer this question for me – and required me to make a leap of faith that I’m not sure I’m ready to make.

First person shooters are a tough sell for someone like me. I evaluate them against my favorite action adventure games and they tend to come up lacking unless they bring something new game play-wise, have a world that is super fun to explore and interact with, and/or have character-driven story that is well crafted and engaging.

Prey is a great example of an FPS that I knew nothing about before the demo and that blew me away when I saw the cool possibilities that “portal” based game play brought to the table. I don’t get that same sense in the Wolfenstein demo.

I also have a strong suspicion that story won’t carry this game – the bar has been set too high by its competitors (The Darkness, Bioshock to name a few) and, let’s face it, the Wolfenstein franchise is not known for its great character-driven story experiences.

With a ton of other content (casual, social, and console games) and Uncharted 2 around the corner, I think that Wolfenstein gets added to the Gamefly Q.

Adding to the game queue…

I’ve been buried in bizdev work (talking to prospective clients) and actual work (reviewing a game-in-progress for a current client) so I haven’t had much time to play many other games in the past few days.

I have been spending some time with Defense Grid and continue to enjoy it. For a spreadsheet game it’s pretty fun and I’m starting to get more and more into the “mathiness” of it all. My hope is that it teaches me to appreciate expert level play in RTS games more. I’ve always wanted to play them competitively, but I have just never had the patience to do the kinds of precise, systematic calculations that expert level play requires.

Anyhow, here are some more games to add to my queue:

• http://platogo.com/home. This is a game content creation and sharing site. Looks kind of cool.
• The Ludum Dare competition winners.
• Time Fcuk.
• ASCIIpOrtal.
• And some of the educational games content found in futurelab.

This is, of course, on top of the games I listed in a previous post. And I also want to talk about my experience with Raptr – a social networking application that has some serious potential.

And on top of that, I’ve pre-ordered the next Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted.

Hello holiday season!

Tomb Raider: Underworld Demo... Bump it up my Gamefly Q

Creating a great demo is hard. It needs to be accessible to all gamers yet it can't be so dumbed down that it bores the core market who have played lots of similar games and maybe even previous versions.

Tomb Raider: Underworld was underwhelming in some ways as a demo in terms of game play. But it was really impressive in terms of visual polish and the "feel" of exploration. The game is flat-out beautiful. The music, the attention to detail when it comes to animating Lara Croft's climbing techniques, and the beautiful and lush world make me want to just climb and explore for hours on end.

The combat, however, was a little shaky for an initial experience. The combat system is really designed for slower targets that use cover, not large and fast (and deadly) lions. If I could have changed that one aspect and the unsatisfying ending then I think the demo would have been outstanding. Some of the specific changes I'd have made:

• Combat vs. enemy humans. This would have been easier to balance and much more accessible. The game isn't really about free form running and gunning (well, at least the previous version wasn't) which is what the demo combat encounters were like.
• A more satisfying ending. It was clear that after I solved the puzzle I triggered a Quick Time Event (QTE). Unfortunately the way the demo ended and cut to the upsell screen left me feeling that I had failed the QTE and died before realizing that I wasn't even going to get a chance to check out one of the core features of the game. The absence of QTE events in the demo seems weird.
• More forgiving failure conditions during early platforming/exploration. The initial climb was long and reasonably complex for a early-middle game experience. Unfortunately this meant that as a first experience there was much falling and starting over. This got a little bit frustrating as the punitiveness of the fall tends to make the player less willing to experiment and try new things.

Other things I feel like commenting on...

Using a radial interface for the main game shell menu:

• I'm not sure this is a great idea. The icons aren't nearly as useful as text labels. Removing text labels has simply meant that more menu selections can be put on the screen at once -- which means more bouncing around because you need to toggle through all of them to find the one you want. Moreover, there isn't any room for context-sensitive help text, so it's hard to figure out what the different toggle options are.

The "learn-as-you-play" experience:

• I'd like to see the actual intro level to this game. The current "tutorial mode" was a standard series of text billboards that were sometimes contextually relevant (like the first time you stomp a spider) and sometimes way, way, way out of context (like the weapon aiming and firing instructions that were provided whilst I was climbing a huge pillar).
• The climbing puzzles were a bit too advanced for an initial experience and I'm assuming that they were extra frustrating for first time players. A number of off-camera "leap of faith" maneuvers were required and failure was punished by a significant (but not unreasonable) amount of backtracking.
• Combat was frustrating and did not feel cool. As I mentioned above, the ranged weapon system is much more suited for human-to-human combat where both sides are exploiting cover and other environmental devices. Being surrounded by multiple strong, fast enemies with little obvious way to get to cover and regroup made for several annoying player deaths.
• That said, the game does a really neat job of providing cool environmental visual and sound cues to help guide the player. I discuss this in a bit more detail in the next section.

The "where to go/what do I do next" systems:

• Both the Tomb Raider and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune series try to push realism and pull back user interface clutter in order to bring about an immersive experience in a beautiful world. Lighting, environmental design, character animation, music, and sound contribute to creating worlds that are fun to explore. 
• Both series also appreciate the difficulty facing the player when they are thrown into a 3-d game world from a 3rd person perspective camera. Not only is the moment-to-moment navigation often a challenge (how do I notice targets that are off-screen?) but it's also difficult to convey an overall map-level understanding of the level (where did I start? where have I been? where do I need to go?).
• The moment-to-moment navigation requires attention to subtle environmental details (like does Lara lean or not when you pull in a certain direction; are birds perching in a conspicuous place) and patience (letting the camera float to a "best" position if you're stuck and unsure of where to go next). You also get a reinforcing musical "ching" when you've hit the next way point, which assures you that you're making progress and not just backtracking. Of course, it would be nice to have a visual onscreen flash/text, too... But I understand why the game designers decided not to do this.
• In terms of map-level understanding, there are a few systems in place that reflect great intentions but that fall short in execution. First, there is the 3-d Sonar map. This is a very intimidating 3-d visualization of the game world. It's possible that the player could be gradually introduced to this tool over time, but it certainly seems overwhelming and not very useful. Second is the built in hint system. The basic idea is very clever: Have a spoiler-free method of obtaining hints on your PDA. You need to press A ("hear what to focus on" -- HINT) or Y (hear what to do -- TASK). On the surface this is cool and made me think of the great hint system in Bioshock (level 1 was an in-fiction reminder of your objective; level 2 was the practical "what do you need to do next" explanation). In practice, both hints were so vague as to be unhelpful when I truly was stuck.

I bumped it up on my Gamefly Q, but won't be purchasing it (even though I did purchase the previous version).

Oh yeah, I've been gaming... Wordscraper, Boom Bloxx, and GTA IV

I haven't posted in a while. I'm going to start getting back to it now that I've taken a brief break from work and a nice flurry of gaming over the past few days.

First, Wordscraper. I've been getting fewer Scramble, Wordscraper, and Word Twist
requests from friends so I decided to dig in to the "Blitz" version of the game. It's an online competitive solitaire version of Scrabble with some interesting twists. The initial board lay out is random which creates for an RTS-like experience where you scout the map and plot your strategy. The random set up of the game makes it so that you have to adjust your strategy each time. Do I create intricate cross hatches of words to take advantage of a nest of letter multiplier tiles? Do I rush out to the corners as quickly as possible to take advantage of a cluster of word multiplier tiles? Do I need to play a straight up game because there are very few bonus tiles at all? Very fun and very competitive. The rounds are 4 minutes meaning that an hour can disappear quickly.

My biggest pet peeves are:

• The board is puny. This makes it hard to place tiles accurately.
• There are too few keyboard shortcuts. I believe I talked about this elsewhere. Hopefully we'll get some more (especially a hot-key for tile swap).
• There is a serious bug (or flawed feature) in that the game seems to want to "intelligently" decide whether my first click on the board yields a down or across arrow. This is extremely frustrating especially near the end of the game when you want to jam in one last word and the game guesses wrong.

I haven't had a lot of time with GTA IV, but strangely enough I'm rather hooked. I really didn't care for any of the previous versions as I found driving to be frustrating and combat to be painfully awkward and unsatisfying. In addition to my frustration with previous GTA games, after playing a bunch of Crackdown (where I thought combat was over the top, driving was much better, and my character could do insanely interesting things) I figured there was no way I could go back to the more "realistic" GTA world.

I was wrong. I got sucked into the story line and visuals from moment one. This is happening more and more often these days -- I'm willing to forgive less exciting core combat for great story telling. The world is truly beautiful to drive around in (I play on my 100+" projection screen) and the cinematics are mostly worth watching. The writing, voice acting, and cinematic direction keeps me engaged in ways that Uncharted: Drake's Fortune did.

Moreover, the game has become much more accessible to the more linear minded gamer like myself. The addition of the GPS and an engaging main plot line has left me wanting more. As I get a bit better at combat, driving, and world navigation I'm starting to get antsy to just "screw around" in the world... Something that I loved to do in Crackdown (because my character was a super hero who was basically invincible) but never quite got in the previous GTA games.

Interestingly enough, my fiancee has been watching me play a bunch. We both laugh along to the story (not due to cheesiness, but due to actually humorous dialog and situations) and she loves just watching me drive around and act like a maniac.

Also, as with Crackdown, Liza likes to give me hints. This has happened with other puzzle type games (like Portal). Games that she has no desire to play (most likely due to fear of "sucking" because she doesn't consider herself a hard core gamer) but that would probably have fun playing if somehow the controls were made more accessible. Something to think about.

Finally (well, there are some demos to review, but I'll do that in a later post) I picked up Boom Bloxx. I played a bit of it with a friend and knew that I would want to play more. It's a great puzzle game that makes decent use of the Wii-mote. My main gripe is that the pushing/pulling of blocks is hard to execute with any precision. Maybe it's because of the way I'm sitting, but I seem to have to push or pull exceptionally far (and with an exceptionally steady hand) in order to push a block directly away from me or pull it directly towards me.

There's lots of fun content and puzzles. What I'm left to wonder is: Is this game actually worth the full retail price given the huge number of great free puzzle games online? I haven't explored much of the Wii Ware feature (and probably won't until there are free trial versions) but there's a ton of potential here.

Bourne Conspiracy: Demo

Since I've returned to working on games I haven't had as much time to write about (and play) games recreationally. This will hopefully change soon as things die down -- though having work is a good thing.

I burned through The Bourne Conspiracy and was left wanting more, in a good way. I'm definitely going to bump it up my Gamefly Q. It had the frantic/frenetic feel of the Bourne movies (and books, of which I'm also a fan). What I'm not sure about is whether the story and cinematic feel will be enough to make up for the somewhat repetitive combat. Yes, finishing "take down" moves do spice things up, but it's really just a button mashing brawler at its core so far.

It's clearly in the same vein as Tomb Raider (but without platforming elements) and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (but with more Quick Time events), but it handles hand-to-hand combat in a much more accessible manner. That is to say that I could actually use my fists effectively in Bourne (I never could in the other titles).

The IP alone is enough to interest me and make me look past the mediocre combat and forgive the somewhat unforgiving Quick Time events. The question is whether the production value, pacing, and challenge curve will keep me going.

They're here.... And now they're gone!

Well, the undead have finally arrived in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I'm kind of sad about how the 6-axis functionality was incorporated into the game play (shake the controller when one of them jumps on your back) but it's not awful. Unlike the melee combos (which I could never master and thus never do hand-to-hand combat) I needed to figure out this maneuver in order to complete the initial encounter.

Oh -- and they answered the "how am I going to find guns in a dungeon with populated by the undead from the time of Sir Francis Drake". Nazis discovered the dungeon during WWII and left some sweet weapons and ammo behind. Say hello to my little friend... The MP40.

Then back to humans and... we're done.

Great game. Definitely Hudson Hawk with strong elements of Indiana Jones. It also made me think of how much cooler Crimson Skies could have been and makes me sad that there won't be a Crimson Skies II. I still remember cringing at one of the original visions for that game where you "play the movie" -- and now I'm with the impression that I did just play a movie and it was a great gaming experience.

I'd really have to put this game in the category of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and Eternal Darkness. The game mechanics in both of those games were fun. Not great, but fun. Yet both of those games really made me feel like I was in the middle of the movie and able to guide the lead with my thoughts and button presses.

Could the combat have been better? Yep. The puzzling? Definitely. But I developed an attachment to the main characters of the game that was as deep as in any movie. The ending was truly satisfying (in terms of the story resolution moreso than the final battle) and left me looking forward to the sequel.

Uncharted: Upon further review

I'm quite enjoying Uncharted. I'm a little sad that I mostly fight humans and that I never feel very smart for solving puzzles because inevitably I bump into more humans guarding the areas I figured only I would be clever enough to find. Then again, I'm not sure how the fiction would work if I found myself in ancient crypts surrounded by undead with ready caches of bullets and guns.

It seems that the folks at Naughty Dog are doing their best to keep things varied under these constraints. I recently discovered the sniper rifle and my human enemies are becoming much tougher and have cool laser sights and such.

Really, the combat and puzzle solving isn't any better than, say, Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. But the story telling techniques used in the game are quite well done. I actually care about the characters. And, even though the plot seems to be a somewhat recycled version of Hudson Hawk (which I say in a good way -- I am one of the 5 people who loved that movie), the production values put into the game shine through in a way that I haven't experienced to date.

It's really worth going on the "Technical Dives" that are offered as unlockable extras where the developers go into how the cinematics were created. A couple of things worthy of notice:

• Cut scenes are filmed in one take with minimal props and standard mocap equipment. It's kind of like watching a play.
  
• Final rendered sequences then digitally edit the scene together with standard 2-shot and other film conventions to make it feel like it was actually shot like a movie (with multiple takes from different angles). It was a total "eureka" moment for me: Because the actor data were captured via mo-cap, the scene could be rendered in 3-d and cameras could be placed anywhere after the fact in post production. Very cool. This means that the cost of filming all the live actor data had to be minimal -- no moving of equipment... Just shoot it all in one take if possible.

I have a feeling I'm getting close to the end. The game seems to be foreshadowing some unholy enemy goodness, so I imagine it's going to start getting even more intense.

The pause that refreshes...

Whoops. I was about 15 minutes into Uncharted: Drake's Fortune when my PS3 controller ran out of juice. I guess it has been sitting there losing its charge since my last ramblings through Ratchet & Clank: Future Tools of Destruction.

Sadly the USB charger cord is way too short to actually play while wired (I'd have to sit a couple of feet away from a projected image > 100" diagonal). Between the crappy cheap cord and the crappy cheap controller, I'm left to wonder: Who made the bigger blunder: Xbox with "the Duke" or PS3 with the "cheap knockoff controller & cord"?

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune... Initial Experience

So far I am liking, but not loving Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I guess I've always been more of a Ratchet & Clank guy than an Jak & Daxter guy -- the Insomniac games folks just have me better figured out than the Naughty Dog folks do.

The game feels a lot like a mashup between King Kong and Tomb Raider with elements of Prince of Persia. There's a strong narrative, and the game switches me between traveling with a buddy, getting separated from a buddy, and then meeting up with the buddy again. I really do love the "hints via your buddy" system that these games employ (e.g., they stop and look at things; they talk to you; they trigger events that move the plot forward). As an aside, I really must give props to King Kong where the character played by Jack Black carried a movie camera around and actually pointed the camera at the things you were supposed to look at. Both meta and clever at the same time.

I generally prefer female leads in third person adventure games for the extremely shallow reason that if I'm going to be staring at someone's butt for 15-25 hours, it may as well be an attractive female butt. That said, the character I play is entertaining (in terms of dialog) and really reminded me of Mal from Firefly in the opening game sequence.

Now that I'm a few hours in, I have a few points to make re: Initial Experience:

• The difficulty setting was kind of catchy: All options were displayed (not hidden behind a spinner), with the default being "normal". There was also "easy" and "hard" and a locked "crushing" difficulty setting. Cheeky -- yet not at all confusing.
  
• The game seemed to take a while to load and I worried that this would be a problem. As it turns out, loads are really pretty fast in this game which is great because there is a reasonable amount of dying during some portions of the game (more on this later).
• While the writing, mocap, VO, and acting were quite good, there was a little bit too much of it in the first 15-20 minutes. Normally this is when I would want to start familiarizing myself with basic game play mechanics, but instead my learning and practice kept being interrupted by more cut-scenes.
• The first major "dang" was that I was immediately dropped into a firefight without having an inverted aim and look. Whoops. This was (as per usual) very disorienting and not the kind of thing you want to learn while not under heavy fire. I await the day when the industry standard will be that all games that allow you to aim/look using the right thumb stick will include include in-game calibration (like in the original Halo). Interestingly, Uncharted supported independent horizontal and vertical inverting (as opposed to other games I have railed against for either not offering horizontal inversion; or worse tying horizontal to vertical inversion). However, they also differentiate between "aiming" and "camera". While this is very cool (in some games I actually do want normal camera and inverted aiming) I messed up at first because I only adjusted the aiming and not the camera. I initially thought I had exited the options screen without saving my preference (because the camera was still "normal") and only after some fiddling did I realize that I needed to set both to inverted (actually called "flipped" in this game).
• I died during the first battle (5 minutes into the game). At first I was a little aggravated, but the game is very good about save points for the most part and quick loads are lightning fast. Learning by dying is actually OK in this game for the most part -- but, personally, I'd still rather not have the player die in the first hour or so.
• The initial puzzles seemed overly artificial. In some ways I'm sure they were done this way in order to teach the basic world interaction and puzzle solving mechanics.
  

Other usability/playability notes:

• The game really has a nice state of the art hinting system. At the L1 level my partner shouts out useful commands, investigates points of interest, and triggers sequences that progress the action forwards. On the L2 level, there are occasional on screen button icons suggesting that I interact with the world (triangle button) or with the diary that I found (select button). On the L3 level, whenever there is a pause in the action and the game is waiting for me to go somewhere in specific, the game will periodically flash the L2 button which directs my attention to the next location I need to reach.
  
• Also, the autosave system is excellent. Not only do checkpoints seem logical and forgiving, but the load times are so quick that dying frequently (which happens at the occasional choke point) isn't as frustrating as it can be in other games. I'm not opposed to learning by dying. I am opposed to being penalized for dying.
• Weapon combat is reasonably fun. It's very much in the Gears of War mode (run for cover; shoot from cover). There was also a bunch of attention paid to cool animations -- it's hilarious to watch my female companion blindly reach around a pillar and fire her gun blindly at the enemy.
  
• Some other cool things about combat:
• They added an interesting twist on aiming. By clicking the left thumb stick you can switch which shoulder you aim over. This makes it easier to see around things and seems especially helpful when targets tend to be grouped on one side of the screen because you can focus more of your attention on the more threatening side.
  
• The AI and combat/level design make it so that while you can turtle a bit, it's not an effective strategy. There are enough variants of "baddie" such that they present a challenge when they attack as a mixed force. Some are much more gung ho and charge while others sit back and plink away. And, of course, if you turtle too much you'll get grenaded.
  
• Two slight improvements to combat I would love to have:
  
• Better audio feedback when I kill someone off screen or that is hard to see (Half life 2 did an awesome job of this).
• Better music/visual cues when the combat sequence is over and it's safe to explore again.
• There are a couple of downers, though:
• I'm having a tough time with the hand to hand combat. The combos should be simple, but I can't seem to execute them correctly even though it should just be a matter of tapping square-triangle-square. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I tend to get slaughtered when I'm in close quarters.
  
• Death by ladder. I managed to die a couple of times while trying to climb down a ladder. This isn't unique to this game, but I figured I'd mention it.
  
• The Load Game interface isn't up to snuff. Load game slots contain no useful metadata at a glance. You need to hover over each slot and wait for the data to load -- there's no way to look at all of the saves at a glance and decide which one you want to select.
  
• Stupid 6-axis controller. I'd rather have a controller that felt beefy and had rumble functionality then a gyroscopically controlled "leaning" mini game when I walk across logs.

Game polish notes:

• I know I've said that the health bar is dead in another column. Uncharted recognizes this and does a great job of desaturating the world and playing up audible cues like grunts and gasping for air when I get hit.
  
• The U-boat exploration mission was cool. In order to simulate the narrow and claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine they used a very Resident Evil-like camera and control scheme (e.g., camera close, but stationary; controls are screen relative). This was augmented further by adding custom animations to my character whereby as he maneuvered through narrow walkways and port holes, he would grab or push or touch things in a very human way. It was a neat way of making a fairly linear journey seem pretty immersive and cool.
  

More housekeeping...

In preparation for a weekend of rotting and gaming, I have decided to do a little housekeeping in the right column. Mostly I just shifted around a few entries to make sure they were in the right bucket and removed a couple of duplicates.

Next up: Deciding what the menu of gaming will look like for the weekend.

• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: I know nothing about it other than it has been highly reviewed and will give me a reason to dust off the PS3. It should arrive today from Gamefly.com.
• Arkadian Warriors: Hopefully I can convince a friend or two to try some co-op.
• Call of Duty 4: It is going to be insanely fun. I'm just holding off for now for a lull in the action. I also need to review its initial experience again because it has a behavior-based system of helping the user decided on the best difficulty level.
• Darkness, Puzzlequest, and miscellaneous XBLA and trial versions sitting on my 360 hard drive.
• And, possibly, some board gaming if I have a desire to be social.