#I RESTARTED IT AND IT HAD AUTOSAVED RIGHT BEFORE THAT SO LIKE

[crestfallencrest]

LITERALLY HAD MY HEAD IN MY HANDS FOR A MINUTE LMAO

[phoenixcatch7]

Nearly at the end of bayonetta and honestly whoever green lit that missile/Jeanne final fight chapter -

[beaubambabey]

I just finished act 2 (spoilers below the cut)

But I had to play through the assault on Moonrise Towers twice because the first time my game crashed and I lost a save. I could've just done it from right before the Ketheric fight since there's an autosave but I didn't have Gale in my party the first time so I swapped him in this time. And it was very rewarding.

Story wise, the ideal party for the act 2 finale is definitely Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll for all their persona story beats but balancing them all out with a College of Swords Bard like my Robbie might not have been the best thing for me. Especially since I've barely used Wyll thus far and haven't played around with changing his class/stats at all yet.

Also I thought there might be something special if you had Halsin in your party fighting Ketheric, like a "I put you in the ground a century ago and I'll do it again by my own hands" kind of thing. But there wasn't. Maybe there's one with Jaheira if you have a free spot for her? But that's for another playthrough.

Part of why I didn't bring Gale along the first time was due to him being out of spell slots by the time I got to Moonrise. I'd taken him along to find the Nightsong and well. I'd had to restart that fight a couple times already because of several different glitches. Didn't know that there was a restoration thing in the mind flayer nursery! Which is why I want ahead and swapped Lae'zel out for him.

Also, UMMMMM how is it that I, The Player, pieced together that Isobel is Ketheric's daughter from a few pieces of flavor text in the Thorm family mausoleum, but when I tried confronting her there's no way you can ask??? Not even like. See her dodging the question? And then if you rummage around in private quarters in Moonrise, you can find letters from her and her mother all addressed to Ketheric.

I just think that having a build up that feels rewarding or like the game acknowledges you for piecing it together. Also it's pretty damn obvious. How much of this was caused by dramatic irony? Even with the knowledge that Ketheric didn't fully approve of Isobel and Dame Aylin's relationship because he was very protective of his daughter there's still plenty of details we haven't learned about all this. Yet.

But man does it feel kind of awful having broken up with Shadowheart right before finding the Nightsong

I know it's because I wanted everyone carnally and these are the consequences of making Robbie flirt with Everyone In Camp while absolutely still putting Astarion as my number one romantic target but a whore can still have feelings!

Anyway, I typed most of this at 4 AM after my game crashed RIGHT AT WYRM'S CROSSING

With Baldur's Gate in sight

Right after I had a chat with Astarion about how he's gonna go about fucking up Cazador

God I love him sm

[zaptap]

a year or two ago i reblogged a post that said it doesnt actually matter much whether you turn off your computer every night or leave it on, and it made me consider leaving it on instead of turning it off every night like id been doing my whole life

well. maybe it's fine for the computer. but i feel like it doesnt really work for me. i end up having way too many things open. one billion firefox tabs and a bunch of other programs. on my laptop it ate up all my ram and made things run slow so i at least had to close things to speed it back up but my new computer can handle a lot more.

i have like 30 tumblr tabs open because ive kept opening new dashboard tabs every day (thinking once im out of new posts i can go back to looking at yesterdays posts. but i dont) and i have a bunch of half written posts that probably wouldve gone into my drafts (technically i guess theyre there since tumblr autosaves them now)

like idk i feel like i had it right before. finish things up for the day and close everything and shut it all down. and my computer gets to rest when i do. i need to get back to doing that

also whats the point in having dual boot windows+linux if i get so bogged down with days and days of shit open that ive just been using one of them (windows in this case). if i restart it every day i can be like "hmm i feel like using linux today" and try it out more than i have. and just reboot if i need to get into photoshop or musicbee or whatever

[pandora15]

okay so I 100% finished skyward sword HD yesterday (and man, did I love playing that game.  I did enjoy playing the original, but this was even better.  Like I spent most of the time gushing about how they made the water and the rain look so much better omg, I can go on and on about it)

Also I ran into a funny glitch towards the end where at the final ghirahim fight, homeboy just disappeared in the middle and I was just trapped there.  I had to restart the software, but luckily my autosave put me right back at the beginning of that boss fight, instead of having to go back to my last statue save (which was uh. a while before that.)

But that’s not the point of this post.

I finished the game yesterday and instantly was like “Okay, I do want to do Hero Mode, but let’s wait a bit before starting.  Like a few weeks, at least.”

...And guess what I just started about an hour ago?

Also yes, I want to 100% Hero Mode too just to flex but also because I love this game so damn much.

Anyways, highly recommend Skyward Sword HD if you have a Switch!  It’s the first Zelda game chronologically, so if you’re interested in getting into the series, it’s a great place to start.  You don’t have to know anything about Zelda at all to play!  Plus, the story, the music, visuals, the gameplay is all amazing.

[isthemedia]

ACS Week: Day 4 AU

I wanted to at least TRY and get something done for ACS week. So....here’s a little something that hasn’t been seen in a while. NoTeams!AU with Gamer!Cyrus-which seems to have become more of a thing since I’ve left-and FilmMaker!Gio. 

(AO3 Link)

Pairings: Absolutecontrolshipping, hinted Researchethicshipping, hinted Darkdreamparadiseshipping

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was an intense game Cyrus was playing. A horror survival that has repercussions if you lose anyone in the party. The game itself would autosave after you make your choice, making it almost impossible to retry after the choice was made. Nerve Wracking but enjoyable in a way. 

The game itself had a well thought out story and the characters were well handled. Gio was impressed. Sure there were times where he would get invested in Cyrus’ playing, but that was more watching the younger man play. 

This...this was him actively enjoying the game. Hell, Cyrus was even asking him for second opinions too. It was, really nice actually. 

The chat was also enjoying it from the comments they left behind. 

SGTMareepFluff:Yooooo boyfriend-o heping GL! Is so cool yo!

MegloChance: Never see GL so into a game before.

Fire/LightningLeaders4EV: He’s totally making sure everyone frickin lives

MODYaaaBoii: Don’t fuck up. 

“Shut up Boii,” Cyrus huffed as his eye darted over to the chat for a brief moment. Even since that time he and Augustine streamed together, and meeting the other through one of the matches they played, there was a spark. 

A spark that grew to include YaaBoii and his other friends to join in. Cyrus wasn’t sure how to feel about SisSkullFlower just yet. She was intense and rather competitive. She was also really insanely good at almost anything. 

Then there was the other one...FabEliteCheif. Dude had an ego. 

And that was all Cyrus could take away from him. 

Alright that was a lie. He was arrogant too. Annoying...full of himself…

They hit it off right away. 

“You hear that?” Gio’s voice broke in. 

“Hm?” Cyrus stopped his character and listened. “That sounds like Maggie…”

“Should we follow that or just go to the meeting point?” 

Cyrus chewed at his lip. A choice to make, meaning that it’s either going to have a good outcome, or a bad outcome. He already restarted the game twice because of the decision he and Gio made, had several of the characters get killed within the first fifteen minutes of play. 

He was now well into almost five hours into the game. That means if he made a wrong choice he would need to restart all over again. 

And he was tempted too. He liked this character, Abby. She reminded him a lot of Cynthia. Confident, certain...she had this leadership quality to her. However, even with all those traits she still had flaws. The stress and surreal nature of the threat made her come off as cold and harsh. 

Cyrus and Gio jumped as an alert suddenly sounded. 

FabEliteChief raiding with a party of 35

“You’re a dick Fab,” Cyrus huffed. “Thanks for the raid.” 

FabEliteCheif: I COULD have taken my raid elsewhere you know. 

Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah you say that all the time. Good stream?” 

FabEliteCheif: Good enough, Col wanted to get attention though so I got distracted. 

“I would never know how that feels,” Cyrus smirked as he glanced at Gio.

Gio chuckled and leaned over to kiss his cheek quickly. 

MODYaaBoii: COC yo!

“You kiss your girlfriend AND boyfriend all the time on stream so don't start,” Gio pointed out.

“You also do that lap challenge, where you have one of them sit in your lap as you play,” Cyrus added. 

FabEliteCheif: Wait, are you playing Survive the Dawn?

“Yes, and I’m trying to figure out which way to go,” Cyrus huffed. “You played it before right?” 

MegloChance: THat’s cheating GL!!

FabEliteChief: I have, all I can say is; Good frickin’ luck. I’m gonna go give Col attention now. 

“Yeah later,” Cyrus sighed and looked to Gio. “What do you think?” 

Gio pondered for a moment. If he recalled the character Maggie was the one most against trying to stay together. Concerned for her own survival than the rest. However, she and the character Abby were close friends. If she died, there was a chance Cyrus could lose options later in the game. “I think we should follow the voice.”

Cyrus nodded. He made the choice and Abbey made it down the narrow passage. Once he got to a certain point, his heart sank as he no longer was controlling the character. Realizing the mistake he made, he set the controller down and leaned back in the chair, arms crossing over his eyes and awaited Abby’s fate. 

There was a shriek, and a scream...followed by the sounds of bones cracking and something hitting the ground...before the scrapping sound of the body being dragged against the cavern floor, and off camera. 

Gio covers his face. Welp, he fucked up. 

CanalclaveDawn: OH NO!

SGTMareepFluff: RIP Abby. 

MegloChance: GL? You alright?

MODYaaBoii: What did I say about fuckin up?

Cyrus sighed as he pulled off his headset and got up from his chair. Gio blinked as he watched the other. Cyrus was out of the webcam’s sight, but the microphone picked up the frustrated shout clearly. 

Gio covered his mouth as he tried not to laugh. THIS was something he wasn’t expecting. He watched as Cyrus trudged back over and leaned over the back of his own chair, holding his head in his hands. “...the rest of the stream is PokeCrossing...and I’m going to replay this off stream and make sure she doesn’t die.” 

“Il mio cuore,” Gio chuckled. 

Cyrus lifted his head and gave a playful glare to him. “I’m not asking for your opinion again.”

[soloplaying]

BatIM Babble: Glitches/Issues

Just climbing a tower of chairs in a stairwell looking for cans of Bacon soup, with a Tommy Gun. As you do.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game a lot, but I did have some persistent issues when trying to play it. And nearly having a heart attack when the Projectionist glitched up onto the platform on Level 14 barely counts.

My Thoughts:

1. Mouse and Resolution

From the first frame of the game, I had problems with my mouse. I thought it was either my computer or my mouse’s sensitivity so I messed around with every setting I could find (in-game and out) trying to fix it. Nothing worked. I was disappointed but decided I could still appreciate the story, even with the cross hair moving several seconds behind my mouse. It made me dizzy, I died a lot, and it took a while but I managed. It wasn’t like any of the game elements depended on speed or accuracy or anything.

...I’m sure you can see where this is going.

The target-shooting minigame in Chapter 4 was impossible. Literally, physically impossible. By the time my crosshair reached where my mouse was pointing, the target had gone down. I had to look through discussions on Steam to find out that (a) I wasn’t the only one with the problem, (b) the problem wasn’t with my equipment, and (c) the only way to fix it was to turn the game’s resolution nearly all the way down. Not all the way down, not turn the quality down, not change anything about the mouse...No, the answer was to turn the resolution down to a specific value.

I mean, I’m glad the fix was so easy. I was able to continue the game after that and the crosshair behaved itself, even if the quality was a little lower than desired. But I’m still confused as to why it happened in the first place.

2. The Save Mechanic

Unlike the mouse issue, this didn’t become a problem until I tried to replay the game. But once I started my achievement run, it became a major thorn in my side. I’ve had the problem most often with replaying chapters in old save slots, but I’ve had it with some new games as well.

Why does the game only reliably save at the beginning of each chapter? There are save points throughout the first four chapters but they don’t always work and if you’re in the middle of the Twisted Angel’s tasks or halfway through the Bendy Hell challenges then being set back can be pretty disheartening. And in the fifth chapter, the game has no save point until you reach the admin maze. Autosaves can occur at the Lost Harbor dock and the boat launch platform but they default to the beginning of the chapter almost every time that you have to quit and restart the game. And as much as I like Allison and Tom, I really don’t need to see their very long introductory scenes that many times.

Last time I played, it actually set me back an entire chapter and a half. I went from saved at the dock right before the fight with Sammy to the beginning of Chapter 4.

3. Miscellaneous

These aren’t really persistent problems so much as random freak things I banged into, like the aforementioned tower of climbable chairs and the Projectionist gaining the ability to run up to the lift after Henry. I’ve run into Searchers you can’t kill with an axe, immortal boards that levitate after you hit them with an axe, cans of bacon soup that respawn when you run past them more than once, objectives that don’t spawn in Chapter 3, objectives that don’t re-spawn when you restart a task in Chapter 3, the lift refusing to leave Alice Angel’s floor after finishing all of her challenges, the whole ‘locking targets after the bell dings’ in Chapter 4′s Bullshot minigame (which thankfully doesn’t affect the game’s plot), and the boat in Chapter 5 just stopping without anything stuck in the paddle wheel.

4. Does it matter?

Nope! I still love the game, even with its problems. But it makes me feel better to complain about them here!

Have a random picture of Bertram:

[leadershihyun]

Hi Lena! This is a 'spare' Tumblr account that I tend to use for 'here's a link to something that will show you better' purposes, but like I said I wanted to offer you the insights I have that come to mind for this project

a good thing to try and establish early is the frame rate - I would go with cinema-standard 24 frames per second - and where you prefer the frames to fall. Animating "on ones" (one unique image every frame) produces a very Disney-style 'true to life', where as animating "on twos"/"on threes"/"on fours" has that slightly more 'choppy' style that evokes a more nostalgic visual of things like the early Ardman work, in the way that newer films like Isle of Dogs does. This definitely isn't a template that has to be constantly stuck to throughout the video, but it's an important aspect of what you'll want to achieve with the animation; this video is a great look at how that choice contributes to the 'feel' of stop-motion animation.

I think the best thing to then do is to work out what your "I want the character to X" frames are and where you want to put them in relation to the song. Even if you only had four "beats" and didn't have particular places you wanted to place them in relation to the some, if you knew that you wanted them about evenly spaced from each other in the video then placing those "beats" with blank frames in between is both possible when you know what frame rate you're working and with gives you a less overwhelming starting place. A really great free tool to use for this is Storyboarder, which you have to opt in to the email list of the studio who makes it in order to download, which has a "shot generator" of pre-made 3D figures to help create or use instead of full drawings for this rough outline.

(two heads up about Storyboarder are 1) that it asks you to create a file before using the program in order to impliment their autosave functionality, but many security programs automatically block apps trying to tamper with your files; with mine, a window came up after the error asking if I wanted to allow the app to alter my files, which I selected and then restarted the program, and 2) the first time you open it you get a bunch of these pop-ups at the bottom right corner of the screen over an area you need to use and it's not super clear how to get rid of them - just click on them to clear them)

a next stage is to get your 'animation sketch' to the 'level' of an animatic - most of the animatic I have a point of reference for are fanart for a podcast of a family playing DnD, which is the kind of thing where you're either like oh yeah of course or it sounds wildly niche haha, but the two that are at top of mind for animatics that 'feel more animation-y' are this one and this one. Tumblr isn't letting me add images to post right now so I can't show more directly,

[operationrainfall]

Title Vitamin Connection Developer WayForward Technologies Publisher WayForward Release Date February 20th, 2020 Genre Experimental, Multiplayer Platform Nintendo Switch Age Rating E for Everyone – Comic Mischief, Mild Cartoon Violence Official Website

In a weird way, I’m kind of glad I only recently found the time to play through Vitamin Connection. Because what better time to play a game all about fighting infectious diseases than during a worldwide pandemic? Dark humor aside, Vitamin Connection is a very hard to explain game. It’s incredibly unique and experimental. I recognized plot elements that reminded me of Powerpuff Girls or Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, mini games that would have fit right into WarioWare, and controls that reminded me somehow of Yoshi’s Island. That’s a diverse mix right off the bat, and I applaud WayForward for their ambition. The question then was did this heady mixture of disparate elements come together in a cohesive elixir? Or did it erupt in an alchemical misfire?

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The entire plot of Vitamin Connection revolves around the Sable family. They’re an idyllic bunch – scientist father, bad-ass housewife mother, energetic young boy, psychotic baby and lovable dog. Something has caused bacteria to infest the entire family, and one by one, they come down with mysterious symptoms. Before you discount this as happenstance, I can tell you there’s actually something sinister afoot. I didn’t realize that until late in the game, but suffice to say the experience is as much about healing the family as it is discovering the source of their infection. You do so as the heroes of the game – Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl. They pilot the minuscule Capsule Ship, which enters bodies, finds bacteria and blasts them to smithereens. Each of the game’s levels has you wandering through veins and sailing towards major organs. Once you find a source of infection, your job is to beat them in a mini game. These can involve dancing, grabbing items, obstacle courses and much more. Oh and did I mention all of the viruses can talk (which is voice acted) and they love to trash talk you? Yea, this is a strange experience, but not without its charms.

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When I compared Vitamin Connection to Yoshi’s Island, it was mostly due to the very unique controls found in both games. You can play this game either single player or with a friend. I have a feeling the latter is the way it was meant to be played, but in the spirit of self isolation, I played this solo. In single player, you control all the aspects of the gameplay, whereas you split duties when playing with a friend. Or so I understand, I didn’t actually try multiplayer. In any case, there’s a lot of really cool features to the gameplay. As you wander through bodies, you can rotate your Capsule Ship with the right and left triggers, clockwise or counter clockwise. This is important, since touching any structure harms your ship, and if you take too much damage, you’ll die and have to restart from your last save. You use the joystick to control your beam, which can be shot in any direction you aim, making it very versatile. To make up for that, you have a limited charge to use it with. If you use the beam too long, the power of it is vastly diminished until it has a chance to reboot. You also later get a claw module that can grab and move things. It’s nifty in theory, but in execution it was very different. Mostly cause it was mapped to the same joystick used for firing your beam. So it’s very easy to accidentally arm the claw when you’re trying to blast, or vice versa. And since the claw’s controls are very, very finicky, I grew to dislike its inclusion in short order. You can also speed up how fast the level speeds past you by holding any two buttons on the right Joy-Con, which is handy. Especially since you otherwise can only maneuver your ship around with the left Joy-Con.

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In case it’s not already evident, the controls in Vitamin Connection take some getting used to. And even then, they can be a handful. As you navigate about, you’ll come across colored blue and red cords that block your path. You have to rotate your ship around so the proper colored edge is facing the cord, and then by ramming them at the proper angle, you’ll cut your way through. This was fun at first, but the game starts to go crazy with how many cords you come across. It’s also exacerbated by the tunnels you drift through often being very narrow, meaning that if you’re facing the wrong direction, you’ll sometimes have to rotate through the stage, harming yourself, just to be properly oriented. It wouldn’t be an issue if the game previewed that a cord was coming up, but it doesn’t. It’s also nerve wracking since if you get too far behind the stage as it scrolls, you’ll constantly take damage every few seconds. This didn’t happen often, mind you, but when it did I got very frustrated. And keep in mind that you’re not just wandering through harmless areas. There’s lots of bacterial enemies, and they love to get in your way, blast you from a distance or otherwise harass you.

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I mentioned mini games earlier, and there’s plenty of them in Vitamin Connection. One of the most iconic ones has you bust a move in dance battles against bacteria. That’s really cool in theory, but actually doing it can be very tough. Reason being, when playing in single player, you have to watch prompts for dance moves as they scroll on the periphery of both sides of the screen simultaneously. I started to feel like a chameleon playing this game, with my eyes trying to focus on two things at once. I did sort of get the hang of it, but it’s just an example of how mechanics in the game aren’t always well-implemented. The worst example was actually a mini game that involves extending a mitt to grab a certain amount of items. The first few times you encounter this, you’ll have to navigate around moving bacteria, since touching them hurts you. The last iteration of the game has bacteria that don’t move. I was totally flummoxed, until I figured out that you’re supposed to extend your mitt upward inch by inch, with minute flickers of your joystick, while simultaneously maneuvering your ship around, and then do the same thing in reverse to bring the items towards you safely. Suffice to say, this mini game was so irritating I nearly gave up on reviewing Vitamin Connection. Thankfully, I found some deep reserve of patience and pushed through. Maybe it’s not so bad with a friend, but if not, then something needs to be done to streamline it for solo gamers.

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I don’t mean to make it sound like everything in Vitamin Connection was a slog, cause it wasn’t. Oftentimes this is a very charming and funny game. Even though your heroes Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl are totally unvoiced, the other characters are bursting at the seams with personality. The game almost plays out like an old Saturday morning cartoon, full of humor and silliness. I especially liked the design of the various bacteria, such as giant cyclops bats, happy amoebas, candy colored rhinos and more. This is only boosted by the tremendous voice acting, which even minor characters like bacteria get. Visually, it’s a really attractive experience as well. Though it mostly plays off bright, crayola colored areas, the use of bold colors and cartoon style really makes it stand out. Musically the game is even better, and features tracks that would fit in perfectly in JPOP or KPOP, full of funky beats and mellifluous singing. Honestly, if I were just scoring the game on aesthetic or even creativity, it would probably have gotten a perfect score.

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Although I estimate I got through the main game in about 6 hours, there’s actually pretty decent replay value here. Each mini game you play is unlocked for free play later on. Additionally, by collecting all 5 hidden Ion Stars in a stage, you’ll unlock an accompanying bonus stage. These are fun and short affairs that play more like a SHMUP than the rest of the experience. Also, you unlock New Game Plus after you beat the final stage, which apparently lets you play as a different character. I say apparently since I haven’t tried it myself yet. Either way, I always appreciate reasons to come back to a game, and find it laudable Vitamin Connection is trying to put its best foot forward. Having said that, I probably would have preferred a longer main adventure with more story and hijinks to enjoy, since there’s only 6 main levels.

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Before I close things out, I need to touch upon some areas that really hurt the overall experience. Earlier I mentioned cutting cords in stages, and how it can get tricky when you’re navigating tight tunnels. This was problematic in one long stretch that leads to a stage’s last Ion Star, and I simply couldn’t manage it. I wish the game offered the ability to switch the color orientation of your ship, instead of just rotating it around and around. Another area of contention is with the save system. It autosaves whenever you are at a junction or after beating a mini game. My issue is that one time I was playing a mini game, about to win, when Vitamin Connection had an error that forced me back to the Home Screen. When I booted it up again, I wasn’t placed right at the start of the mini game, but instead at the tunnel branch which led to it. I also can’t express enough how much I wish the claw controls were separate from the laser controls. I had so many times where not only did I have trouble using the right tool at the right time, but even had tons of times where the claw was ready, I tried to grab something, and instead the claw retracted back into my ship. There’s actually a final boss in the game, in a fight that plays a lot like a battle in Mischief Makers. Problem was, it forces you to use the claw to fight back, which made things far more difficult. Oh and the Love Test game that plays after you beat stages really should have clarified that you don’t actually play it, but instead that it rates you on your overall performance. And lastly, while this is a minor quibble, it seemed odd to me that in a game so full of personality, the main characters are totally unvoiced, and don’t even get dialogue.

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Ultimately, I feel there were tons of cool ideas on display here and tons of charm, but that it wasn’t fully realized. Vitamin Connection is still a fun experience, and I appreciate the creativity. I just feel that perhaps some features required more time in the oven, so to speak. Honestly though, for only $19.99, it’s hard to take too much fault with the experience. I’d say if you want to support a cool indie company, you should give it a go. Just be ready for a steeper challenge than you might expect.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: Vitamin Connection Title Vitamin Connection

[casualarsonist]

Nostalgia Killer - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I used to have a podcast, and this was a segment on it. I’m going to be extensively shitting on Uncharted 2, so this seems like the best banner under which to do that - at least this way you’ll know what you’re in for.

Before booting up Uncharted 2 (the remastered edition) I’d had delightful premonitions of what I was going to write here, largely based on my memories of my last two or three playthroughs of the game. I was keen to witness the visual upgrades of the PS4 version, of course, but I was also looking forward to talking about Among Thieves’ wholesale gameplay improvements over its predecessor, the improvements that solidified its place as one of the greatest adventure games in video game history. So I started the game up and worked my way through the iconic opening section as Nate wakes up in a crashed train dangling precariously over a cliff edge…and after I’d finished it I put the controller down and didn’t come back to it for six full months.

Something had changed. Not within the game itself - the remastered edition is exactly the same as the original, 1080p upgrade aside. And despite the accuracy of H. Bomberguy’s life-ruining video accusing the series of being completely devoid of freedom, offering little more than a collection of expensively animated tunnels that one is relentlessly forced down, it wasn’t this revelation that had shaken me either. No, something had changed in me - perhaps in my expectations, or in a misremembered idea of the game’s qualities, but this was not the enjoyable experience I recalled. Finishing Uncharted 2 this time around was a chore, and my nostalgic review became an article, and my rose-tinted memory darkened to a crimson scorn. Here I come kiddies, ready to shit on your memories again. This is Nostalgia Killer.

                                                                    ***

For the uninitiated, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a 2008 third-person action-adventure game, and the second of Nathan Drake’s grand Playstation 3 adventures. To Naughty Dog’s credit, they worked hard to tighten up and polish a lot of the ideas and mechanics of the first game (reviewed here) with more enjoyable gunplay, more lifelike animation, and more varied and detailed environments. The narrative improvements are marked, and they’ve been particularly ambitious when it comes to the interactions between characters both in cutscenes and otherwise. But while the game succeeds in being a refinement in all these areas, there are still some serious growing pains evident in its design, especially ten years on from its release. I’ve said of Uncharted 4 that if you’ve played one Uncharted game, you’ve played them all, and it was here in Uncharted 2 where that adage begins, where all the familiar beats and tropes would be defined and repeated ad nauseam. Sadly, this isn’t a trend only visibly when viewing the series as a whole, but glaringly obvious within this game alone.

The story follows Drake as he’s dragged ‘back in’ to a life of roguish non-legal adventuring by a pair of shifty old colleagues - Harry Flynn and Chloe Frazer. Coaxed by the thrill of uncovering the location of Marco Polo’s lost fleet and the treasure it carried, Drake and Flynn infiltrate a Turkish museum to steal an artefact containing a map leading to their next location. Flynn double-crosses Drake in a stunning twist (sarcasm), and after serving three months in a Turkish prison, Drake is freed with the help of Chloe and his old friend Sully. Chloe reveals that she is a mole within the army of Serbian mercenary Zoran Lazarević - the man who hired Flynn, who subsequently hired Drake, to find the treasure. The two groups then cross paths back and forth for the next six hours as Drake invariably discovers the next clue to the location of the treasure, and the bad guys invariably show up immediately after to take it away from him.

And while I can understand what they’re trying to do with the format - that is, to make an interactive Indiana Jones film - it’s not long at all before the formula gets tired and very predictable, not the least because the first two acts are essentially one plot point repeated over and over again. See, the thing that Indiana Jones films had going for them was the fact that they’re only a couple of hours long, and one can pretty easily fill a couple of hours with exciting content, even if your bag of tricks is relative small. But when you scale the length of your film up to the equivalent of a quarter of a day whilst retaining the same limited bag of action movie cliches, soon you need to start repeating yourself - a tactic that offers diminishing returns when you’re relying not on depth of story or character to engage people, but on a short-lived dopamine rush inspired by seeing someone hanging off the edge of something precarious. Indiana Jones only fell of a bridge once, not once every ten minutes, and given the Uncharted series’ three types of gameplay (cover-based shooting, climbing, and ‘puzzles’), there simply aren’t enough ideas to sustain a six-hour run-time. Running and gunning - ON A TRAIN; running and gunning - UP A MOUNTAIN; running and gunning - IN A COLLAPSING BUILDING. It’s the same thing Call of Duty has done to death (running and gunning - IN THE FUTURE), and the reason why no-one buys those games for the single player any more. Change the location as many times as you want, but if the people and the situations in your story just repeat themselves again and again and again, you’re not building a game that someone can come back to repeatedly and get the same level of enjoyment out of.

But then again, perhaps that means that they’ve gotten it exactly right - the Transformers films aren’t made to be watched twenty times, they’re designed for maximum impact the first time around - and the first time round, Uncharted 2 is a blast. It’s also accessible, undemanding, and easy to pick up and play at pretty much any time. But much like the Transformers films, the bright lights and flashy colours are designed to distract you from the overwhelming emptiness at the game’s core. Who is this Serbian war criminal? Why do you care? Why is he seeking the Cintamani stone?Because ‘power’. How is it that his group keeps finding Drake at the exact point that he locates the next clue? Stop asking questions. And why do all these bad guys keep threatening to kill people and never actually do it? I said stop asking questions! And just how the fuck did he get hundreds of troops and weapons and vehicles and a fucking tank up to the peak of a forgotten, remote mountain buried deep in the Himala-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Again, one can overlook this kind of narrative short-changing if you’re watching a dumb ninety minute film, but if you’re paying £50 on launch for a six-to-ten hour game, the sheen really starts to wear off when the boards you’re climbing up crumble from beneath you for the 400th time.

But hell, you say, this is just the Uncharted we know and love, right? Sure, it doesn’t have a lot going on, but what it does, it does really well. I imagine that just as many people will feel justified in loving the series for these reasons as much as I feel justified in complaining about them. But I can’t imagine anyone looking back fondly on that level with the tank that will one-shot kill you, or the bit in the mountain temple with the snipers and rocket launchers that will one-shot kill you, or when you’re on the train and have to fight the helicopter and the armoured shotgun troops that will one-shot kill you, or the final boss battle where you run around in circles so he doesn’t one-shot kill you. Because what you forget when you haven’t played the game for a while is that it’s filled with the most horrendous and incongruent difficulty spikes. Enemies take anywhere between one and a dozen hits to kill depending on when the game decides it’s going to change the rules, and while some times eliminating everyone you see will allow you to progress, other times hordes of belligerents will then suddenly spawn from nowhere just because. I’d say that it was dreadfully archaic design that comes from the days when monsters would literally wait in a closet until you stepped on a specific floor texture, except that even Doom kept its enemy health consistent.

I know that it’s ‘action movie logic’, but there’s something uniquely frustrating in Uncharted 2′s design when you’ve just spent fifteen minutes getting fucked over and over again by a handful of enemies, only to be blowing them away by the dozen five minutes later with the exact same weapon you’ve been using all along. Noticing the change just adds insult to injury, and all the while the game autosaves every minute because the developers know that if they made you restart from the beginning every time you died you’d throw your console into oncoming traffic

Which is a shame, because while it is indeed a far more polished release, Uncharted 2 still exhibits the same bad design habits that plague the first Uncharted game - design habits that I know Naughty Dog can leave, behind because I just replayed The Last Of Us, and that game is fucking superb. It still contains a lot of the cover-based shooting gameplay of Uncharted, but there’s something about the balance in difficulty, as well as the variation in weapons and enemy types that makes all the difference in the world - when the developers decide they need to change the pace they don’t change the rules of the game, instead they change the scenario, and this means that while each new set of circumstances might present a greater and greater challenge to the player, your skills at playing the game can improve to meet them as you become more acquainted with the game’s internal rulebook. You’re not coddled for hours before being thrown into an intentionally unwinnable battle, then coddled again, then punished, then coddled, etc, etc. The end result here is that Uncharted 2 often feels cheap in how it tries to challenge and thrill the player, and I can’t go and put myself back in the mindset of a person playing it for the first time in order to understand why it’s seen as something so perfect.

If you still love playing Uncharted 2, I’m not here to convince you that you’re wrong. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of writing this article is at all, other than to document the fact that I went back and played one of the most lauded video games in history expecting to write the glowing follow-up review to the first game that I’d promised to do so long ago, and found that without the initial thrill, and contemporary comparisons to make, a lot of its lustre is stripped away. Uncharted 2 is fine, and it’s certainly a hugely influential work, but it’s actually pretty fucking annoying in retrospect. And the fact that you can forget that so easily is perhaps the game’s greatest achievement.