Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

[LingeringRegime]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

If you are a fan of the series, it is an absolute must buy.

If you don't like the series then pass on it.

[Flawless]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Only played about an hour, and this will probably be shocking, but it plays like Uncharted.

Production values are top notch. I liked the opening and chapters 2-3 were kind of unexpected (in a good way). Coming from Batman Arkham City though, the emphasis on more melee fighting isn't nearly as smooth here. It's clear Arkham Asylum had influence on them. Aiming feels a little off too. It's hard to to explain why, but I never felt like I was fighting the reticle in UC1, UC2, or even in the UC3 multiplayer beta. Maxing the sensitivity has helped. I see a lot of people saying the same thing, but reading it's not an issue at all in the final multiplayer. Weird.

[EnigmaNemesis]

Got my collector's sitting there delivered from Amazon staring at me.

It will probably be up to two weeks before power is restored in my town. It is a mess. Like a tornado swept through. Such a nasty snow storm. Trees still down on power lines for miles. Day 4 of no heat, electricity or running water. And they have yet to even start removing the trees off all the downed lines here. Pathetic.

Bigger **** to worry about I guess. And now I am called in for some crazy long overnight shifts the next few days because people are gonna start looting soon.

Enjoy the game everyone. Will touch base periodically.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Damn man, our thoughts will be with you. Reminds me of when I got Dragon Warrior on the NES and Hurricane Hugo came through and knocked our power out for over a week.

Stay warm and safe.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

I really liked the first chapter, very well done but expected a bit more in the fight scene in the bathroom. Started Chapter 2 and much different than what I expected. Hoping the rest of the game holds up well. Not sure how I feel with Flaw's comments about having to fight with the recticle, that does suck since I haven't gotten that far yet.

[Cpre5]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

After playing for an hour, I long for Batman's movement. I think a nice mix of the two games would be great.

[SinisterAlex]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Any MP impressions?

[LingeringRegime]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Any MP impressions?

I am not planning to play it until I beat the SP, but I did see that my rank and unlocks were carried over from the Subway Beta.

[aukevin]

Cole has a new friend...

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Sent from my HTC Thunderbolt

[SinisterAlex]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

I am not planning to play it until I beat the SP, but I did see that my rank and unlocks were carried over from the Subway Beta.

I'm wanting to buy this game but my wallet is taking too big of a hit the last few months lol.

[TheBadazz]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Mines came today (love Amazon), but my backlog is jammed right now. I'll get to it soon.

[bcruise]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

They sure threw us a curveball with that trailer, didn't they? Start of the game turned out nothing like what I was expecting.

I'm finding a fair challenge in Hard + Hints Off. Will definitely be playing through the first time on those settings.

Also stumbling across plenty of treasures just in the course of playing the game, similar to UC2. Should make the trophy hunting go a lot smoother (Platinum #3, here I come! )

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Cole has a new friend...

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Sent from my HTC Thunderbolt

Nathan's face looks so off, he looks like Patrick Swayze. LOL! Now Cole's looks spot on.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Quite the interesting story.

The Final Push

...Even when it was time to stop working and submit a disc to Sony, things would crop up.

Wells relates, "We were three days from gold master -- a [few] weeks ago -- and our lead programmer comes in with Christophe and [game director] Justin Richmond, and they shut the door. I'm like, 'Why are we having a closed door conversation so close to gold master?' He sits down with the most depressed look on his face, and he says, 'Guys, I took the game home, and it's a mess.'" The problem: the game performs just fine -- for the first half. After reaching the halfway point, numerous bugs would crop up. Objects would disappear. Walls would flicker in and out of existence. Nathan could find himself in a hall devoid of anything -- geometry, texture, lighting, etc.

Wells continues, "All of these bugs point to the exact same problem in our streaming system. We are streaming stuff constantly; we're abusing the PlayStation 3 like a bad child. We're streaming audio, music, animation, video, levels, textures, everything. We're filling the memory, and about halfway through, it gets jammed up so that when we ask for a texture, it's not there; we ask for an animation, and it's not there." Balestra interjects to note that the reason this bug came up was because the programmer happened to play the game on an older test unit -- most of Naughty Dog's Quality Assurance team were using newer debug hardware and hence weren't running into this issue. The developers realized that a lot of fans still probably play games on launch-era PS3 systems, and this bug could end up ruining a lot of players' experiences.

Balestra remembers having an intense two-hour-plus discussion with lead programmers Travis McIntosh and Christian Gyrling to nail down exactly what triggers the game's meltdown at the halfway point, and they concluded that somehow, the streaming system was causing the PS3's hard-drive to fragment, which therefore led to lots of seeks when requesting data, and said seeks would cause the "traffic jam" that Wells described earlier. Wells notes, "Even though it's literally past the day that we told Sony, 'We're not changing the code anymore, trust us,' we went in and changed the most fundamental and frequently called function in the game."

The lead programmers made a tweak to the code and then burned a new disc with the revisions. Then they had two testers play the old and new code side-by-side; one tester played the old code on a relatively old system while the other tester played the freshly fixed version on the oldest PS3 in the office. Wells finishes, "Right away, we notice that one system is doing better while the other is pretty bad. There was this [specific] threshold we were looking for, 3000, and we knew that was when things would get bad. The number kept creeping up and up, and right when both systems hit 3000, we saw that one guy would go around a corner, and nothing in the world existed -- while the other guy went around the corner, and everything was fine."

Two days after that, Naughty Dog submitted the Uncharted 3 gold master for active production. And based on their track record (recall that the studio has always shipped a game in two years), Naughty Dog personnel are probably already having meetings about their 2013 title.

[SinisterAlex]

Re: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Just bought this game. About to fire it up in a bit.