Well, this is only my second blog and I've already got 3 subscribers! Thanks to Martin, Harry & Surge - the support is very much appreciated.
After last nights' introduction, it's time to get things up & running now. No more dancing about on the fringes of conversational mediocrity. I intend to get stuck into the most pressing international matters of the day; the topics that count for the people who care. So we're into the meat of it. The nub. The bottom line. The nitty-gritty.
Video games.
That's right. Video games. "Tish, paw and poo-poo"say you? "Naaaaaaaay" say I. Bear with me avid reader, for we're not discussing Frogger here. We're talking 21st-century, multi-billion dollar entertainment franchises that make most companies in the film industry look like they would but aspire to reach the dizzying creative heights of Speed 2. It is with such a franchise that I have just fallen out - Uncharted. For those of you who don't know the Uncharted games, the series places the gamer in control of a guy called Nathan Drake. Drake is a 21st century version of Indiana Jones (if you don't know who Indiana Jones is, please log off now and put your face in a blender; you'll be helping civilization) - an all-action, wise-cracking, gun-slinging, running, jumping, climbing, punching, dodging, all-round good guy who always gets the girl. And sometimes the treasure. Basically, it gives everything anyone of my age could want out of a game, with the exception that he doesn't get to kill any Nazis.
I got the first game free with my first PS3; I've completed it probably 5 or 6 times, on & off, over the last 4 years and still have my original copy. It really is that good. Uncharted 2 took it to the next level (urgh - sorry about that). The eye-melting graphics, brain-zinging storyline, spot-on scripting & in-depth character development were all dialled up to 11. Despite the slightly ""Hollywood" ending, it was still a truly fantastic experience - once again, I put in several replays and still retain my original copy. Then came Uncharted 3.
Now, taking a step back and putting things into context, October/November was a huge period for gaming. Uncharted 3, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, SWTOR beta trials, Assassins Creed: Revelations & Batman; Arkham City all hit the shelves/interweb for consumption. There was also some waffle about something to do with CoD. Or possibly Haddock. Either way, I'm not a fan of Norwegian trawler simulators, so it's bound to be shit....
Now, with such a plethora of plastic playthings begging to be inserted into my slot (forgive the pseudo-sexual connotations, but we all know what it's like to unwrap that new shiny disc of joy), I made measured judgments on what to buy. A new PS3 title here in Dubai costs upwards of £40 - if the UAE Government haven't banned it - so I don't wade into these purchases with such wanton abandon as I once would have. In fact, I have developed my own bench-marking system for all such purchases that I like to call the Sliding Scotch Scale. It works thus;
[Cost of item 'A' / Potential Length of Enjoyment (in hours) = Fiscal Fun per hour].....or [A / PLE(h) = FFph]
Now substitute an equally-expensive bottle of single malt whisky for item 'A'. If my FFph is higher for the scotch, it's time to get a bag of ice. If not, it's time to warm up the sofa, put Controller 2 on charge and the phone on mute.
So, it is with such absolutely fool-proof mathematics firmly in mind that I approached the purchase of Uncharted 3. And reached a very close decision in favour of the scotch. But still, for a few days after, I umm-ed & ahh-ed, until I saw something online. A review. Or rather, a decisive review. An individual - of rational mind I gather, given that he is in the paid employ of a money-making enterprise - gave Uncharted 3 a score of 10 out of 10. That is 100%. Despite the feckless drivellings of all those arseholes who will inevitably beg you to "...give 110% .", you cannot get any better than 100%. In other words, said individual claimed that this game was interactive entertainment perfection, coitus excluded. And not just any old 10/10...NO!!!! 10/10 for each of 5 different areas of scoring; literally 100%. Not even 99.99%, rounded up. A straight-as-an-arrow 10. And so I was swayed. My liver was spared and my controllers were doomed to a weekend of charge cycles.
However, £45, 7 hours 10 minutes and almost-one-blog later, I'm looking at an empty hole in my drinks cabinet and baying for blood. That's right; just 7 hours & 10 minutes. That's how long it took me to complete, not including the 10 day gap where I didn't play it as I stewed in the general funk of realisation of how disappointing it was. As a frame of reference, I've put 50+ hours into Skyrim and only just learnt the skill which allows me to boil a kettle. Remember - this guy said it was perfect. PERFECT. Now, unless I am the victim of some seriously long odds, whereby I am in possession of the only copy of the game where the NPC AI is of the same level of most single-celled organisms, this "review" is, quite frankly, horseshit. During my 430 minutes in-game , I have watched 3 enemies run INTO grenades I've thrown. I've had 2 guys willingly dive off a cliff, rather than take cover behind the jeep next to them. I've made Drake dive through a solid wall, into a burning room. 4 times. In a row.
To top it all off however, the final nail in the coffin is what I'm referring to as "Police Squad Syndrome". For those of you who remember this timeless comedy classic, you will recall with great glee the frequent scenes where Lt. Frank Drebin would be engaged in a shoot out with the criminals. Except the criminals would be maybe only 2 or 3 feet away, hiding behind the same car/park bench/waste bin as Frank. Seriously, if you've not seen this, you've not lived. Or laughed. Unfortunately - but at the same time providing a very sad & twisted comedy value - this situation is an all-to-often occurence in Uncharted 3. Thugs, apparently hired for their cold-blooded killer instincts, will run up and crouch behind your cover, whilst trying to shoot at you with an RPG-7. And that can only ever be a bad thing.
"Ah!" I hear you say. "What about the much-vaunted multi-player options?" you pose. I have considered this at great length and will respond with equal balance & poise; "Bollocks", I say. I do not buy a campaign/story driven, single-player game for its multi-player aspects, just like I don't go to restaurants based on the standard of conversation I could expect to have with all the other diners. I go for the food. The meat & bones. I play MMO games for personal interaction, and have done so with many great guild-based friends for a number of years. This is a specific niche and no-one should kid themselves that this generation of console-based gaming will ever overtake the PC MMO communities. I will take nothing away from console multiplayer, but several hours on "Haddock 4; America Saves The World Again" will never replace the coffee- & booze-fueled fun-fests of Star Wars Galaxies, as Ozakk & I threatened to pee on everything in sight, including the Emperor. Nor the 48-hour weekend sessions where Mack Shackalak & I would hook up to grind out GCW points & chat to each other online for the duration...despite being in opposite bedrooms in the same house (some things are just better said in /tell).
And so I get back to the crux of the matter, and answer my own questions from last night; "Video game reviews; Are they reliable? And who gives a shit?" The answers, respectively, are;
a) "No" and
b) "Me, but I'm clearly a tit as I've wasted 10 days, 7 hours & 10 minutes on that tripe when I could have been getting legless on Scotland's finest export".
So, in conclusion my dear friends, I urge you to not put too much faith in franchises (except Star Wars (except Phantom Menace)), always trust the maths and certainly not believe everything you read. I have ejected Uncharted 3, and shall take it to Game when I return to the UK. Perhaps I could trade it in for a copy of Speed 2?
Stay frosty!
After last nights' introduction, it's time to get things up & running now. No more dancing about on the fringes of conversational mediocrity. I intend to get stuck into the most pressing international matters of the day; the topics that count for the people who care. So we're into the meat of it. The nub. The bottom line. The nitty-gritty.
Video games.
That's right. Video games. "Tish, paw and poo-poo"say you? "Naaaaaaaay" say I. Bear with me avid reader, for we're not discussing Frogger here. We're talking 21st-century, multi-billion dollar entertainment franchises that make most companies in the film industry look like they would but aspire to reach the dizzying creative heights of Speed 2. It is with such a franchise that I have just fallen out - Uncharted. For those of you who don't know the Uncharted games, the series places the gamer in control of a guy called Nathan Drake. Drake is a 21st century version of Indiana Jones (if you don't know who Indiana Jones is, please log off now and put your face in a blender; you'll be helping civilization) - an all-action, wise-cracking, gun-slinging, running, jumping, climbing, punching, dodging, all-round good guy who always gets the girl. And sometimes the treasure. Basically, it gives everything anyone of my age could want out of a game, with the exception that he doesn't get to kill any Nazis.
I got the first game free with my first PS3; I've completed it probably 5 or 6 times, on & off, over the last 4 years and still have my original copy. It really is that good. Uncharted 2 took it to the next level (urgh - sorry about that). The eye-melting graphics, brain-zinging storyline, spot-on scripting & in-depth character development were all dialled up to 11. Despite the slightly ""Hollywood" ending, it was still a truly fantastic experience - once again, I put in several replays and still retain my original copy. Then came Uncharted 3.
Now, taking a step back and putting things into context, October/November was a huge period for gaming. Uncharted 3, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, SWTOR beta trials, Assassins Creed: Revelations & Batman; Arkham City all hit the shelves/interweb for consumption. There was also some waffle about something to do with CoD. Or possibly Haddock. Either way, I'm not a fan of Norwegian trawler simulators, so it's bound to be shit....
Now, with such a plethora of plastic playthings begging to be inserted into my slot (forgive the pseudo-sexual connotations, but we all know what it's like to unwrap that new shiny disc of joy), I made measured judgments on what to buy. A new PS3 title here in Dubai costs upwards of £40 - if the UAE Government haven't banned it - so I don't wade into these purchases with such wanton abandon as I once would have. In fact, I have developed my own bench-marking system for all such purchases that I like to call the Sliding Scotch Scale. It works thus;
[Cost of item 'A' / Potential Length of Enjoyment (in hours) = Fiscal Fun per hour].....or [A / PLE(h) = FFph]
Now substitute an equally-expensive bottle of single malt whisky for item 'A'. If my FFph is higher for the scotch, it's time to get a bag of ice. If not, it's time to warm up the sofa, put Controller 2 on charge and the phone on mute.
So, it is with such absolutely fool-proof mathematics firmly in mind that I approached the purchase of Uncharted 3. And reached a very close decision in favour of the scotch. But still, for a few days after, I umm-ed & ahh-ed, until I saw something online. A review. Or rather, a decisive review. An individual - of rational mind I gather, given that he is in the paid employ of a money-making enterprise - gave Uncharted 3 a score of 10 out of 10. That is 100%. Despite the feckless drivellings of all those arseholes who will inevitably beg you to "...give 110% .", you cannot get any better than 100%. In other words, said individual claimed that this game was interactive entertainment perfection, coitus excluded. And not just any old 10/10...NO!!!! 10/10 for each of 5 different areas of scoring; literally 100%. Not even 99.99%, rounded up. A straight-as-an-arrow 10. And so I was swayed. My liver was spared and my controllers were doomed to a weekend of charge cycles.
However, £45, 7 hours 10 minutes and almost-one-blog later, I'm looking at an empty hole in my drinks cabinet and baying for blood. That's right; just 7 hours & 10 minutes. That's how long it took me to complete, not including the 10 day gap where I didn't play it as I stewed in the general funk of realisation of how disappointing it was. As a frame of reference, I've put 50+ hours into Skyrim and only just learnt the skill which allows me to boil a kettle. Remember - this guy said it was perfect. PERFECT. Now, unless I am the victim of some seriously long odds, whereby I am in possession of the only copy of the game where the NPC AI is of the same level of most single-celled organisms, this "review" is, quite frankly, horseshit. During my 430 minutes in-game , I have watched 3 enemies run INTO grenades I've thrown. I've had 2 guys willingly dive off a cliff, rather than take cover behind the jeep next to them. I've made Drake dive through a solid wall, into a burning room. 4 times. In a row.
To top it all off however, the final nail in the coffin is what I'm referring to as "Police Squad Syndrome". For those of you who remember this timeless comedy classic, you will recall with great glee the frequent scenes where Lt. Frank Drebin would be engaged in a shoot out with the criminals. Except the criminals would be maybe only 2 or 3 feet away, hiding behind the same car/park bench/waste bin as Frank. Seriously, if you've not seen this, you've not lived. Or laughed. Unfortunately - but at the same time providing a very sad & twisted comedy value - this situation is an all-to-often occurence in Uncharted 3. Thugs, apparently hired for their cold-blooded killer instincts, will run up and crouch behind your cover, whilst trying to shoot at you with an RPG-7. And that can only ever be a bad thing.
"Ah!" I hear you say. "What about the much-vaunted multi-player options?" you pose. I have considered this at great length and will respond with equal balance & poise; "Bollocks", I say. I do not buy a campaign/story driven, single-player game for its multi-player aspects, just like I don't go to restaurants based on the standard of conversation I could expect to have with all the other diners. I go for the food. The meat & bones. I play MMO games for personal interaction, and have done so with many great guild-based friends for a number of years. This is a specific niche and no-one should kid themselves that this generation of console-based gaming will ever overtake the PC MMO communities. I will take nothing away from console multiplayer, but several hours on "Haddock 4; America Saves The World Again" will never replace the coffee- & booze-fueled fun-fests of Star Wars Galaxies, as Ozakk & I threatened to pee on everything in sight, including the Emperor. Nor the 48-hour weekend sessions where Mack Shackalak & I would hook up to grind out GCW points & chat to each other online for the duration...despite being in opposite bedrooms in the same house (some things are just better said in /tell).
And so I get back to the crux of the matter, and answer my own questions from last night; "Video game reviews; Are they reliable? And who gives a shit?" The answers, respectively, are;
a) "No" and
b) "Me, but I'm clearly a tit as I've wasted 10 days, 7 hours & 10 minutes on that tripe when I could have been getting legless on Scotland's finest export".
So, in conclusion my dear friends, I urge you to not put too much faith in franchises (except Star Wars (except Phantom Menace)), always trust the maths and certainly not believe everything you read. I have ejected Uncharted 3, and shall take it to Game when I return to the UK. Perhaps I could trade it in for a copy of Speed 2?
Stay frosty!
Hey! Whats wrong with Frogger!!
ReplyDeleteNothing at all mate; just the first Classic that "jumped" to mind.... ;-D
ReplyDeleteThanks 'planes. I actually sent a mail, with link to my blog, to the guy who write the review. No response. Obviously not open to constructive criticism!
ReplyDelete