But that leaves us with 3. Heading into it, I wasn't actually expecting 2 to get topped, and merely wanted another fun uncharted romp. But 3, just as much as the jump from 1 -> 2, is a very different game from their previous outing. While there are clear moments that look to match(or even one up) uncharted 2 in the setpiece department, the pacing magic is no longer here, and the game feels very cut up and stop-go all over the place. A glacial opener, jumping around areas constantly instead of having a more directed free flow feel to the progression, etc. all crop up. Drake will one minute be in syria on a bus with Cutter and Chloe, then cut to Yemen never to see the previous characters again. Get abducted to an area with zero plot relevance for a huge chunk of the game then magically wash ashore...somewhere(I guess Yemen). The game in general also takes on a much more combat heavy focus in the later stages, with the few puzzles being front ended. That said, though the series always had simplistic puzzles, the ones that you go through in 3 are much better than before so it's a shame they pretty much vanish after chapter 11.
However, pacing isn't all that it takes for 2 to be held as highly as I put it, as those little moments I mentioned such as the billboard shootout are key. This heads more into the combat which is where 3 is seriously heartbreaking. On launch when I originally played 3, the aiming was noticeably fucked up the moment I tried to aim. Funnily enough there's a quote very early on from Sully where he asks if you forgot how to aim, and that was definitely true at the time as Drake was apparently drunk. Thankfully this has been ironed out for the collection here and I can aim like a sober human being, and that really does go a long way to make me like the game more. But at the same time, it also makes the issues with the core design of the combat stick out that much more.
There are three main issues with the very strange combat changes in UC3. To preface this I think I get what ND was trying to do; utilize movement much more to make for active and exciting firefights where you aren't just plopped in cover. Being able to throw back grenades actually has a large impact against this, as it almost promotes camping. Previously, a grenade would be thrown to flush you from your cover, opening the enemy up for a killshot. With that no longer being a flush, it's now up to the enemy itself to do it. This leads into bullrush suicide charges where guys will go without any cover just to run directly where you are, which is...weird.
I posted this in here before which is the type of thing that happens, but for an extended test I actually intentionally stayed back
here. What happened? Lo and behold, literally every enemy in the entire encounter actually ran right over there to get beat up. You can hear Cutter almost constantly getting into fistfights, and it's particularly apparent around 2:03 as the enemies that were shooting at me just give up and run right in the open. The video got cut off a bit at the end, but you can still catch the final 2 people running towards me. It's ridiculous looking, and actually problematic because of the next combat change.
Melee! UC3 seemed to really want to have Drake use melee attacks. There are multiple brawls where it's just him vs. a bunch of enemies you punch and counter out. In its own right these are fairly dull moments that mostly just have some cool camera work and a lot of interactivity in the environment, but the design in these sections actually seeped into the main game for some baffling reason. O, the button that is always used to take cover and/or roll is now mapped to GRAB AND THROW. This is
unbelievably idiotic when you have a gun, as the standard melee fights in 3 take quite awhile to resolve. Naturally, this means one thing: An enemy is right next to you, and there is no escape. Try to roll away, and Drake now grabs and tosses the guy in that direction. The enemy throws a punch and suctions you into him, which is almost guaranteed to kill you. Two examples of this:
here we see a guy punch me and the game might as well have killed me there--look how long the melee takes to do anything, and I'm under fire the whole time. Special note for this is it happened right after I died, it spawned me in this area I was not previously at while under fire(it's a stealth segment the first time), UC3 also does that a lot for some reason.
Here is another one that shows how well and truly fucked you are. I threw a guy while I tried to roll...had this been UC2 I would have been able to roll away and blindfire once I saw all those people I ran into. Enemies that rush you mixed with this problematic melee is already a recipe for frustration, but what's the magical third piece?
Hit reactions! I keep seeing it mentioned in this thread, and yes, in 3 specifically the enemies love to shrug off bullets like they're no big deal. Like...I don't even know what happened here? How on Earth did the game coming after UC2 go backwards in such a key spot? This is primarily a TPS, which in its most simplest terms means you shoot many dudes with a bunch of guns. Feedback is, like, the most essential part, y'know?
What the hell is this? That's an enemy that holds a laser sight on you, and after it being beaded in on you, leads to an instant kill. He manages to hold it in sight for long enough to pull this off while being pointblank blasted a whole bunch of times.
Or this, again, power weapon user that isn't getting interrupted under fire. This is another compounding issue that despite the videos focusing on particularly rough occurrences is omnipresent in every shootout. We got bullrushing dudes with vacuum melee that also like to ignore bullets when they feel like it. Now that sentence is scarier than most horror games I've ever played.
Ultimately, even if 3 lacked the flow of 2, I would still be alright with it being a normal ass uncharted game, but the combat just outta nowhere is such a mess. Like I just wrote all those paragraphs and I still didn't cover multiple huge topics, like the spawning system. This is the worst occurrence in the entire game to me, in the cruise ship.
First, you start here. A lot of pressure right off the bat, but eh. Once they're taken care of, there are immediately dots on your back as enemies came in from the door up above and almost cheap shot you in a super blatant fashion.
But that room gets worse even after you switch sides pre-emptively for the backwards spawn. When a single enemy remains from that side, they do it
AGAIN and have a bunch of people spawn behind
this side. It's like you take a box, put the player in the corner, lock them in that corner with heavy fire, then punish them for not moving out of it by lighting them on fire until they have the magical ability to telegraph when the game pulls something like this. So now that's added into the mix above, where you have a frenetic combat system that wants the player to keep moving, but with actual backwards spawning on top of the enemies already running around like a bat out of hell makes it overwhelming and sloppy. If it isn't outright spawning like that, it's other power weapons out of nowhere.
You can't have this happen to a player, where they fight through a combat wave, move up and trigger a spawn which lights them up with no damn warning. It's not like these are new to the series, there were plenty of rockets, grenade launchers, and snipers in UC2--they were just placed with tact in ways that didn't lead to TKOs outta nowhere. The moment the combat starts to become 'die, learn the spawns, kill the priority targets, breeze through' it should be apparent something is off. It feels videogamey as hell in some masochistic trial by fire with some of this stuff. Another example
here. The enemy type near the end of the game is also a pain in the ass
and is capable of teleporting right behind you. Thankfully they're only present for ~3 or so encounters.
So...yeah, man. Some
weird stuff happened in 3, and it really pains me to once again come to this realization. Where 1 is an alright TPS, 3 is just actively annoying and rarely shines when it comes to the actual structure of the combat zones. It's an absolutely gorgeous game with a nice soundtrack to boot, and finally added some punch to the sounds of the guns, but there's sadly not much else for me there. Has a few solid moments(I still like the Chateu chapter the best), and where they were heading with the Sully and Nate relationship was nice but in the end I put UC2 leaps and bounds above the rest of the games, and still hold 1 higher than 3 in the end even if all three aren't without their warts. I really hope 4 pulls off what I know ND is capable of, and I can hold another UC game in a very high light. At the very least give me some damn hit feedback.
