Denster wrote:Watched the whole cut scenes as a film and segued before the winter one into the left behind ones.
It really does work as a film when youve played the game and can fill in the parts. The emotional hold on me remains very strong and the little nuances that you pick up on with repeated viewings are superb.
Only OOT has maintained this sort of spell over me where i have to make repeat visits.
Even re reading the reviews on it are pleasurable. Such a wonderful piece of work.
A vast sigh of contentment passed through me (tinged with sadness) upon completion of the main game and then this DLC. In terms of engaging and maintaining an emotional hold on the player and realising the world - it's pretty peerless for me.
I even had friends round while i was mid way through watching it and they were captivated by it.
Completely agree. I finally completed the main story tonight (barely 30 mins ago) and just found the whole story and more importantly the characters really captivating. I honestly haven't played a game where I've cared so deeply for the main characters like in this.
The pacing was top notch as well and it was refreshing to go back to the style of combat developed in UC2, but evolved with smarter enemies and more realistic behaviours/animations. I did struggle initially getting used to the mechanics and how to utilize my surroundings and tools, but learnt to take my time and plan my approaches better. This team just understand how to make satisfying combat, in what feels like mini combat arenas if you will, levels that are specifically designed to give you many options (routes etc) and ways to proceed. This is what for me makes it such a fun game to play. Running and hiding doesn't feel cheap either, but rather beneficial if you make a mistake in that you can recover then re-plan your approach. It's not like the alarm goes and you must wait it out or be seen. Just by losing the enemies sight I could quickly out flank them. It just always feels methodical to play and rarely ever frustrating. I think I only really got kind of annoyed once in the game, with a puzzle, as I didn't realize I had to run and also press x to leap across a bridge...
I think what surprised me though was actually how good the characters really were. Going into this game I knew it was obviously meant to have good characters and story, but I was surprised just how good they were and how much they grew on me as it went on. The strong sense of importance they have to each other never fades. But grows only stronger (yes that sounds really sentimental I know) as you progress and I've not seen anything like that in a game before. Only in films/tv shows.
Then there's the visuals... There's actually something in the incredible lighting that elevate this game beyond anything I've seen on PS3 easily. The textures aren't even really very high res looking, but they have s lot of variety and depth. But it's really down to the the lighting that makes many locations look incredibly realistic. It has this natural quality which I've seen nothing like in any game before, even on PC running superior hardware. I mean if this game was on ps4 with high res textures and high quality anti aliasing, 1080p/60fps, It would be unreal to the point I would collapse in awe. Uncharted 2 had some wonderful looking locations, but the natural realism in this make it the best looking game on PS3/last gen imo.