Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception

[Neon Ignition]

I'm doing a simple run through at the moment as I find starting a new Uncharted on Hard can get in the way of being swept up by the action and story first time through. So far though I have the heavy impression that on Crushing the first half of this installment will be the easiest yet as combat sequences are fairly minimal. I'm sure that will change in the second half though, lol. It's a refinement on 2 but it feels so much more confident a product. The co-op and multiplayer components are a solid improvement on UC2's and so far the single player is as good if not slightly better too. I bought the Explorer Edition for the statue but the treasure chest it comes in steals it. So far, so pure excellence.

[SmokeScreen]

I'm up to Chapter 7, and am loving it! Great pacing and a lot of nice breathing room - something I wasn't expecting after the Eurogamer review.

The one thing that is slightly annoying me though is the change to the aiming system. It feels far less free than in the previous 2, almost like it is sticking to the horizontal and vertical plane a little too much, meaning the amount I have to move the stick to get free of the sticky zone makes me over compensate.

Never had this in the first two, no troubles at all. In fact I'd say the first two had the best 3rd person aiming systems I'd ever used, ultra-responsive, with no need for aim-assistance.

The way the aiming is going here is *almost* making me want to try another controller, as it feels like the controllers dead zone is knackered. I know it isn't though, as just moving the camera without aiming your gun works as well as ever...

IYKWIM

EDIT: Altering the aiming sensitivity doesn't alleviate the issue either... secretly praying to this to get sorted!

[MrMarbles]

The one thing that is slightly annoying me though is the change to the aiming system. It feels far less free than in the previous 2, almost like it is sticking to the horizontal and vertical plane a little too much, meaning the amount I have to move the stick to get free of the sticky zone makes me over compensate.

Never had this in the first two, no troubles at all. In fact I'd say the first two had the best 3rd person aiming systems I'd ever used, ultra-responsive, with no need for aim-assistance.

The way the aiming is going here is *almost* making me want to try another controller, as it feels like the controllers dead zone is knackered. I know it isn't though, as just moving the camera without aiming your gun works as well as ever...

IYKWIM

EDIT: Altering the aiming sensitivity doesn't alleviate the issue either... secretly praying to this to get sorted!

Spot on.

As the gunplay ramped up in the campaign, this started to really dampen my enjoyment of the game. It says it all about the incredible quality of the rest of it that I powered through a couple of the game's latter areas.

I found dulling the sensitivity as much as possible made things slightly easier, purely because it meant that over-compensating for the dead-zone was a little less severe, but it was still far from ideal, particularly seeing as ND made the NPCs themselves faster and more mobile.

[Team Andromeda]

Holy crap this game is ridiculously good, the cast of characters and script are handled so well you not only care for them, but enjoy watching the cut scenes (instead of wanting to skip them) The new environments are just modelled to utter perfection and the overall graphics are the best I've seen this gen on the consoles

In almost every way it's better than Part II, other than the hand to had combat which seems quite bit worse, other than that (and a few cheap deaths) this is gaming bliss

[Neon Ignition]

Not really getting the aiming issues. For me it's more responsive than UC2, particularly noticeable when it comes to multiplayer.

[SmokeScreen]

Not really getting the aiming issues. For me it's more responsive than UC2, particularly noticeable when it comes to multiplayer.

I'll try and explain in another way... Lets say I wanted to move my aim across to the right at say a 10 degree angle, I could do this no problems in the first two game, as I felt in COMPLETE control of where the gun was aiming.

In this one, it like my aim is being stuck to the horizontal (0 degree) plane, so I have to over compensate for that little vertical movement, meaning I end up jumping too far up for what I'm aiming for. It is giving me major problems getting accurate headshots - never an issue previously. The stickyness only seems to kick in when I'm trying to move the camera at an angle... straight up and down, or left and right aren't an issue... it's the stickyness to the V and H planes. It's like I've got to snap it off, a bit like how you can constrain movement in photoshop etc to V & H planes by holding shift (if you don't use them, apologies ).

This is by no means knocking the amazing game they have built, but this must be a conscious design decision - just one I don't agree with!

[SmokeScreen]

The following link describes exactly the problem I am having, with images

http://forums.naughtydog.com/t5/General-Discussion/Big-problem-with-the-aiming-with-L1/td-p/607411

[Neon Ignition]

That makes more sense, it's odd that it seems restricted to affecting the single player and not the multiplayer. Would explain why I hadn't noticed as I've done a fair bit of multi and the first half of the singleplayer doesn't have a lot of gunplay

[dvdx2]

I'll try and explain in another way... Lets say I wanted to move my aim across to the right at say a 10 degree angle, I could do this no problems in the first two game, as I felt in COMPLETE control of where the gun was aiming.

In this one, it like my aim is being stuck to the horizontal (0 degree) plane, so I have to over compensate for that little vertical movement, meaning I end up jumping too far up for what I'm aiming for. It is giving me major problems getting accurate headshots - never an issue previously. The stickyness only seems to kick in when I'm trying to move the camera at an angle... straight up and down, or left and right aren't an issue... it's the stickyness to the V and H planes. It's like I've got to snap it off, a bit like how you can constrain movement in photoshop etc to V & H planes by holding shift (if you don't use them, apologies ).

This is by no means knocking the amazing game they have built, but this must be a conscious design decision - just one I don't agree with!

so you can only aim using the compass points?

i'll give it a rattle tonight - I hope i'm understanding this wrongly - you need full control with the aiming in a game like this...

[SmokeScreen]

so you can only aim using the compass points?

i'll give it a rattle tonight - I hope i'm understanding this wrongly - you need full control with the aiming in a game like this...

Almost that mate yeah. The ability to be precise has gone. It sounds like it is getting all blown out of proportion, and I thought it was a small niggle for me personally, but having read about on some forums, it isn't just me.

It is definately way different to the previous games, no matter what ND may say on the matter. I'm thinking of holding off for a few days now in the hope they fix it, as it is hampering my experience of the gunplay...

[Sketcz]

You don't honestly think they're going to rush out to correct this, do you?

Such a fundamental change was probably focus-tested early on and deemed to be more appealing to the mainstream, so will stay.

Maybe I'm just being cynical though.


EDIT:
Agh balls, been reading that topic and that's depressing. Every time I discover something I like, it eventually gets changed. Food, clothing, drinks, games - now Uncharted 3.

Bloody hell, there's a bad case of lag too! I think I'm going to hold off buying this until I hear it's been fixed. I don't want to clock it only for them to correct it after the fact. I want my first playthrough to be perfect.

[SmokeScreen]

Seriously Sketcz, the more I think about it, the more I want to hold off... it is bad if you are used to how it used to play.

I think ND's denial can't last too long... that thread is a monster already!

[Sketcz]

Un2 was one of the few games this gen that I actually replayed a few times. I absolutely loved it. But after reading that I feel like rather getting the first game, which I've not actually played yet (I never picked it up because someone on here commented on how different printings of the game in different regions had more/less screen tearing - is that even true?).

Back to Un3... How do you screw up something so intrinsic as aiming?

Also, I read this on their forums:

The thing is the enemies just don't seem to feel pain. Regular enemies, I'm not talking about special foes like the armored shotgun guy. In Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 2, every time you hit an enemy with a shot, they immediately react to it with an animation related to the zone they were hit with the bullet. That was part of the strategy itself, because you could stop enemies from firing at you, and you could stop them from coming at you, giving you enough time to recover a little, change places or reload your weapon. But now, the enemies keep shooting at you even if they are hit, and they keep coming at you even if they are hit. When they are too far and you target them with a pistol or the AK, for example, you cannot know if you actually hit them, because you are too far to see the little blood spilling. This makes the game feel unnatural, and unreal, and it doesn't make sense if you take the previous games as reference.

Can anyone comment?

[dvdx2]

sounds like something that can easily fixed by a patch though?

What were ND thinking?? Limited aiming with pretty graphics

dragons lair anyone?

[MrMarbles]

Can anyone comment?

One of the big issues I have personally found is that, because of the recoil Naughty Dog have added to the shooting - combined with the dead-zone in the right stick - I tend to aim at the torso and rely on the recoil to bring the bullets up for a headshot. This was my tendency of play anyway, because I was finding fine-tuning movements for direct headshots far too frustrating due to over-compensating the aim constantly.

However, playing like this serves to highlight how bullet-spongey the enemies are which would lead to the above complaint being rather prominent. I'm sure it's no worse than the previous games - it's simply that it's much, much harder to get headshots in this one.

I'll post my end-game stats later on, but the amount of successful bullet-hits compared to actual kills was ridiculously high.

This, combined with the difficulty in actually targeting the swines (and the fact that I had to kill 689 enemies in total over the course of an 8 hour game - considering how easy-going the first hour or so is, that's averaging about 100 kills per hour!) led to definite frustration in parts.