Three Uncharted 2 Gripes

Uncharted 2 is about as perfect as a video game can get. I'm not going to write about that here though. If you want to read about how great Uncharted 2 is, just visit any of the millions of game related sites and blogs out there. Also, this isn't a hateful Uncharted 2 blog entry, it's just about three things that bother me about game, one of which is fairly insignificant. Here goes.

1. Multiplayer matchmaking is broken. You would think that having to wait 2-3 minutes to even find a game (another annoyance) would ensure that the game was at least finding you other players that are somewhere in your skill level, but instead you wait that much time, sometimes longer, to eventually get split up into the most ridiculously uneven teams. On one side the average player level could be 7. On the other side the average player level is 20 or higher. What ensues is a merciless ass kicking of 50-12. NOT FUN.

2. Shiny eyeballs. The cutscenes are so great and the spoken dialog is nearly flawlessly delivered. Too bad the overly shiny eyeballs completely draw me out of the game world as I sit there and wonder to myself "what color are their eyes and why are they so damn shiny?!" Did nobody at Naughty Dog take notice of this?

3. Okay this is the stupid one, but it still bugs me. The AK-47 and the M4 share the same reload animation. I'm talking about when Nate pulls the charging handle back after slamming home a fresh magazine. The animation is appropriate for the AK-47 whos charging handle is on the side of the upper receiver. However, the M4 charging handle is on the upper back of the receiver and is pulled straight back, parallel to the stock. Yeah I know it's silly, but in a game in which the rest of the animation is amazingly well done, it begs the question: why did Naughty Dog cheese out on such a simple animation used in one of the core gameplay elements? Gun enthusiasts will for sure notice this one, but for the rest of gamers it's a non-issue.

Obviously none of these are game-breaking flaws. The multiplayer matchmaking process can always be patched and the shiny eyeballs thing probably comes down to personal opinion. I don't think the M4 reload animation will ever get fixed (it was that way in the first game too). I'll get over it.

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Trevor Hinkle

October 15, 2009

I'll agree with the matchmaking, but the rest are pretty nit-picky (though I know nothing about guns).

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Lance Darnell

I would have never noticed the reloading animations. The shiny eyeballs could be due to drug use? Sony wants to be equal to Xbox Live, but every time a great game comes along that would help this process out, like this or Fat Princess, Sony shows how it has no clue what it is doing.

Travis McReynolds

Totally agree on the first point. I was hoping this game would be the reason I'd pick up a bluetooth headset for my PS3 and it's not. At least, not yet. I'm no gun nut, but if you're correct then that's definitely a worthy gripe. This is a gun-play centric game and for a lot of people (myself usually included) the devil is in the details.

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Michael Bradley

@Lance - well you really have to be nitpicky to find flaws in a game like Uncharted 2, don't you. ;D Man this day at the office cannot go by any slower. I just want to go home and finish Uncharted 2. I'm 70% through the single player at this point.

Frank Anderson

I love the game as well, but noticed a few more problems. One was bad AI glitches. At one point I ran up to two enemies on a staircase. I ran right in front of them, hid for two seconds, then got up and mowed them down after they apparently forgot that they had just been shooting me and that I had run in front of them. Another is bad checkpointing. There were a few times, oddly often in the worst sections of the game to have it (you know- the hard ones) where I got pretty far in a level only to die and get stuck way farther back than I should have. Lastly, and this is the one I will get knocked on, despite how amazing some of the vistas and effects are I noticed some places that were pretty weak graphically. The biggest section I noticed this was on the train, when the rocket guy is shooting at you. While the surrounding environment looked good, the guy looked like poo and the train cars were not very detailed as well. Now, I am not at all saying Uncharted 2 is a bad game, as a matter of fact I think it is undeniable one of the best on the PS3. I do think that it is not nearly as perfect as some would say, and there there is a good chance that these things stick out to me because there are some pretty crazy statements being made about this game-- like Adam Sessler calling it 'the best single player experience I have ever played." While I do not doubt that Adam feels this way, I think it pushed my excitement too an unattainable degree. Because of this the small issues I ran into struck me a lot more than they would have in a game that is not already being hyped as the 'Game of the Year'.

October 16, 2009

[quote]the guy looked like poo[/quote] Don't insult this digital equivilant to the second coming of Jesus;D

Kevin Xing

It's not really the matchmaking, but the team balancing. God, if the matchmaking does fail to give you players around your skill level, at least break up the good players to make the game balanced. Asskicking ensued in the Multiplayer Beta as well, and it was addressed, but never fixed. Can't say I noticed the shiny eyeballs. Probably because I'm retarded or something. Also didn't notice the M4 reload animations in comparison to the AK-47. The weapon change animations where Drake quickly pulls out the other weapon and switches is still kind of janky to me. I dunno why.

David Matos

Since the only legit gripe is the first one I'll respond to that one. I find a lot of people have this problem, yet I have found tons of people, random and people on my friends list that this does not happen to. 30 seconds is considered a long time for me to find a match. As for the level balancing, that happens because of parties. If me and my friends who are all level 30-ish are in a 5 man party, the game will set us up with the fastest 5 people it can find. If they are lower level people then it doesn't matter to the game. Next time one team is stacked, check to see if they are in a party, they will have the same coloured backgrounds behind their PSN username. I also never noticed the eyeballs and the reload animation? I just cut Naughty Dog some slack on that one so it doesn't bother me too much. My biggest gripe about UC2....How Canadians cannot enter any of the contests to win a Fortune Hunter Edition. This is 2009! No excuse for that.

October 17, 2009

Awesome! Great job getting Spotlighted!

Rick Miller

October 19, 2009

Did anyone else have any major bugs or crashes? I had the game freeze up my PS3 several times, and during 2 or 3 cinemas the voice acting would cut out. It was particularly annoying in the cinema right after you beat the last boss, there was no audible dialog at all. Also, I really dislike how they changed how the bonus features work. In UC1, you could use things like slo mo and weapon select in Hard your first time through, which made me want to actually do that. And I frequently had the store tell me that it had failed to purchase an item for some reason, and I would have to try again. Weird.