Weekend Note: Uncharted Awe

Things! They happened last week! More things! They are happening right now.

I will don last week as the ‘week of trailers,’ because we posted lots of those in our news items. You see children, the awesome marketing tactic used pre-E3 is to blow your load early so people talk about your products instead of those products getting lost in the mix. If my education is worth anything, I, too will be one of those geniuses that designs those marketing strategies someday.

Next week is E3 and so undoubtedly we will have that much more quips, observations and bitching for you to consume. Who knows what those crazy kids at the big 3 will unveil? To make things interesting, Graham, Schwartz and I will be partaking in a drinking game during the show on Monday. We don’t quite know what the conditions for the game will be just yet, but we will make sure to let you know the results!

In the way of less business-like things, today I plan to sit down and play Metal Gear Solid for the first time…I plan on beating it today, too. I played through the remake on the Gamecube, which I enjoyed at the time but since I was perhaps 11 or 12, do not remember anything about it. I’m told that to like that game is to be sacrilegious or something.

Graham and I are making our way through playthrough 2 of Borderlands, intent on getting the most insane guns we possibly can from the game. Chances are, we’ll run through playthrough 3 to see if we can top what we find on playthrough 2. But aside from that we need to cap our levels to even think about entering the Knoxx DLC, so that requires more than 1 playthrough to achieve.

Also been playing through Persona 3, have made it to somewhere in the 20’s in the Tartarus. To be honest, I don’t know why I like the game–there are many tediums–but I can’t stop playing it. Its like Animal Crossing all over again. Plus I am intent on figuring out whether or not I can romance our party members–if not, why does the game keep giving me hints as to what Mitsuru looks for in a man? Also, why does she look like 27 to everyone else’s 14? Why is Junpei such an idiot? Why do I just stand there when people tell me very personal things? I feel like a heartless brick or something…not that bricks have hearts, but, you know. It’s just he way I stand there looking blankly at them…I weird myself out. But people keep throwing themselves on me and everyone wants to be my friend! What the hell!

I ended up trading in MAG…I just couldn’t enjoy the game. Lots of neat ideas, sure, but it just couldn’t deliver. MAG has very little soul…and less of a lot of other important things, like gameplay. I got Uncharted 2 as well as the Sonic energy drink, which I will write a review of…sometime soon. Anyway, I played through the first couple of hours of Uncharted, and man, I’m just in awe. Not only is the premise fresh and interesting–you’re the supposed descendant of the explorer Sir Francis Drake; a treasure hunter with a shady past looking for the fabled lost ships of Marco Polo. And the production values on this game is just plain insane–it reminds me a lot of Avatar. Avatar presented such a rich, living world–small details like the glow of the flowers at night to the majestic landscape made my imagination run wild with the sheer beauty of what it was witnessing. It’s the same thing with Uncharted, and the narrative benefits all the much more from it. People will tell you that it’s always gameplay over graphics. Rubbish. I want them both. And either way, we’re primarily visual creatures–whats wrong with wanting something that entangles your strongest sense? Still, video games have a long way to go in terms of narrative and storytelling. It’s always a pleasure when you get the best of both worlds, though.

Onwards, to next week!