More Uncharted Drakes Fortune and Colin McRae Dirt

I was looking forward to a weekend of playing Drakes Fortune and was surprised to finish it on Friday Night.

I think that the linear nature of the game takes the player through more quickly, even though there is plenty of content.  In an open world game I spend so much time messing about and exploring that the total playing time is extended massively.

The more I played, the more prescribed the climbing and jumping sequences felt.  I am going to give them a bit of credit, though.  There is a sequence in the game where Drake has to jump from place to place inside a temple along a particular route to reach two levers which give him access to the next area.  It is a lot like several sequences in Assassin's Creed II.  There are no comparable section in the first AC game, and Drakes Fortune pre-dates ACII by a year.  Though the Uncharted version was not so extravagant, and although there have been a lot of ledge hanging and swinging and jumping sections in plenty of games, not least the Tomb Raider games, I can't help feeling that this specific one might well have served as inspiration for the game which followed it.

Drakes Fortune was paced very well.  None of the sections were too long or short and the peripheral characters never tagged along for so that they got annoying.  The acting performances and script were pretty respectable.  Although I was surprised that the game finished when it did it seems with retrospect as though I had a full experience with lots of different types of challenge in contrasting environments.

I recommend that you play this game.  If you don't have a PS3, buy one and play this game.

This is a link to the previous entry I made about Colin McRae: Dirt:

http://therubbishgamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/nothing-dirty.html

Playing Dirt this weekend has probably improved my opinion of it, though not of the co-driver calls which are inconsistent and sometimes far too last-minute.

This is what a car soon looks like if I'm allowed to drive it.

I am now trying all the different competitions in Career mode on Clubman; the second easiest difficulty.  I have started to fail to win some races and my average speed for my career has reduced.  I suspect that I am rushing too much and crashing more often as a result.

The steering controls are pretty sensitive.  On a narrow road in a rally section you are ill advised to pull the stick all the way to the left or right for more than a split second at any sort of speed as you will be unlikely to stay on the road.  The occasions when I've gone too much one way then over corrected and got into a prolonged cycle of weaving all over the road are too numerous to count.

You can see what this picture is.  I don't really need to write a caption.

The races are still fun and the OTT vehicles like buggys and trucks are fun to driver on the uneven roads provided.  The rally stages can seem a bit dull when mixed up with these races though, so purists might prefer Championship mode where Rallying is still dominant and each stage seems vital.

I am surprised that I have not bought Dirt 2 yet.  Another Dirt game (Showdown) is now out and it is nearly a year since I bought the PS3 and I am not catching up.  There are just so many games.