Got it for 'Free' - The Games I've Played

When you buy a console, it's traditional that you also get a free game or two with it. It's the way things work. Back in the day, you bought an N64, you'd get a Mario 64 with it.

Buy a wii, get a wii-resort game. Buy a ps3, get a free Uncharted 2.

Now, let's go back in time to March of 2011, before this I had NEVER owned my own console. I'd played other friend's games, but never one of my own. I didn't know any better of what I would like and what I didn't, or even what controls I would like, so this game. . . oh this game. . . it broke me and is part of the reason that I hate certain types of games and avoid them to this date. One of the funniest things that this game taught me was what type of controls I liked using. In a weird twist of me not knowing what I liked and what I could do, you can invert or not invert ALL of your controls, and then you can do it again when you're zoomed in when targeting with a gun. My controls were so backwards. In one form they were inverted, in a different one they weren't. I had such a hard time understanding the controls, because I was brand new to console gaming, but I don't blame the game for that, I blame more of me trying things out and making the controls much more complicated than they ever needed.

You see, it's a semi-decent triple A game. It has everything that the sterotypical gamer would want out of a game. It's got the stealthy stealth sections, shoot 'em up sections, puzzle sections, and of course the hot girl sections. The graphics are okay, the music is okay, and all of the things that you'd normally review with a game, this game does decently well. All of the things that game reviewers said that I should like were there, but I didn't like them.

Let's start with the story. There's an item! Go get it! Yeah, that's about as much as I can remember. The story didn't really grip me. I didn't care about any of the characters, it didn't grab me and make me want to find out about them more, and it didn't give me anything more to work with than that. This was also the start of my rule of, if it's got the number 2 or higher in the title, I need to do more research. I'm 99% sure that if I understood what in the world happened in the first game, I'd understand and love the characters in 2 a lot more, and actually care about the story.

Respawn points/ checkpoints. I didn't know that I hated them until I really played a game with checkpoints like this. The theory is simple, if you die, mess up, or otherwise don't play the game right, you start back at the last checkpoint. The problem? What in the world is going on? Why is this never explained? How in the world do I just keep popping back into reality with all of my limbs intact and having to talk to the exact same people yet again, just to have the people not realize that I'm going to kill them this time? I don't like checkpoints. They are there so that if you ever get off of the linear story line that is set up for you, that you hop back on and have to finish up what the developers want you to do. I quickly learned through this game that checkpoints are there for game producers to force you to do something the way that they want you to do it. I still remember the stealth section and how frustrated I was with the checkpoint system because I had to keep listening to the same things over and over again. We'll get into checkpoints with later games, don't worry, I'm not done with you.


Difficulty- This is where I don't understand some games, especially first person shooters or action games like this. Difficulty never came through anything more than a guy taking more bullets to take down than usual. That was the difficult part, something was tankier than others. The puzzles never got harder, the directions were always clear, and I always knew exactly what Drake could do and what he couldn't. For example, Drake is a climber. He can scale up and do jumps from ledge to ledge like a mountain goat. He's a nimble little guy that has crazy upper body strength that lets him climb all over things. . . but only ones that are slightly more yellow than others because those are the ones the developers want you to climb on, everything else is a no go.

You can see EXACTLY which bricks you're allowed to work off of, they're the ones that are shaded unlike anything else in the system. Now, this is okay to highlight them at earlier levels. Let me know that walls, pipes, and other things are climbable, but then to keep that same system there until the end of the game? It makes me feel like the game is just handing me things.


Superhuman human. Drake is supposed to be a normal guy. Normal guys don't get shot, shake it off by hiding behind a wall, and are just fine. This was the start of my hatred towards regen health that has no explanation. If you're going to do crazy things like have me be able to run around without taking damage long enough to heal all damage done to me, at least explain how normal Joe is able to do it. There are some great games that approach this and explain exactly how and why you're able to eat bullets, hide, and then feel okay. This, along with checkpoints, made it seem like there was no challenge in the game. It wasn't a game that would be fun, exciting, or test me on skill, it'd be a test of how many times I could run away and heal up or just respwan and start at the last checkpoint. Everyone is going to do pretty much the same thing, and you might as well just strap me on the choo-choo train of story telling so I know that nothing I do will ever alter the story no matter how many times I die, or how many bullets I catch with my body, the ending is always going to be the same.


I can't complain about much with this game. As a whole, it's a solid game, but the core mechanics of what people consider essential to a great game make me sort of sick to my stomach. If I wanted a linear story where I had no input on what is happening, I'd read a book or watch a show. I play a game so that I can interact with the story and make a difference in what is happening.