I’ve been playing the Uncharted 3 Subway Beta for around 2 days now, and as a massive Uncharted fan, it mortifies me to say this…but I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Beta, but in the Subway demo’s current state, Uncharted 2 feels better. Somehow things have changed drastically between the Beta and the Subway demo and it has not been for the better. It boils down to the following issues:
- Players have alot of life/Weapon damage is low.
- Weapons no longer have stopping power.
- Weapons recoil in a random manner
- Sprint has a very long duration, short cooldown, really fast, and is too controllable now. In a sense there is no drawback and no point in ‘not sprinting’ now.
Naughty Dog have admitted previously that they made a mistake with the UC2 1.05 patch, and I think there was a conscious decision made this time to make it harder for players to die, hence the changes. But I believe that the combination of the list above contribute to the growing dissatisfaction amongst players that it just takes too long to kill someone.
With the new recoil, aiming down sights no longer feels fun but frustrating because there’s no real way of controlling the recoil, even with burst fire. This has lead to players resorting to the fact that hipfiring is still quite accurate, takes less effort and has become a more effective way of getting kills. It was bad n the Beta, but somehow it feels even worse now, which brings me to my next point.
The biggest culprit for me is the new sprint. It feels much faster than the Beta and the worst part is that you can turn very quickly with it now. It just doesn’t feel right and looks/feels quite comedic. As a result, the pace of the game feels too fast now. The sprint, combined with hipfire, and it just doesn’t feel safe to even stop or take cover for even a second now.
Please bring back the Beta Naughty Dog. There’s still a month to release and I feel there is still hope. Bring back the stopping power, lose the current sprint, and fixing the recoil would be an added bonus. I want to love U3 as much as U2, but it feels like the spirit of Uncharted just isn’t there.
