I haven’t posted about video games for a long time but with the current lockdown, I have had the time to play a lot more.
I have progressed through the Uncharted series from the beginning and am now well into the last release – “Uncharted: The Lost Legacy”.
The first in the series “Uncharted: Drakes Fortune” was released in 2007 and the most recent (The Lost Legacy) in 2017.
The one thing that really stands out is the improvement in the graphics with each release. In fact, with The Lost Legacy, it is easy to forget that you are not viewing real actors on film, particularly in the cutscenes. It is the same for most new games.
I can easily see a time in the near future when actors will not be needed with only a much smaller number relegated to off screen motion capture tasks.
I now play these action adventure type games almost exclusively rather than first person shooters. I’m not as agile as I used to be and this makes it hard to get kill streaks in the shooter games. On the other hand, I enjoy solving the puzzles and other things required in the action adventure games. Also, Nathan, Chloe, Lara etc still get to kill plenty of baddies and there is no end to the wanton vandalism and destruction of valuable ancient artifacts and buildings. Naturally, the aforementioned Nathans, Chloes and Laras are trying to save this stuff and defeat the baddies but still, they leave a trail of destruction (and dead bodies).
As I have played these games a number of times previously, I don’t have too much difficulty remembering the solutions to the puzzles and (for Lara Croft) the locations of the tombs.
But the one I still have a problem with is in The Lost Legacy. To release the Queen’s ruby, Chloe has to collect tokens scattered around the map. To retrieve one of the tokens, she has to climb up on a ruin to activate 7 fountains located on top of 7 different elevated structures. Then she uses her rope to swing from structure to structure to deactivate each fountain before returning to the starting point to get the token. She only has a limited time to do this and I always fail by making her jump too early and miss the next target. The tension is made worse with a clock ticking down the seconds and increasing in volume as time runs out.
However, I managed to get it on the 4th try this time, so I’m improving.
Leaving aside the many real and serious problems caused by the lockdown, I have to say that I don’t mind being “forced” to play video games.