Uncharted Trilogy

 

Naughty Dog's Uncharted was a new IP back in 2007, and a system seller for the Playstation 3. Currently it has four available titles, is immensively popular and is also well loved by critics. As I started playing the first part, I knew that I was in for an exciting adventure.

Meet Nathan Drake, enthusiastic treasure hunter of old artifacts who is talented with both languages, guns and being funny in overall. Together with his friends Elena and Victor they search for Francis Drake’s fortune in South America, which is connected with El Dorado.

The main theme of the soundtrack is pretty good! It plays as an action third person shooter set during exotic locations while going on with unraveling mysterious areas and treasures. Somehow, it's all very similar with Indiana Jones.

Enemies were ridiculous in their amounts, but I suppose that could be called game logic. Still, near the end in particular the church shootout was challenging. Before that, the enemy waves were do-able, even the unexpected monsters found later on.

The climbing physics were fun in a different way from for example inFAMOUS. The cast was likable, especially Nathan was funny intentionally and unintentionally whenever dying in a silly way.

As for the puzzles, these were too simplistic. Everytime Nathan opened up his little book, the clues were in your face.

Whenever you would sometimes get lost by the detailed graphics, you would sometimes find smaller treasures that act like trophy achievements. This is one of the few times for me where they actually make sense to have a reward system surrounding these precious objects. 

The technical and production values are seen back by the colorful detailed graphics, voice acting and animations. These continued to get even better with each sequel, but I am honestly impressed at the amount of details designed here already.

In overall, Uncharted is rightfully an entertaining game and Drake's Fortune happens to be just the first entry. I am pretty sure that the best has yet to come!

Rating: 8.2

An explosive sequel where the scope of the settings increased dramatically, and the action sequences could easily be described as a summer blockbuster from Hollywood.

In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Nathan, his mate Harry Flynn and colleague Chloe Frazer have an agreement upon going after the mythical Chimsala Stone, rumoured to be hidden in Shambhala somewhere.

But the road is long ahead, as Drake will journey through Turkey, Borneo, Nepal and Tibet before arriving on the destination. Through these transitions, old friends and new villains are appear. Victor takes a minor role but Elena is more involved with Nathan's troublesome adventures.

And boy do these adventures get crazy sometimes. From a falling train at the very beginning to a collapsing building during a civil war to a giant hidden temple of ice and platforms, there certainly were a variety of locations present.

Especially the parts of Tibet were astonishing for me. The culture was well presented. I thought the snowy mountains of the Wii game Cursed Mountain were already impressive, but the ones seen in here are just sick. (although to be fair, the mountains were used differently in each game)

Lavericius was one tough son of a bitch as a final boss as he wouldn't go down easily. The excuse of quantity from the Serbian army was more plausible than the large group found in Drake's Fortune because they felt more authentic as mercenaries.

Among Thieves is a very good game that builds upon what was achieved with the original with everything, but the best part is that it's such a lengthy game with many satisfying moments of success.

Rating: 8.7

Very similar to the previous one, except that the settings and story are different.

In Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Nate and Sully experience a deal gone wrong in England, but are still able to continue their latest journey, involving around uncovering the lost city known as Iram of the Pillars, and using the tools and hidden notes left behind by Francis Drake.

Since the focus is on these two this time, the other support characters Chloe and Elena have minor roles. The new villains Talbot and Marlowe plus the new minor character called Cutter are fine.

After leaving London, the two find themselves in eastern France, looking for a clue which might pinpoint where to go next. Meanwhile, Chloe and Cutter are investigating the other possible location in Syria.

As the latest wave of enemies keeps the tensions going, and after the 4 characters reuniting, Nate and Sully alongside Elena find themselves stumbling upon an ancient underground tomb in Yemen. There it becomes clear that the final destination will be somewhere in the center of the Rub' al Khali desert.

What Drake's Deception easily does better than the previous ones in my opinion is the amount of different puzzles being available. Also, I liked how I noticed the references towards blockbuster movies such as the final action scene in the James Bond movie The Living Daylights.

The desert chapters were spectacular, with mirages and hallucinations appearing, a cavalry moment, the sandstorm or just walking around aimlessly, looking for water. What I also noticed just now is that each Uncharted game ends not only with a hidden location, but mythical enemies as well.

Also somewhat new towards this entry is playing a chapter during Drake's youth in Colombia, where the relationship between his best friend is created. Marlowe's background remains unknown, but I could imagine.

So it turns out that the Uncharted trilogy is a very good trio of action adventure games with platform and puzzle elements that have easily captured the magic found in typical successful action movies. I'm sure that Sony and Naughty Dog are very proud of these titles as well.

Rating: 8.6

Mother Trilogy

 

The first had been an obscure Japanese release for a long time, until emulation caught up with the West and thus, discoveries in the East were getting made. Mother uses a traditional battle system similar to Dragon Quest where basic action can comply. 

As Ninten, you are on a quest to unravel the mysterious phenomenon occuring at your home town. As you recruit new friends, you notice that the setting is more of recent times, with modern NPC's, baseball bats instead of swords and more ideas such as being able to bring back fallen allies using hospitals.

There are also weird scenarios that made their debut here and never really went away with the trilogy. In Mother, there is for example a dream world that is important for the quest to continue, and some enemies are rather odd, such as hippies attacking your party.

Like many old RPGs, Mother suffers from illogical walkthroughs and offers very low knowledge towards items, PSI(magic), weapons etcetera. To smoothen the gameplay, I sped up the level grinding by use of the “Easy patch”, which honestly made the game more enjoyable for me.

In this age of video gaming, I must try my best to play as many interesting games as I can and beat the majority of them if possible. So, while there are no major faults with this RPG, it does show its age.

Rating: 6.4

 

Massive improvement over the original Mother, EarthBound, which is the more recognizable title of this sequel, is a favorite of seasoned SNES gamers. 

With it’s many references towards pop culture, wacky dialogue, odd mood and strange themes playing, it’s one of the quirkiest RPG games I have played. That is in essence why this title is still beloved and remembered by many today.

The difficulty is more fair in here, plus the length of the game is pretty big. The graphics are cute in their own way, and did not hinder the modern 90’s based setting. Never mind the fact that molecules, annoying old party men and abstract arts amongst other enemies for instance can be aggressive against your party members. 

The soundtrack is quite diverse, with a few outstanding ones, plus some remixes from the NES game. I enjoyed the Threed, Moonside and Fourside songs, the dungeons were most of the time forgettable though. And perhaps EarthBound relied a bit too much on so much weird occurences that it kind of hurt the overall score. 

The final boss Giygas is easily one of the most unique ones out there, worth experiencing after all that traversing, level grinding and unusualness. It's the same alien from the original, and this time, he is defeated in an entirely new way.

Nothing beats the Moonside area though when speaking of total unexpectedness. It’s probably one of the best trips you can have inside video games. So Mother 2 has plenty to offer for many of us, but it is understandable if you cannot grasp the excitement around it.

It is simply one of those games that you probably had best grew up with in order to truly love it.

Rating: 7.6

 

It ends with a bang, so to speak. Situated at the Nowhere Islands, away from the settings of the other two, Mother 3 comes with new features, a varied new cast and a touching story that will no doubt hit you at certain times, despite the game’s quirkiness, as fans of the franchise are already used to.

While the traditional turn based RPG gameplay is still here, as well as the humoristic parts of it, it comes with a new rhythm based feature that is sort of akin to how Paper Mario games reward players when they hit enemies at the right time. 

Instead of watching closely when to strike them in Mother 3, you must listen to the beat each tune provides during battle, in order to score more hits. While it isn’t necessary to use this feature, it will certainly help out anyone who is prepared to memorize the tunes and thus, deal way more damage.

That isn’t to say that the overall difficulty is noteworthy lower, on the contrary, this third entry is around the same really, if you forget about Mother 1’s tremendous amount of grinding. Bosses are unexpected adversaries of varied origins, and likewise it goes the same with the regular enemies, that can start from strange roadblocks or flying mousses, to the craziest, including Horseantula’s and Negative Man, who is depressed about everything. 

The story is about a troubled family that eventually gets separated from each of the members. While a mysterious pigmasked army has come to do malicious business around the once peaceful village and other areas, you will meet up with another bunch of bizarre characters, such as 7 “transexual sages” of some kind protecting magic needles, mole crickets and peculiar oxygen supply machines along your long journey.

The length is split up between chapters. The first few of them will let you control different kind of characters, eventually all related to the overall story, but starting from Chapter 4, you will control Lucas as the main protagonist from now on.

What Mother 1 and 2 established as a way to deposit or withdraw items and/or money has been changed here to quite different characters. Now, homeless men and wandering frogs will fill their roles for these desires, and hospitals no longer seem to exist.

In fact, I don’t even know if it’s possible to revive party members in this game by myself, because I would usually find a revitalizing machine or a hot spring that both fill up the party’s health to the maximum. 

The comedy most of all comes from the bizarre situations and characters you encounter during the game. As far as I know, there aren’t that much pop culture references as there were in EarthBound, but feel free to prove to me otherwise. I did however notice one that brought a smile to my face at New Pork City in the theater. There, a reference towards the classic movie Cinema Paradiso(1988) is readable.

While maps got introduced with Mother 2’s towns, I must say that they have been improved here, for allowing much more locations to have maps now, resulting into navigating around much easier and more comfortable.

Several characters have also returned, such as the Mr.Saturn’s, some familiar NPC’s which are quite taller and even Porky, who has now become the main antagonist and the final boss. He’s old and sick now though, so he resides in this dangerous looking machine that seems to be keeping him alive.

He wishes to see the end of the world, get rid of everyone who hates him and while doing so, turn it all into one giant toy ground for his ultimate pleasure. At the endgame, you must first overcome Porky’s twisted Empire Building, which involves cameos, tricks and challenges. 

After Porky defeats himself, the story then ends with a sad piece of tale about two brothers confronting each other to settle family issues. Well, after that, it truly ends, but what happens to the people of Nowhere Islands is up to the player’s imagination.

Rating: 7.8

All in all, while they won't appeal to everyone, even when speaking of RPG's in general, the Mother trilogy has a specific own style of approaching traditional thinking, as they blend their odd characters, story and settings, while adding in lots of humor and charming dialogue. In short, they are an oddity when it comes to RPG's. 

They're good games in my eyes, and they are masterful games in other eyes. I'd say, for the best introduction, especially try EarthBound first, and then decide how to go further. Lots of gamers grew up with that game, but not me, I just went from 1 through 3. Still, even I can conclude that it's recommendable to play at least once.

Metroid Prime Trilogy

The adventures of space oriented bounty hunter Samus Aran got their grand 3D debut with the game known as Metroid Prime, releasing with Metroid Fusion at the same time back in 2002 and they marked the return of perhaps Nintendo's earliest resurrection of a franchise.

Retro Studies was guided to design these new worlds and perspectives that Samus would soon be going through. Defining the trilogy as first person adventures, they left behind immersive and memorable entries.

Metroid Prime gained popularity because the formula introduced in Super Metroid, which has been used by Konami's Castlevania's many times as well, was succesfully transfered through 3D, a feat that no one expected to be able to be done.

Not only that, but the world of Metroid would be given more depth, with tons of information objects to be scanned by the visor, a new feature that offered much new and established lore. They provided much intrigue, not only for reading more about the various alien species, geography and more, but also because it was curious to discover them on your own.

A stunning soundtrack would give the various areas to explore fitting songs that sparked with heroic and epic moments of feelings, as you were controlling the world's most brave female warrior. With Metroid Prime, the story of the trilogy starts on the planet Tallon IV.

After the prologue, seeing Ridley, her nemesis, Samus lands upon the planet not only to hunt him down, but also to investigate the history and surroundings. Both Space Pirates, an evil race, and Chozo's, an ancient race that raised the protagonist, had colonizations here.

Traversing and encountering many new creatures, as well as recovering her equipment and upgrades that allow for new routes to be taken, eventually it becomes clear that a substance known as Phazon pretty much created a lot of wreck and havoc on the planet.

Reaching the Impact Crater, the final area of the game, and after defeating Ridley, Samus confronts the Phazon mutated beast called Metroid Prime, and she must stop the beast before it releases more of the substance before all of Tallon IV is lost.

As monologues don't happen, all of the "communication" happens through dialogue, but even that is limited to information that has been found with the scan visor. That's fine. The focus is on exploring and recording notes.

Metroid Prime has plenty of platforming and shooting sequences, but it is balanced out nicely with the interaction of gaining more information, exploring and really just discovering not only new area's, but new sections of older ones as well.

Backtracking is normal for these kind of games, and Samus is also able to do the majority of movements previous known, such as the unique Morph Ball, which not only acts as a way of moving around more suitably and quickly, but also provides fun puzzle sequences and lets you find out about hidden items.

Items that consist of capacity upgrades, energy(HP) tanks and more. And that's about everything that is happening within Metroid Prime, a game that is absolutely a blast to play. It looks like a sci-fi shooter, but it has an identity of it's known and is different enough to be worth playing.

Rating: 9.0

My personal favorite of the trilogy is Echoes. After Samus's previous adventure, she once again discovers the substance known as Phazon on the planet Aether, a weird world that is split up into a light and a dark dimension, very similar to the concept found in A Link to the Past and Ikaruga as well.

Actually, combine the two, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes comes out of it. The planet is inhabited by the illuminous Luminoth and the cruel Ing, of which the latter is exploited by Phazon. Aether introduced to me two of the most interesting locations in any game I ever played.

The first one, called Torvus Bog, was so beautiful for me, partially because of the graphics but also of the music, that I would had liked to live there for a while if it was possible and minus the vile creatures of course.

The second one, called Sanctuary Fortress, is an area so alien in design that it was a challenge to get comfortable here. The first region called Agon Wastes is simply a waste and forgettable, but the latter two more than make up for it.

Dark Samus, a cliché concept, is also introduced here, but the circumstances are forgiving for this rising. Besides, the theme of the villain, as well as many other tracks are still wandering my mind whenever I think of Metroid.

What's abstract next towards Aether is that your ammunition at one point also becomes limited, using both Dark and Light ammo in order to exploit weaknesses and discover new routes to take. The Screw Attack also marks it's return in Echoes, and it was the first Metroid game to feature a multiplayer mode, a limited one.

I failed to mention this previously, but Metroid Prime and it's sequel had more than one kind of visor. They have always been used as excuses in order to open up and progress further apart from the combat visor, and this time in Echoes, the Dark and Echo visors are designed.

"The Echo visor is based upon echolocation and allows Samus to see sound waves by replacing her HUD with a monochromatic false-color representation." And the Dark visor allows Samus to see interdimensionally between Aether and Dark Aether.

It's best to see these in action rather than trying to explain it to dummies, but they made the current adventure more enjoyable. Lastly, Echoes was criticized for having an imbalance surrounding difficulty.

The mini-bosses were actually harder than the regular ones according to the reactions back in 2004, but I disagree with that. The overall gameplay was certainly more challenging, but nowhere did I found it to be unfair.

It also suffers from being squeezed inbetween the classic original and the impressive ending of the next sequel. Still, Echoes remains my favorite for personally being very expanded upon itself, standing proudly next to it's brethren.

Rating: 9.1

The end was about to come, as Dark Samus AKA Metroid Prime plots to corrupt the galaxy with Phazon overworlds and large obelisks using the supercomputers called Aurora Units, which are reminders of the original Metroid final boss, Mother Brain.

Samus works not only with the Galactic Federation monologially, but is also grouped up with 3 other bounty hunters, of which they differ very much from each other. Rundas is an icy fellow able to travel through the sky, Ghor is a mechanical cyborg like creature and Gandrayda can morph into others.

The controls aren't changed much, apart from being able to use Wii Motion Control now. There are some new features, such as the Command Visor letting Samus being able to call up her gunship. Another feature is Hypermode, which made the game too easy for me.

It is simply a state where you are able to deal massive damage against all enemies for a short while. It also doubles as a plot element for counteracting against being infected with Phazon. Part of the driven story is to recover from getting corrupted too much, a fate that happens for your fellow partners.

The locations weren't as great as the previous ones, but Elysia for example represented a majestic view of an interesting ancient robotic race. The urge of defeating Dark Samus and Ridley once again also kind of made this game the weakest one of the three.

Still, Corruption remains a very good first person adventure like the others as it is essential to recommend if you liked Prime and Echoes already. It doesn't even come close to the dissapointment of Other M, the first Metroid game I reviewed here.

Rating: 8.7

Quarter of a Century

It is no joke that I was born on this day.

What follows is after a quarter of a century being alive, these are my current noteworthy memories, opinions, experiences and beliefs, in general. I will try to keep personal connections as limited as possible, and give you an overview of a general profile of mine alongside trivial information that continues to be important for me.

So life has been the most interesting since that seems to be everything or nothing. In these 25 years, I've been very lucky, with a terrific childhood full of happy memories with plenty of friends to play around with, a great family and I have been very spoiled.

School was finished well, and I am still studying, mainly for the challenge. Through the years I did many kinds of sports: tennis, baseball, swimming, chess. And now Kenpo Karate has consumed my main physical activities since I was 18.

The internet has broadened my worldwide view through educational sites and sooner or later I got more interested into the big topics such as politics, religion and science. Strangely, this wasn't as much as when I was at school. Perhaps because I could decide by my own from now on on what to learn and read about.

At the age of 17, I started developing my own religion, simply because I could. After fleshening it out so to speak, I decided to compress it into a future video game instead, which I still have to develop. That is one goal I intend to accomplish, creating my own game.

My view on beliefs in general is agnostic atheism. That means that I disregard the organized religions for they have the burden of proof, while I do not disclose that a higher intelligence could exist. In this case, extraterrestials and entities beyond the materialistic world are the same for me with respect towards my position.

Politically, my support lies with the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project. The former says that the marketing and the monetary system have become outdated. The monetary system in particular has become obsolete since reports came out of certain resources getting more scarce and whenever the next huge bailout happened.

There are many topics discussed during the Zeitgeist films about these systems that have made me support their stance on the current state of the world. Planned obsolescence for example I find to be a ridiculous policy. Or how money is created and the whole idea about debt and seeing how it's played out.

The Venus Project offers a possible, non-utopian, non any "ism" (capitalism, communism etc.) solution or replacement towards the current status quo globally using the tools known as science and technology.

In order to cleanse the world from poverty, war, crimes and corruption in the biggest way imaginable, we must share the resources and needs as a common heritage for all the world's people in order for humanity, nature and technology to co-exist.

That, and making all of these resources abundant and sustainable, so that we will be able to live out our lives much better. Jacque Fresco has always fascinated me because he makes so much sense during the examples and life experiences he gives to others.

For example, he says that everyone should not only have clean air and rations, but a relevant education as well. He means that the current educational system is outdated as well and in the future people should learn a global language that everyone else understands, similar to math, chemistry or physics. Without cultural differences so to speak.

Racism by the way is the biggest baseless ideology for me, it's such a shame that it exists. Ethnic cleansing is a sub-topic that is disturbing for me, whoever thought of that one surely created some nasty consequences.

Enough about my opinions and positions, let's talk about something I have yet to experience. Love hasn't come for me yet, but I keep trying to approach it and in the mean time pursue hope and keep myself busy. It's the hardest "thing" to achieve for me. I know a lot about it, but it remains the strangest and illogical status.

I also have a bucket list for a life time, or rather several backlogs. I pursue dreams and wishes, but know that everything has their place and time, even with all of my backlogs I constantly update and plan, practically events change all the time.

And as said several times in other posts vaguely, video gaming remains my number one passion. I am thankful that I am able to have the luxury to continue doing this. I've had SO many positive emotions coming out from them, and well, I just really like them. :)

Cinema and traveling are the other two big occassions to do for me. I've seen a ridiculous amount of the former already, most of all with content, while the latter has only begun for me. Truly I am a hobbyist who enjoys to try out new stuff.

My own blog, Flok Factory. Of course I have enjoyed writing up all of those posts so far! Some of them were harder than others, but I hope that whoever has read them so far from around the world(as I can see at the overview statistics) has enjoyed the entries as well. I have been writing and reviewing a lot since 2006, while I started with FF in 2010.

So after a quarter of a century, I've surely had a great time so far in general! And by the way this post was my attempt at talking about my life in general, I don't think that I was too personal with details here.

Let me end the post with one of my own quotes that I agree with:

"Life is uncertain, unfair and unbelievable."