badcrumble said:
And I'd still argue that they did a lot to serve the pacing of the game, and the game would be worse without them. Naughty Dog should find ways to make the platforming more fun (without necessarily becoming based on precision and timing), but they shouldn't abandon it.
To be fair I don't think I can tell I know how the game would fare without these.
All I know is how boring they are, they break the pacing from constant shooting well though.
I mean the way they're now, you could remove 80% of the geometry and the gameplay wouldn't lose much anyway.
Giving 2 or 3 alternative routes would certainly do wonder.....like they do in the shooting parts.
dark10x said:
I think they are important to the game as it allows for variety and gives you the opportunity to enjoy the environment. If you distill the game down to only its best features it will become overly repetitive, I think, like Call of Duty SP. These platforming sections, to me at least, are enjoyable enough that I appreciate their existence. If they removed the platforming it would compromise the overall world design as many areas depend on this to work. For instance, climbing the tower in Uncharted 2. The platforming gives you the impression of a large building that you must scale. If they removed it completely, what would you be left with? A cutscene between combat areas? An elevator that takes you all the way to the top? Throwing in some platforming and mixing in combat on the way to the top really improves the experience.
The thing is it's way too apparent that they're there to connect 2 areas, might as well allow us to skip the parts so that we can have the fun parts not being cut by boredom.
It's build as a summer flick after all.
dark10x said:
What about the train? There's plenty of platforming to be done there. What would you have them do instead?
It's very rare that you run into an area that is 100% platforming without any combat and even those that ARE there still help build atmosphere and give the game a sense of place. Working through the icy caverns, for instance, would have been less interesting if there were no traversal elements. It adds to the game.
I DO think they could improve upon it, but I'm not sure in what way.
I mostly play platformers these days so they appear hollow shells of what they could be. Heck I play platformers since I began gaming so I know when I'm having and when I'm being bored.
My point is more about the fact that since they've put trophies and other trinkets to make people replay the game, they might as well go all the way and make the pure platforming parts fun. About the train it'd be vastly more fun if there was say 3 paths and the paths were conditional (stay too long on a pipe and it naturally fall, closing a path...)
