Uncharted 2
It's been sitting in its case for a while. I figured since I owned a PS3, though, I should eventually take a peek at "the best" of the ridiculously high budget heavily scripted offerings.
I'm going to be using some technical jargon here; look up Autonomy/Relatedness/Competence if you haven't read the psychological theory.
The climbing seems really bad. It's bad on Autonomy--there's always one true path for climbing, and the only trick is finding it. It's bad on Competence--it's so unclear what surfaces are climbable and what are not that I end up jumping at lots of walls and looking like a dork. Hell, there was one time when a gate that was supposed to open didn't, and I had to get myself killed to restart the scene properly. They do, at least, make some effort with Relatedness in this category; your allies seem impressed with some of your climbing.
The shooting seems pretty solid. It's good on Autonomy--I've had success with all five of running up to someone and punching them, hiding behind a concrete block and popping up to shoot them, hiding behind a concrete block and blindfiring, stealthing behind an enemy and performing a OHKO, and running around in the open with guns blazing. Different strategies work better depending on the situation, of course, but often several strategies are pretty good. (And when they enforce only one strategy it's usually pretty bad). Competence it's also good on (I strongly suspect some autoaim shenanigans).
The two weapon system I'm...not yet sold on for a 1-player game; I honestly spend most of my time doing ammo management--like "let me put down my main gun for a moment, pick up this one, empty it of ammo, then switch back to my main gun". The one that really annoys me, though is "oh, there was an ammo pickup and a gun pickup right next to each other, and I picked up the gun, not the ammo, because they both use the same button. Damnit! Now I dropped my high-ammo gun -_-." Two weapon system is, I'm sure, great for multiplayer, but it just clashes with the psychological hoarding tendency of players in a one-player.
And...well, honestly, I think I'd like the game more if the main character was female, or if I liked the first supporting female (Zoe). That's more personal taste, though--maybe I should look into the new Tomb Raider--supposedly it's taking a lot of lessons from Uncharted 2 >_>.
The cutscenes and scripted events are "cool", of course. I say "cool" rather than "good", because they're pretty light on character development, and much more about the explosions. But, y'know, nothing wrong with explosions.
Overall the game is...solid. The combat gameplay is good enough that it'll probably rate in at 6/10 or 7/10 on my scale if it continues the way it has (decently high, might even play it a second time, but I'm not expecting it to become a long-lasting favourite).
