The first time I stepped out of the Anchorhead spaceport I realized that SW:TOR had been missing something for me: the Star Wars part. Tatooine was the first environment I visited that really felt like Star Wars to me.

Now don’t get me wrong, before now the characters have at times felt Star Warsie, particularly the Force users (but I play a Trooper). It helps a lot that Bioware uses the iconic sound effects we all know from the movies. But Coruscant and Nar Shadaa were both basically corridor crawls and very very “level based.” Plus, as Scopique so aptly put it, Nar Shadaa was Coruscant with some neon lights decals applied to it. And while the design of these cities might be ‘canon’ they’re absurd, really. These places don’t feel like they could actually exist, at least not to me.

Taris was a ‘world’ but it was so segmented by impassible terrain that, again, it felt like a bunch of levels joined together. And maybe Tatooine will feel that way too as I explore it. But at least for now I can jump on my speeder and tear across the desert skirting bands of sandpeople and visiting moisture farms and finally, the game feels like Star Wars.

It’s a shame players have to wait so long to see an iconic location, but I’m glad I finally made it!

So anyway, with that out of the way let me tell you today’s story.

My Trooper, Bart, took Cybertech as a crafting skill. He also took Scavenging and Slicing, but no mission skill. That wasn’t a problem until he wanted to make a Mod that used a metal that can only be obtained via Underworld Trading. I went to the broker to see if I could buy some of this stuff (mulinium, I think it was) and I could, but the cheapest price was 10 units for 5K credits. Bart had about 18K credits at the time and there was no way I was going to spend 5K of them on 10 units of metal.

But Trae, my retired Sharpshooter, had taken Underworld Trading (as well as Armortech and Scavenging). He’d been sitting at level 15 in a Cantina since I’d rolled up Bart. I’d been making a half-hearted attempt to log in to queue up some crafting now and then but hadn’t really focused on it.

I love having a ‘family’ of alts who can aid each other though, so yesterday I decided to let Trae stretch his legs. My goal was to use up his “rested bonus” and then put him back on ice, and while playing him I’d send out his Companion to level up Underworld Trading during all those runs to and from the Senate Tower.

I’d removed Trae from the awesome guild he was in since I didn’t want to have to go through the whole “Hello everyone!” thing every time I logged him in to queue some trade skill missions. So all I had for ‘company’ was general chat, and it so happened that when I logged in, THAT person was online and yammering. Y’know the person I’m talking about? Generally they have an obviously female name (Babydoll or Bambi or something along those lines) and they talk constantly and flirt with everyone, often implying an interest in bisexuality so that no one feels left out. The only thing worse than THAT person is all the idjits that react and feed the ego of THAT person. Anyway, it’s a free game and General chat is called GENERAL chat for a reason, so they have every right to use it like an AOL Chatroom, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen so I switched over to my Other tab that has only game-generated text in it.

And that was how I played from level 15 to level 19 or so. Or put another way, from maybe halfway through Black Sun Territory all the way to the gates of the Jedi Temple. I soloed a couple of the Heroics and ignored the others. It was an interesting experience.

I finally started to ‘get’ what people are talking about when they refer to the stories in SW:TOR. Bart the Trooper’s story hasn’t really grabbed me and I hate his Companion, but I love his gameplay. Trae the Smuggler’s story I find to be pretty interesting and I genuinely like his Companion, but I don’t like his gameplay all that much. To try to maximize Bart’s Companion’s good will I have to “go by the book” with my answers, but Trae’s Companion gets as much of a kick out of Trae being a wise ass (under the right conditions) as I do.

But here’s where I make a confession. I’ve told you all that I’m not a huge Star Wars fan. I saw Episodes 4,5 & 6 in the theater when they came out and I enjoyed them, but I’ve maybe seen them once or twice in the 30 or so years since. We actually own them because, y’know, as a geek you HAVE to own them, but I never feel compelled to watch them.

Here’s the new confession: I’m not a huge Bioware fan. I liked Dragon Age: Origins a lot and Jade Empire was ok, but I’ve never been able to get into Mass Effect and while I forced myself to play through KOTOR I didn’t like it very much. Baldur’s Gate? Played it for a few hours, max.

Yesterday, playing an MMO completely as a solo game, I felt like I finally drank the Bioware Kool-Aid. There were some quests and interactions that DID NOT go as planned and left me feeling really tore up. There were characters who I immediately took a shine to, and characters I really hoped I’d get the chance to kill. I was totally wrapped up in the world to the point where I hardly glanced up when the clock hit midnight and 2012 began.

What changed? I’m not sure but I think a lot of it had to do with isolating myself from the distraction of other players and having everything that was said spooled into the chat log. Quite a few times I found myself rolling back the chat to re-read what an NPC had said, and I think I absorb the story better that way than I do by listening to a character speak while I’m paying more attention to what’s going to make my companion happy and what’s going to lead to Light Force points than I am to the actual story.

SW:TOR is an MMO though and I was reminded of that at about 1 am. I was trying to finish The Works before quitting for the night and I came to an object I had to interact with. Another player was standing there, so I switched over to the general chat tab to ask him if he was waiting to interact with the object (I didn’t want to ninja it from him and make him wait for it to reset). A few minutes later I saw someone looking for a group for the Heroic in the Jedi Temple, which was where I was about to go, so I joined up and myself and 3 strangers had a very enjoyable few minutes of completing that Heroic Quest, snagging the holocron after taking down the mini-boss that guards it, and finishing up the other quest we had in the temple.

It was a really nice change of pace after spending the whole day solo, and the Sharpshooter is a great group class because everyone understands that his role is DPS. My Commando is more open to interpretation. I’ve been asked to tank and asked to heal and he can’t really do either all that effectively (yet), but he kicks ass as a solo character. The Sharpshooter is much more fragile and really struggled with soloing Heroics that the Commando farmed for gear without breaking a sweat.

Anyway, SW:TOR works well as a solo MMO and depending on how content rolls out I may wind up willing to pay a sub just for a monthly new story.

Now it’s a matter of combating my altaholism. I read that Jennifer Hale voices the Lady Trooper and I’m tempted to roll one up just to hear her work. And I kind of want to do another Smuggler and go Scoundrel with it. And I need some more crafters anyway. Hmm….

I’m a slow leveler at the best of times. Combine that with starting over after I didn’t really take to my Sharpshooter, and then losing all my credits via a careless click (which had me going back to farm easy heroic quests for loot to sell) and I’m just barely crawling along. I also got my ship late: people will tell you it’ll come at level 15 or 16 but I was 19 when I got mine.

Anyway, so far the ship is a bit of a let-down. I assumed it would function like a house in other games: you’d be able to decorate it to some extent and it’d behave as a ‘rest area’ so you could log out in it. But that seems not to be the case (maybe that changes later). [Update: I just noticed when I left me ship I got a "Leaving Rest Area" message. So even though you don't get an "Entering Rest Area" message I guess your ship IS a rest area.] Getting to it is a chore too, as it sits alone in a HUGE solo-instanced hanger. Why? Why make me run across an empty football field to enter my ship?

I also got an annoying droid with it, to go with my other annoying companion. I was a bit disappointed when I learned that certain classes get certain companions; I hope in some future expansion Bioware opens that up a bit. I’m envious of the people running around with a little R2-D2-esque droid following them. I’ve got a surly cat-man and now a goofball protocol droid. The best part about the cat-man is that whenever I wise crack or flirt, his “affection” towards me goes down. So I do it all the time just to piss him off.

So top of my wish list for Bioware would be a broader choice of companions, a broader choice of ships, and the ability to customize the interior of your ship (I get that customizing the exterior could have an impact on space combat). I’ll be really surprised if we don’t see a cash shop stocked with Companions crop up at some point; that’d be fine with me.

On the other hand, let’s talk about the oft-maligned space combat in the game. Maybe my expectations were pretty low due to all the griping I heard, but I actually enjoy space combat. I wasn’t really expecting it to be EVE Online or X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. And I don’t want it to be. I want a change of pace from running missions, but I don’t want a whole second game that I need to practice to get good at. Jumping in and blowing up stuff in an on-rails mini-game seems fine to me.

One of the things I’m finding surprising about SW:TOR is that it’s not as alt-friendly as I thought it’d be. Since every class has its own story I thought alts would be great. But the truth is that your ‘story’ consists of a small fraction of your missions. Each side has 2 starting planets (2 classes per planet) but then all 4 classes on a side go to the same place. On the Republic side that is Coruscant and it’s a long slog of a zone to get through. The idea of doing it all again with another character isn’t at all appealing.

SW:TOR isn’t alone in this; the days of parallel zones seem to have died out back when EQ2 and WoW launched. Hmm, or maybe Warhammer Online. I guess it’s too expensive to generate enough content for alts to go to different places. Anyway I’m just feeling it acutely because the other game I’ve been playing is EQ2 where for any level range there’re always a few zones you can go and adventure in. By the time Bioware gets around to adding new content they’ll have to focus on level cap stuff, so I don’t expect this ‘funnel everyone through the same zone’ thing to ever improve.

Now let’s talk Holocrons. These are artifacts that (usually) give you character a permanent stat boost, and Bioware hid them in some truly fiendish locations. Of course gamers being what we are, collecting every one soon became mandatory and there are guides with detailed walk-throughs of where and how to find them. I see a lot of angst over these holocrons because getting to them often involves lots of jumping. Here’s another place where I’m running counter to the crowd since I actually find all this climbing around to be pretty fun. I’ve been using guides to find the general area where they are, then I try to figure out how to get to them on my own (though I’ve had to resort to the full walk-through at times).

Basically at this point I’m enjoying blowing sh*t up with my Trooper and running around seeing the world. We launch-day players have until January 20th to decide if the game warrants a subscription or not and I’m still not sure that it will. I hear the higher level group content segments (called Flashpoints) are really long and for me, finding 2-3 hours of continuous time to play a game can be really tough. I did the level 10 one and it was fun but even that took a long time to get through. Most of the Mission Content (that I’ve seen) is meant to be soloed, aside from the “Heroic” daily quests.

Basically I’m not sure I’ll be inclined to pay a sub to get access to a game that I’ll be playing solo almost all the time. If Bioware were to add some 60 minute Flashpoints that I could do with my guild, that’d go a long way to convincing me. We took down a “world boss” the other night and that was a ton of fun; more activities like that, that a busy person has time to partake in, and Bioware might have me for the long haul.

But I really think I played things right with SW:TOR. Before the game launched I was very skeptical and told anyone who’d listen that I’d probably play for the free month, maybe 1 month beyond, and then quit. Star Wars isn’t really my thing and yeah I really am kind of sick of MMOs. My long-term plans haven’t changed though for now I’m having fun.

I also more or less avoided beta. I got into 2 beta weekends and played to level 7 in one of them, and to level 3 or 4 in the other. Barely scratched the surface, so now that we’re in (pre)launch I’m playing for keeps and everything is shiny and new (my Sharpshooter is level 12 as I write this). I’m also not bitter because something I loved in beta got taken out for launch (that’s what happened to me with Rift). The only downside so far is that just about everyone in the guild I’m in did beta test a lot so everyone knows everything. I feel like the kid that was locked in the cellar and is finally being let out to see what indoor plumbing and television is all about. I often (sorry any DoGs reading this) just close chat when I feel like exploring and finding things on my own, but on the other hand when I get stuck its awesome that I have a guild to ask; they’ve been super-helpful.

I’m also going outside my comfort zone, joining PUGs, doing Flashpoints (group content) and even Warzones (PvP Scenarios). Side note: I still suck at PvP.

Regular readers know that I’m usually a die-hard solo player, and ironically SW:TOR seems to cater to that type of player. That fact that there’s a built-in “Hide chat” feature and the Companion system tells me they’re OK with people who want to play this like a single player game.

And in some ways, it’s best as a single player game. There’s a lot of conversing with NPCs and story-driven quests that just work better when you’re alone. They’ve done a decent job trying to make conversation trees group friendly, but these techniques definitely impact how you’ll experience the storyline. When you encounter an NPC every group member picks a choice from the conversation dialog, then a random number is rolled and whomever wins gets to see his or her character talk to the NPC. If everyone is generally on the same page this is fine, but if half the group is driving towards the dark side and the other towards the light side, the party can seem a little schizophrenic. In less extreme terms, if some of the part is picking the ‘cocky, wise-ass’ answers and the other is picking the ‘noble, honor-bound’ answers, it again can make the story feel a bit disjointed.

Playing a sharpshooter is requiring a bit of adjustment too. My skills tend towards ranged and many of them work only when I’m behind cover. Playing solo this is fine and awesome, but in a group that’s mowing down baddies it means that I’m always left behind and if I try to use my skills, the mob is often dead by the time I get a shot off (it takes some time to get into cover, and my biggest damage skills take a couple seconds to fire). I tend to end up spamming the equivalent of an auto-attack since it’s fast enough that I can do some damage before the mob dies. I’m sure this issue will lessen as we get into higher content and fights take a bit longer, though.

That’s all balanced out by the joy of wading into a crowd of mobs, flinging a grenade then diving to cover to use my high damage skills to finish off the baddies while my Companion tanks. Combat in this game is just plain FUN in a way I find hard to quantify. I just love blasting things. Given how much of your typical MMO revolves around combat, this is a big deal and is what’s making SW:TOR where I spend my extremely limited free time these days.

Speaking more generally, it’s an odd, odd game. So it has single player Bioware aspects like giving gifts to your Companions so they’ll like you more. And it has Crafting and PvP and Flashpoints for more challenge group content. And the quests are heavy on story. All good.

But then really basic stuff, they don’t have. Like moving the windows of your interface around? You can’t do that. Or I’m missing something obvious. So chat is in the top left corner (I always put it bottom left) and your enemy’s ‘plaque’ is at bottom right at the end of your hotbars (I never even notice it down there). Speaking of hotbars, there are 4 banks (2 bottom, 1 left, 1 right) and one of them you’ll probably devote to your Companion. These get full pretty fast… (I’ve been playing EQ2 most recently where I have 7 banks of hotbars in my standard UI).

I haven’t figured out a way to do implied targeting. Y’know, target a friendly and when you attack, you automatically attack his target. Nor is there a way to open a target’s target window…again, unless I’m missing something. There is a command (I think it defaults to Alt-T) to target the thing your target is targeting…so target a group mate and hit Alt-T and you’ll be targeting whatever he is targeting. So Bioware is aware of this need, they just stuck an extra step in the middle.

So these omissions are weird and slightly annoying, but not deal breakers for me and as I said, I am enjoying myself. In fact I’m enjoying it much more than I suspected I would. My limited time in the beta had my feeling very “Meh” about the game and I was sick to death of the hype about it (I did my best to avoid as much of that as possible). I wouldn’t categorize myself as a fanboy just yet, but I’m pleased and I’m glad I ponied up for the “special edition” with the free goodies. And I’m really glad I didn’t decide to cancel my pre-order. I almost did, a few times.. glad I resisted the urge.

Nickle tour of my MMO gaming life: I’ve been playing them pretty much since they’ve been making them. I played MMOs before they were called MMOs and you had to pay $6/hour to play on GEnie. Or even more on Compuserve. All the big early players, I played at least for a while. And I might be done.

I came to this realization when thinking about this weekend’s SW:TOR beta. I wasn’t excited to partake in it. I have the client, have the account set up. In theory once it opens all I have to do is log in, and I probably will, just to gawk a bit. But really play? No, I don’t think so.

I was thinking that it just wouldn’t be worth the effort, given that our progress gets wiped on Monday.

And that’s when it hit me. I play MMOs for progress and really only for progress. I don’t play them because the minute-to-minute experience of playing them is fun for me. It used to be; I remember a time where every battle, or at least many battles, felt exciting and interesting. These days it feels more like an exercise in mundane repetition.

Just to be absolutely clear, this isn’t a slam on SW:TOR; the game systems of pretty much all MMOs are the same way. I’m just using SW:TOR as an example, and anyway this is about me and my personal preferences, not about the games, which continue to be wildly popular. Also consider I solo much of the time; battles of course get more interesting as you add more people to them (and therefore more variability). That’s why I liked Rift so much in the early days when people fought the titular rifts.

Anyway I’ll wait for SW:TOR to launch and play it then when my progress will be saved. I’m still interested by all the people talking about how compelling the stories are. In my first beta weekend I only got to level 7 so really didn’t get engaged in any stories that time out. If the stories are really that interesting I’ll stick around, otherwise I’ll just play my 30 days and move on.

I might need to give DC Universe Online another look; as I recall that had combat that was a bit more fun. But why can’t MMOs have combat (and other) systems as rich and interesting and compelling as non-MMOs? How about throwing in the odd puzzle, or climbing section, or something to mix things up? Why do I have to turn to Uncharted or Skyrim to have a good story and fun combat and a rich mix of things to do? Shouldn’t we be getting more from a $15/month game than we do from a 1-shot $60 game?

This one was making the rounds even before the game launched:

Silly, huh? I kind of love it when people weird stuff like this.

Not everyone finds it amusing though. I’ve encountered at least one person, a game designer at a major developer, who is calling on Bethesda to “for the love of god” fix the issue. When someone else asked him why, he said that it breaks the illusion that it is a functioning world and turns the game into a farce.

(I’m not mentioned names or linking to the discussion because that last time I did that the person who I linked to got very upset and has since stopped interacting with me, and anyway I’m just using this one incident as an example.)

I thought this outlook was a little bit extreme, given that the issue is easily avoided and in fact if this video hadn’t been making the rounds very few people would have ever considered putting a bucket on the head of an NPC. Full disclosure: I’ve been playing since Friday and I’m not sure how the person you made this video picked up the item to move it like that. My interaction with things has been limited to ‘click to put it in inventory’ or ‘click to drop it from inventory.’ [According to the YouTube comments shudder you hold down the 'pick up' button...haven't tested it yet.]

If Skyrim was a multiplayer game I’d be more sympathetic to the idea that this is something Bethesda has to fix ASAP, but it isn’t. It’s a completely single player game with not even so much as a leaderboard to compare your progress to that of friends. You should play it the way that you enjoy, and if using the old ‘bucket over the head’ trick breaks the game for you: just don’t do it!

This isn’t the first or the last time that this kind of an issue comes up, and the person I’m referring to isn’t alone. It seems to be a compulsion among video gamers that every corner that can be cut must be cut, and every exploit uncovered must be used. Why is that?

When did we lose the ability to create our own rules and follow them? Who didn’t have ‘house rules’ for Monopoly back in the day? Pen & Paper RPGers make up complete rulesets for themselves. Boardgamers do the same thing. If something about a game bothers them, they come up with a house rule to make it more to their liking.

But as soon as a game turns electronic and starts enforcing the rules for us, we seem to forget we have free will and can layer our own ‘house rules’ over the rules the machine enforces. So make a ‘house rule’ that says “No buckets on the heads of NPCs” and enjoy the damned game!

I spent most of October playing Glitch like a fiend. I logged in before work and during lunch (the beauty of browser-based gaming) and I’d spend altogether too much time in the evenings exploring and enjoying that weird, wacky world. I never wrote about Glitch because I was spending every free minute playing.

Then a freak snowstorm hit the Northeast and we lost power for about 40 hours. I’ve hardly played Glitch since.

Why? I’m writing this post to try to figure this out.

First of all, this isn’t a post about Glitch; Glitch is just the latest victim of game interruption syndrome. If you look at my long history of MMOs and even some single player games, I’ve stopped playing virtually every one (every one that was decent anyway) when something happened to interrupt my habit of play.

This time it was the power going out. Another time it could be a weekend of travel. It could be crunch time at work that doesn’t allow time for gaming, or a bad illness that keeps me bedridden for a few days. It could even be another game.

But my pattern is this:

I get a new game and get immersed in it. It becomes an Important Activity to me. I imagine what I’ll be doing in that game in 6 months. What life will be like at cap. This is My Game now! So happy!

Then I can’t play for a few days. Other things demand my attention and the game kind of recedes into the back of my mind. When I finally can play again, it no longer seems all that important to do so. It isn’t that I hate the game all of a sudden. Quite the contrary. I’ll have every intention of playing every night, but somehow never get around to actually logging in.

Why? I still don’t know. Is this just my ADD firing off? Or are games somehow a little like a drug I get addicted to, and after a few days of ‘withdrawal’ from not playing, I lose the craving?

I’m not talking about interruptions so long I forget how to play, or anything like that. I don’t think it is game mechanic related, or having to do with forgetting what I was working on. These interruptions are much briefer than that.

I don’t feel totally crazy because Chris from LevelCapped was without power for a lot longer than I was and I remember him saying (on Google+, presumably from his office where they had power!) that he didn’t really miss playing. That sounded similar, at least, to what goes on with me.

Or maybe I’m wrong and I really am totally crazy.

So, some final thoughts.

Without booting up Uncharted 2 for comparison, I actually feel like UC3′s gameplay mechanics were actually a bit jankier this time out. Part of that comes from the richness of the animation; it can make small movements more challenging than they should be. You know the drill: you have to climb a ladder but every time you move the analog stick you walk past it since the smallest step Drake will take is a bit too far.

This was’t as big a deal as it might have been for a few reasons. First is that Drake generally saves himself. If you nudge the controller and walk off a ledge, he’ll grab on. You have to actually jump off a ledge to fall. And even if you do that, UC3 is filled with invisible checkpoints and respawns are super fast so you can just try again.

Also, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for me. I love how cool Drake looks when he’s running through narrow passageways, bouncing off walls and stuff.

Honestly I play Uncharted for the narrative and the spectacle, not for precise controls or state-of-the-art shooter technology. Enemies are still bullet sponges (unless you go for the head shots) but ammo is plentiful. Some of the fancy stuff (eg grabbing a live grenade and throwing it back at the enemies) doesn’t always work that well. Drake was constantly hitting a wall with those live grenades and blowing himself up. I quickly learned that it was better just to dive for cover.

I really wish I’d never watched any of the preview coverage of the game, since a few of the best ‘set piece’ moments were totally spoiled by those. [SPOILER already spoiled by preview trailers] As soon as I got on to that big cruise ship I knew I was going to end up in the hold with the ship sinking, for instance.[/SPOILER]

That said, the sense of chaos and bat-shit craziness is amazing. Naughty Dog loves putting you on moving terrain. That’s all I’ll say about that. My jaw was hanging open an awful lot.

I generally play games on Easy these days, but I played Uncharted 3 on Normal and it was still really easy. That’s not a complaint, just an observation. I was glad I didn’t get too hung up since, again, I was playing for the narrative and wanted to keep things moving along. Frustration, for me, can ruin the pacing so easily.

I love these characters and I find that to be a particularly rare feeling in games. I know a lot of folks who love the characters in Mass Effect and Dragon Age but none of those ever resonated with me like Drake, Sully and Elena do. They’re like family! Chloe is back too, and she’s brought a friend.

One really curious choice is that Naughty Dog jumped ahead a few years (at least) between UC2 and UC3 and, well, stuff happened. Stuff that is referred to somewhat obliquely and never expanded upon. I want to know more! In a perfect world we’d get some awesome single player DLC mini-episodes that bridge the gap between UC2 and UC3.

I just adore this series. If I hadn’t already pre-ordered a Playstation Vita, I’d be pre-ordering one today just so I could play the Uncharted game it’s getting. When I finished my first play-through of UC3 last night, I sat through all the credits and then jumped into watching the featurettes included on the disk. Then my cursor hovered over the “Another round” campaign option.

But no, I need to clear my plate for Skyrim this Friday.

Please Naughty Dog: Put my fears to rest and announced Uncharted 4 already. I’ll carve out time in my 2013 fall schedule for you!

I’ve been playing electronic games since there’ve been electronic games to play, pretty much. OK I wasn’t in the MIT lab playing Space War! on a PDP-1 when it was invented, but I lived through the transition from mechanical pinball tables to Pong and from there on out, I was a “Gamer.”

We gamers can be a snarky bunch, and we love to argue and debate and proselytize almost as much as we like to play. In fact sometimes I start to get the feeling that actually playing the games comes second to talking about them.

Then every so often the stars align and I’m 12 years old again and staring at a TV screen that is somehow also a game, and a feeling of joy suffuses my spirit.

I’d lost track of the release date of Uncharted 3 so I was a little surprised when the UPS dude dropped it off (along with a cookie for Lola) yesterday. I wasn’t even that excited when I slid the disk into the PS3 later that night. Even though I’d really enjoyed (and finished — a rare event for me) the first two games, somehow the hype for #3 hadn’t really touched me.

And then I launched the game, and the Uncharted theme started to play and a few seconds later Drake and Sully were walking down a London Street, dressed to the nines, and I was hooked.

This blog post isn’t a review and I’m not trying to convince you that you should play Uncharted 3. There are plenty of reviews out there that you can read and decide for yourself. I’m just trying to remind you of what it’s like to truly love a game, warts and all. When’s the last time you felt that way? For me it’d been a little while. Maybe since Red Dead Redemption.

Uncharted, for me, is about story and chemistry. The actual gameplay isn’t all that special and in parts can actually be kind of clunky. But I am genuinely fond of the characters and I love how much work Naughty Dog puts into ‘throwaway’ actions in cut scenes. A tiny example… as the crew sits around a table trying to unravel a puzzle, Chloe (voiced by Claudia Black) throws out a possible answer. Drake (Nolan North) seizes on it as a good lead and the focus of the scene moves to him. But in the background we see Chloe fist-bumping with Charlie Cutter (Graham McTavish), her new beau and a new member of the team. A trivial action? Absolutely, but that’s kind of the point. It’s tiny details like this that make the experience transcend “video game cut scene” and become “interactive movie.”

If you hate interactive movies, that’s OK. There’re lots of games to play besides Uncharted 3.

In a way, I think the Uncharted series is the West’s answer to Final Fantasy. I play both series to get to the next chunk of story, and the stories in Uncharted are good enough to pull me through to the end of the game. That isn’t always true with Final Fantasy: as a Western series, Uncharted’s stories are much less obtuse than they are in a typical iteration of Final Fantasy, too. That helps keep me involved.

Before yesterday I’d been sitting on my hands, squirming in anticipation for Skyrim to release, but now I can’t wait for the work day to end so I can jump back into Uncharted 3. I can’t wait to see what happens next, and I can’t wait to see how Elena (Emily Rose) is going to factor into this episode’s adventure. I love these characters the same way I love Gandalf or Malcolm Reynolds. The fact that they appear in a video game is almost beside the point. Journeying through their adventures with them makes me happy. And making me happy is what games are (generally) supposed to do. [Qualifier to allow for the few 'message' games that are out there.]

This week I was back in Best Buy and now they had an Xbox station set up running the Forza 4 demo with the MWSW. I gave it a whirl and it actually felt pretty good. Much better than I thought it would. I was in need of a bit of retail therapy anyway, and the next thing you know (OK truth? I had to go to 3 stores to find it in stock. Target had it) I’m the owner of a copy of Forza 4 and the wheel.

Last night I spent a few hours driving with it, and I continue to be impressed, but let’s get the bad news out of the way first. There’re no bumper buttons and no jack for a headset. I don’t care about the latter but it was enough to cause Scott to cancel his pre-order. I do miss the buttons; they aren’t used while driving in Forza but they are used while navigating the interface. Also in other parts of the game where you’d use the right analog stick to move the camera around…you’re out of luck. The Wheel has no analog sticks.

This wouldn’t be a huge issue except that (unless I’m missing something) the Xbox 360 is stupid about having two controllers connected at the same time, without two Xbox Live accounts to go with them. Switching between Wheel and standard controller was a hassle, forcing me to constantly log in to my Xbox Live account each time I picked up the other controller. Eventually the system got so confused that the main display thought I was logged in but the pop-up ‘blade’ display [what do you call that?] thought I wasn’t.

I’m no Xbox 360 guru so if there’s a better way of handling this I’d love to hear it. I don’t mind setting down one controller and grabbing another between races if I don’t have to do all this logging in and out.

So that’s the bad stuff. The good? The wheel works really well when actually racing in Forza 4. I could hold a line nicely and my lane transitions were very smooth. At the end of each arm of the U, underneath, is a trigger. The right is for gas, the left is for brakes. There’s a D-pad on the tip of the left arm, used for shifting, and the face buttons are on the tip of the right, used for handbrake, clutch, look back and rewind. The game defaulted to a manual transition and I decided, for once, to stick with it. Shifting quickly came to feel natural; as you hold the Wheel your thumb rests easily on that D-pad.

How you hold the wheel doesn’t matter (in Forza at least). You can hold it up vertically or almost rest it horizontally in your lap. I thought my arms would get tired after a while but that wasn’t really a problem. Sometimes I’d rest the base of it on my lap while driving. You can also easily scratch your nose in the middle of a race…steering one-handed for a few seconds isn’t a problem using the wheel.

The wheel is heavier than you might expect it to be but that gives it some…inertia maybe? I think if it was any lighter you’d lose some stability. Eventually one hand started to cramp a little bit but I think that was due to my deathgrip on the thing during tense racing action.

According to the docs, the wheel can read pitch and yaw in games that require it to, so presumably it’d be a good controller in flight or space games too.

I do think Forza 4, or other games that have a simulation feel, would be a better fit than an arcade racer where you’re throwing your car violently into turns or ramming other cars off the road. The wheel feels like it’s better for finesse than for radical movements, and Forza 4 is a game of finesse. You rarely have to turn more than (total guesstimate) 20 degrees. Turning the wheel more than 90 degrees would feel really awkward.

As a test, at the end of the night I put down the wheel and picked up the controller and went back to Forza 4. Sure enough, my driving suffered. Maybe you’re better than I am, but I find in driving games my car tends to wobble a bit as I push the analog stick through the dead zone and then over-steer slightly as I leave the dead zone. I can correct of course but it doesn’t feel or look like real driving. With the wheel my replays look like there’s a person actually driving the car.

If you have a force-feedback steering wheel, I’m sure that’s going to be better than the MWSW. But for those of us without the room for a proper wheel and pedal setup, in my opinion the Microsoft Wireless Speed Wheel is a better alternative to driving with a standard controller.