Official Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Thread

[semitop]

First review is up and its by IGN. Great looking game... but of course the xbox360 has ODST so its pretty even ...

[pezz]

now I believe when it is said techja is the only life some people have...LOL

[semitop]

now I believe when it is said techja is the only life some people have...LOL

Yeah... considering you managed to post 1-2 minutes after I started the thread it would seem so. How many times you hit the refresh button for that?

[chig]

pezz is the life of techja gaming section, can be found on almost every page of every thread. Remember him defending the making of 20+ threads (mostly by him) for Forza 3 alone sayin that new threads are what keep the forum alive...

anyway on-topic: Uncharted 2 looks good, review is surprising and not surprising at the same time.. I won't be getting this near its release tho I believe my money may be going towards FIFA, until I can get both Uncharted and Uncharted 2 at the same time. Still can't find Uncharted in stores.. Maybe if I bought inFAMOUS when the U2 beta was packed in I'd be thinking differently, cause I have a couple people on my list in the beta and they say its great even tho its just the multiplayer

[semitop]

Tech Analysis: Uncharted 2

Again I havent read this yet, just posting it for those interested

Just read it:

So, despite those additional challenges, the Naughty Dog tech once again comes out on top, effectively sustaining its 30FPS frame rate with no issues. Indeed, if anything, the game seems to be running smoother than ever.

The original Uncharted had a simple, but unrefined solution. It was double-buffered, with no v-sync. Put simply, the game is generating a new frame while the old one is still on-screen. If the new buffer isn't complete by the time the frame is supposed to render, it simply displays the unfinished image (creating a torn frame), purges the buffer and repeats the process. It can look ugly when the engine is under stress, but it ensures the fastest possible response from the controller, and ties in perfectly with the 100ms response time I measured for Uncharted.

V-sync can be deployed in a double-buffer situation, but there's a nasty side effect: if the complete frame isn't ready to be displayed, you'll wait until the next screen refresh to see it. During this time the GPU is effectively idle. It's a poor use of resources and it can be very impactful on the frame rate; the game will literally "switch" between 20FPS and 30FPS when the engine is under stress. Metal Gear Solid 4 is perhaps the most noteworthy example of the use of v-sync double-buffering and its impact on performance and controller response.

Uncharted 2 is more ambitious. It aims to eliminate GPU idling and to maintain v-sync; effectively Naughty Dog wants to have its cake and eat it. Instead of flipping between two frames, it employs triple-buffering, holding one frame in reserve. Rather than produce a torn frame, it'll display the reserve frame instead.

The result is that we get the visual performance we always wanted from Uncharted... You get those spectacular visuals, and you get them without a single torn frame in the whole game. It's not really a case of being difficult to program as such, though there are memory implications; the trick is in doing so without impacting performance. As you can see from the level FPS graphs on all the Uncharted 2 vids in this feature, Naughty Dog has achieved it. Compare and contrast with Resident Evil 5 on PS3, which uses exactly the same triple-buffer technique but still has performance issues and the additional controller lag up against the double-buffered Xbox 360 version.

Naughty Dog done dem monei! Waiting for the 360s rebuttal

[semitop]

This game going to outshine everything else this year it looks like. Wonder if it will be the PS3 game that sells what its worth. Eurogamer.net has put up their review of the game.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is beautiful, and Naughty Dog knows it. About halfway through, the game almost comes to a halt so that Nathan Drake can wander around a village where nobody speaks English and he is unable to run or use any of his small but imaginative range of gymnastic abilities. There is nothing to do but stare at the scenery: children and livestock scurrying across sun-baked mud-tracks crisscrossed by shadows cast from clothes fluttering back and forth on washing lines, the perfect transition of bright daylight to dark interiors, and a spectacular mountain range rising beyond the rooftops in panorama.

The attention to detail is beyond compare. One of the children squirms and blushes with embarrassment when Drake kicks him a football and he holds it to his chest uncertainly; the dark outlines of the clothing on the ground cast by the brilliant sun soften at their extremities, which are devoid of the jagged serration typical of game engines being pushed to their limits; Drake strolls with cautious optimism, as the exceptional voice actor Nolan North throws out a few gentle quips that convey his character's puzzlement without ever seeming contrived or scripted. Ahead of Drake walks Temzin, the hat-wearing sherpa whose dialogue you never understand, but with whom you develop one of the strongest bonds in the game.

Read Review Here

BTW.... TEN OUT OF TEN Btches. lol

Of course the fanboys still dont care cause they have Gears of War and Halo 3 :ODST to play...

I'm running the demo now

[semitop]

Aight the G4TV review is up

Adam Sessler:

I’m not 100% certain when it happened. I think it’s when I had Nathan Drake atop a building in a war-torn Nepalese city, cornered and being fired upon by a helicopter, engaged in a fist fight with the screen slowly draining of color, snapping my enemy’s neck and quickly rolling into cover to reload my grenade launcher only to turn and fire upon the chopper one last time as I watched it crash and explode. I think this is when I realized that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the best single-player game I have ever played.

All the X-Play fans there you have it.

[radkin]

game of di friggin year

[chig]

pretty extensive "demo", or is it really a public beta? I still sifting trying to find my way thru this, tried 2 modes must be bout 4 more i dont reach yet.

[semitop]

You been playing it? Havent seen you online since MAG. The game calls itself a beta so i guess its still a beta.

Graphics nice bad. The water reflectsions, shadows are really well done