Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Yeah. I'm going to be that guy.
Uncharted deserves accolades for its narrative presentation. The detailed and moody environments, impeccably lip-synced voice acting, and believable, engaging character chemistry really sell the story. Even when the plot did a little shark-jumping in the third act, it didn't feel like it interfered with what was really narratively meaningful.
What did interfere were the terrible controls, and the awfully unbalanced gunplay. Uncharted is full of so many cheap deaths - whether due to invisible enemies and magic bullets, or due to the cover button taking you to entirely the wrong place - not to mention tending to put checkpoints way too far apart, that I simply can't forgive it. I don't know if I've ever been as frustrated with a game as I was on my bajillionth die-and-retry in Uncharted's final hours.
Uncharted isn't the first AAA game to come out with a poorly-implemented and error-prone snap-to-cover system; but it might be the first that also heavily relies on it. I couldn't tell you how many times I tried to hide from an enemy, only to instead lock myself to a wall facing directly at him. With impressive enemy AI that can actually flank you, and destructible cover to liven up the battlefield, it's completely unacceptable for the cover system to be as bad as Kane & Lynch's. (I won't even get into how often I jumped to my death because the control stick direction didn't match the screen orientation.)
When I wasn't fighting the controls, I was fighting increasingly irritating dudes with guns, and unfortunately this didn't go any better. As early as the first third of the game, it ramps up combat difficulty by throwing an absurd amount of enemies at you -- wave after wave of guys with eerily accurate shotguns, neverending grenade launchers, one-hit-kill magnums... since the AI is pretty good, being outnumbered 4-to-1 (on average) can become somewhat unbearable, depending on which side the environment favors. And even ignoring the difficulty, the shooting just isn't fun enough to justify the more-often-than-not excessive number of baddies to mow down.
It's for that reason - not just that the game can seem unfairly difficult (on Normal mode!), but that the combat severely wears out its welcome - that I feel Uncharted is an ultimately flawed experience. The otherwise great story's first and third acts are weighed down by meaningless downtime, killing hundreds of guys with little explanation as to why they're even there. Though it's the only gameplay Uncharted has, aside from remedial platforming and some light puzzle solving in the second act, it really just feels like it's in the way of the story - and frankly, that's a shame.
Better than: Rogue Warrior, Eat Lead
Not as good as: Prince of Persia, The Saboteur
The sequel had better fix all these mechanical problems: or else I'll be pretty upset at The Internet again
Progress: Finished on Normal