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A friend got me the 1-3 remastered collection for my B-day back in April. I finally got around to playing it. I played a little bit of 1 months ago but the shifty camera made me want to barf when my vertigo was acting up. I marathoned the rest the past 2 days. The first game is really dated. I'm sure it was amazing when it first came out. The jump and grapple mechanics are pretty poor causing me to rage during some of the jumping puzzles when Drake failed to grab onto the platforms I was jumping too. The one thing that has been consistent through the first 3 games is inconsistency in makeable jumps. For the most part you can tell if you can make a jump or not, but sometimes you can make these absurdly long jumps that normally aren't possible... so it gets confusing where to go at times because you're telling yourself that isn't a possible jump, when it is, and the animation is funky looking because its a distance that's not normal any other time. Despite its problems though, the story was really good, and the characters likeable. There were some really great watershed moments too. The second game frustrated me the most. I liked the puzzles, but many of the first games issues were still present, and since there was more action, it compounded the problem. My main issue with 2 is the stupid amount of segments that last under 10 seconds if you successfully complete them... but you never are successful because you don't know what the fuck to do. Its always some moment where if you don't act fast you die... so you die about 4-5 times and then the game points out something that wouldn't be obvious in such a short time frame.... or something you already did and it didn't work, but magically it does once the game tells you about it... this is shit design. Games like MGS and God of War never had to rely on things like this, and it really ruined the flow of the game for me. It story wasn't my favorite either, but I liked the characters so much I went with it. Despite the apparent plot holes of 3, It was my favorite... probably because the gameplay was the most polished, and the vast majority of the issues I had with 1 and 2 disappeared. The puzzles where the best, the journal was more clear, the jump mechanics were better, and the weapons were great. It has a ton of great watershed moments and was just more enjoyable to play for me. The flow of the game kept on going. My only gripes about 3 are the hint system regressed horribly for no good reason, and you could get stun locked to death... which was the cause of 90% of my deaths in the game. Nothing a little bit of muscle memory couldn't fix the second go around, but the die/retry until you take out common NPC's in a certain order, is a bit dated. Boss fights are one thing, common grunts not so much. I'm currently waiting on 4 to download. I enjoyed myself enough to buy the 4th game since I've read pretty great things about it, and I want to play it before it feels like Uncharted 1 to me. Its like going back and playing Mass Effect 1 after playing 2 and 3. Getting stun locked by biotic powers was so damn annoying, especially during the justicar fight. You just forget how annoying it was when it was taken out of the sequels. UPDATE: Holy crap this game is beautiful. I played up to Chapter 9 and had to force myself to stop. The story's opening is leaps and bounds better than the previous 3 games, and they actually did a pretty decent job of making it to where you wouldn't be too lost playing this one without the last 3. You'd miss some subtle jokes, but thats about it. The stealth mechanic is much improved to where each enemy has a suspicion meter. The basic mechanics of the game are the same, except reloading has swapped to Triangle rather than R1. The melee system is basically the same with a few added touches. The aim assist is a big noobish as it basically locks on to enemies as long as you keep snapping in and out of aiming. Its different from BF1 and COD as it actually locks and tracks... odd, you can turn it off at any time. Along with jumping and climbing there is now sliding down slopes into jumps, and a grappling hook mechanic thats pretty neat.