Played through Uncharted: The Lost Legacy this evening. It’s a captivating title, produced to the standard I’ve come to expect from Naughty Dog. But, above all, it’s a masterclass in pacing. From intense combat to quiet story moments, it’s all strung together beautifully.
Tag Archives: naughtydog
The challenge of remastering Uncharted
Naughty Dog’s remarkable solution was to cut the entire CPU side of the process in half – while the CPU prepared the GPU command buffers for the next frame, it simultaneously worked on the game logic for the frame after that. The end result sees the ‘critical path’ of CPU code dropping from 25ms to 15.5ms, the only compromise coming in the form of an additional frame of lag (no problem there – doubling the frame-rate more than makes up the difference).
Bluepoint: fix Elena’s face in Uncharted 3 and you have a sale.
The Last of Us: Left Behind
The problem with Left Behind is that it is hard to discuss without spoiling much of what makes it special. Suffice it to say that for me, it was in many ways even more enjoyable than the original campaign. Brilliant.
★★★★★
Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us
If you have any interest in the art and science of making games, watch this. (via Polygon)
As far as I can tell, The Last of Us doesn’t have the same “cheat” options as Uncharted 2. I’m specifically talking about the one-shot-kill option. The game is arguably best played on higher difficulties, but for subsequent playthroughs, just being able to enjoy the story with shortened gameplay sequences would be really great.
In other news, I wonder how Donut Joel would look like.
The Last of Us
The Last of Us is more serious than Uncharted. It paints a picture of a bleak world where desperation and fear are commonplace, and does so masterfully. Its story, though straightforward, is expertly told and—perhaps most importantly—does not insult the player’s intelligence.
★★★★★