Why Nathan Drake Needs To Die

THE Uncharted series has arguably been the defining experience of PlayStation 3: fantastic gameplay, trailblazing graphics and a magical playability rarely matched by any studio on any console.

That, and it’s packed with more one-liners than Jimmy Carr doing cocaine (lawyer’s note: he doesn’t do cocaine, he just doesn’t pay tax).

 But the series’ brilliance is exactly why I don’t want another entry.

Naughty Dog are like Pixar. They don’t churn sequels for the sake of dollars, they carefully cultivate IPs, creating a second – or third – story in a franchise only if they think they can top the original. Uncharted 3 is Naughty Dog’s Toy Story 3, arguably the best in a brilliant series.

Crash Bandicoot gracefully made way for Jak & Daxter when the company’s output took a slightly more mature slant, then the eco-freak and his ottsel were binned in turn, despite protestations of fans (myself included) who wanted to see a lush HD sequel on PS3.

Now Naughty Dog faces a dilemma. Do they move Drake and Sully into the PS retirement home alongside Crash, Spyro and Parappa The Rapper, or do they bow to inevitable fan (and Sony) pressure and launch Uncharted 4 on PS4?

While it seems certain a fourth entry will appear, there is evidence to suggest Drake’s already unpacking his Atlases and eyeing up the shuffleboard rota.


 A rating leak for Uncharted: Fight for Fortune, described by a Brazilian ratings board as a ‘card/casino’ game is possible proof that the series is being sidelined for something new.

Adam Trueman: Nathan Drake beefcake?

Well, perhaps it’s time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m Uncharted’s biggest fan. I’ve played all three PS3 titles at least four times each, uncovered the treasures, committed entire clipscenes to memory and eyed up potential people to play Drake in a movie (that bloke who plays Adam Trueman in Casualty is the spit, by the way).
 

But, just like the rabid Star Wars fans who don’t want Episode 7 (let alone 8 or 9), I don’t want to see the series continued ‘just because’ it’s popular (read: makes buckets of dosh).

It already feels like Uncharted 3, plotwise, stretched things a bit. This evil could destroy the world! Let’s find the lost secret city! Again! Last time a train crashed. Let’s crash a plane! This massive, unkillable hand-to-hand combat fighter keeps turning up for some reason! The evil killer spiders are chasing us again but seem to play no actual role in the overarching plot!

I loved the game, but it didn’t make nearly as much sense as the first two, and I’m worried a fourth (discounting the Vita prequel) will be a further mixture of retreading and mild confusion.

One major positive about Crash and Jak is that they were left behind once they’d become outdated and the company went on to make fresher, more modern things.

Not for the first time, I’ll point out the absurdity of a seemingly conscientious, well-meaning bloke -  Drake - who ruthlessly guns down hordes of enemies and then bleats on about doing the right thing to lovely, concerned Elena.

Then there’s the general Indiana Jones-style ‘mythical fantasy’ bent underpinning the plots and the puzzles (who constructed these huge rooms full of metal bits to cast a shadow on a wall which would unlock a door, anyway?) and it all starts to feel like a series that has outlived its believability.

What’s the antitode? The Last Of Us, of course.

The gritty new IP may not be to everyone’s taste, but it shows exactly how the studio can transition from an almost comic-book style OTT adventure to a more realistic, more genuine and consequently more emotive experience without losing the gameplay, graphical and storytelling work that’s gone into Drake’s outings.

Sure, lead character Joel might crack wise once in a while. But it’s only to relieve the tension after he’s cracked the skull of a fellow survivor - intent on ending his and little Ellie’s lives in cold blood - in their desperate dog-eat-dog struggle for survival.

It’s the natural evolution: an even more grounded, gritty and groundbreaking series is about to be born – if the game lives up to its promise -  taking what’s been learned and applying it to gameplay created for 2013, not 2006.

That means it might well be time to pack Nathan off to the home, while we still remember the good times.

Come on now, Drake, there’s bingo in a minute. Sit down in that nice armchair by the fire. It’s for your own good.

Handhelds aren't dead. But they should be killed anyway.

Is Xbox Surface the dawn of a brave new era for handheld gaming - game-centric tablets?

Dedicated handhelds are dead. Vita was practically stillborn and 3DS is a pale imitation of its hotcakes predecessor. No-one wants them and the handheld as we know it will cease to exist within three years.

Or so the internet would have you believe. But then, if you believe everything you read on the internet, peanut butter gives you cancer, Robert Pattinson is gay and the Government’s reading your emails and it’s all a big conspiracy, maaan.

But while handhelds are doing okay, Sony and Nintendo need to realise 2012 is a different world and forge ahead with something truly innovative to stay relevant.

For Nintendo, a family-friendly tablet would clean up. I’ve heard of so many parents looking to buy their (spoiled brat) children tablets for Christmas, but who were uneasy at the thought of having a credit card registered on it and were concerned at what youngsters might be accessing.

But Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD tab has already demonstrated a workable solution. The device supports multiple accounts, with parental controls and even the ability to set time limits for how long it’s used and what (if any) apps can be bought on each account.

But what about the games? That’s easy. The old £40/$60 model has to go out the window. In its place, cheap, pick up and play fare with the option to buy extra levels.

I’m not suggesting New Super Mario Bros be sold for 99 cents. I’m suggesting one level be available for 99 cents, or two or three dollars tops, with the option to buy new ones for another 99 cents each, or an entire world for a fiver.

It would essentially mean one NSMB games’ worth of levels would be about double the price of a normal boxed release, with the flipside being you needn’t buy anything but the initial level for a pittance. Do the same for Mario Kart, Zelda, Layton, and others, and suddenly you have a host of cheap, pick-up-and-play titles providing a steady revenue stream at low development costs.

Use a custom UI Android OS, let it play videos and music and access the Android store, and suddenly you have a tablet able to compete with others on the market while appealing to a section of the market which has yet to be tapped – kids.

But it doesn’t just have to be for youngsters. The same exact kind of model can apply to games for older people. Brain Training/Age could be sold for $2/£1.20 for ten Sudoku grids, for example.

Market the thing as a tab for all the family, with multimedia functionality and the trusted Nintendo brands and the thing will sell itself. Heck, it’d probably be easier to market than the ‘THIS IS A 3DS, NOT A DS’ adverts would suggest.

Microsoft already has, according to rumours, started putting together a games tablet. The internet (see previous disclaimers) claims the PC bods are working on a top-secret 7 inch Xbox Surface tablet, with full Live capabilities, achievements, Xbox controller support and exclusive games.

You see, tablets are what people want. They’re in. Love or loathe the company, when Apple unveiled the iPad, everything changed.

Now 10 inch tablets sell in their millions, while the 7 inch market is a bloodbath of undercutting – Google and its Nexus 7 are going head to head with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Apple’s iPad Mini. All three are different, yet excellent devices and are gaining huge momentum going into Christmas.

Some say games handhelds and tablets are different markets, but I’m not so sure. 

I'm not sure, with 3DS at £120-160, and Kindle/Nexus from £129-199 (the non-HD Kindle is £129), how many people really would choose 3DS instead. Sure it's got New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart and Professor Layton, but I think many people will happily sacrifice dedicated games for the plethora of apps, big HD screens and multimedia.

Put it this way: I'm known as the techie of the office in work. A colleague asked me what she should buy her 8-year-old grandson for Christmas - a Kindle or a Nexus 7. 3DS didn't even come into it.

I realise I’m now the kind of blogger who would have said Nintendo and Sony need to make smartphones to survive a couple of years back, when that school of thought was all the rage. But look at it this way: if Sony had made PS Vita a phone – closer to the PlayStation Xperia phone, but with Vita specs/capabilities - sold it on contract and refreshed it once a year, I’m confident it would have outsold what the Vita has mustered by now.

It’s not that 3DS and Vita aren’t great – I love them both. It’s that the two companies are clinging to the past when they have everything at their disposal to carve out an inventive, innovative future with tablet devices. They won’t die if they don’t, but they’re missing out on the tablet bandwagon, and doubtless a lot of potential sales, too.

For some, tablet gaming is a bitter pill to swallow. For everyone else, there’s an app for that.

Is the little iPad really the next big thing?

Every inch an iPad. That’s the marketing spiel from the world’s greatest PR-come-tech company – but does Apple’s move to diminutive tablet mark a departure from the company’s once-decisive vision?

That’s how it seems. Many have been quick to lambast the 7.9 inch iPad Mini, with its £269 price tag, as being a move which goes against what the legendary Steve Jobs once believed. Anything smaller than 10”, he said, would be too small to be worthwhile and not really a tablet at all.

Fast forward a couple of years and not only is Apple unveiling a 7” tablet of its own, it’s also revealed a fourth iteration of iPad just seven months after the ‘Resolutionary’ iPad 3. It is, as the Twittersphere puts it, ‘powered by the tears of iPad 3 owners’.

All this comes at a time Amazon’s £159 Kindle and Google’s £199 Nexus 7 tabs make serious inroads into Apple’s territory, carving themselves a slice of the lower end of the market. 

Meanwhile, over in Microsoft land, the Windows boffs are bringing Surface tablets to the table – fully-capable Windows tablets with the flexibility of a PC (hello, SD card slots and USB), while a litany of Windows RT and 8-approved tab makers are prepping a range of tablets and touch-screen laptops.

With Android, too, the likes of Samsung continue to make excellent bits of kit while the Google OS grows better by the update.

Has the rest of the market backed Apple into a corner, forcing it to make desperate moves, to go against its own core beliefs?

Not a bit of it. The company is every inch in control of its own destiny. Whatever you make of the iPad mini u-turn, it’s a clever business move. 

Apple execs are not stupid. They know the lower-end tablets are cannibalizing iPad sales. Presented with a smaller, cheaper alternative, many have sidestepped saving up for a pricey Apple app slab and have plumped for one of the Android machines.

 iPad sales will be hit by smaller tablets. So they mayaswell be Apple tablets that eat into that market share. Don’t want a £400 10” tablet from Apple? Buy the 7”. The company is simply ensuring it has both ends of the market covered, in much the same way the iPhone 4/4S is the cheaper choice compared to iPhone 5.

The price? Yes, it is significantly £90-110 more expensive than its nearest competitors. But it’s got that shiny Apple logo on it. People buy millions more iPods than cheaper MP3 players and the same will be true, to a lesser extent, with tablets.

Apple is as sure of itself, as a company, as ever. The question is, has it done enough to stay top of the pile in an ever-bloodier battle for tech space? 

For now, almost certainly. But – as with the iPhone –  the market may soon demand the wheel be reinvented rather than repackaged.