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.

Hackers? Do us a favour

Is it right to punish hackers for exposing security flaws which put our personal details at risk?
 
Today a British teenager was arrested over the recent spate of hacking which has seen the likes of the NHS, the CIA and a range of companies like Sony and Nintendo's websites hacked open.

The arrest, co-ordinated by Essex Police and the FBI, saw a 19-year-old who is the supposed ringleader of notorious internet hacking group LulzSec taken into custody.

Yes, he broke the law. But is it fair to punish someone for exposing the security flaws which could have put us all at risk?

Hacking, you see, has become all the rage. Everybody who's anybody (read: a bedroom shut-in nobody) has been hacking into bigwigs' websites for a laugh, leaving messages inside their 'secure' servers and boasting on Twitter about how they could get access to all these companies' personal details. Aka, your personal details.

These are not simple little Norton firewalls. These are, in some cases, multi-million pound security software systems which have been compromised by groups of internet anarchists seemingly intent on watching the world burn, one web hack at a time.

LulzSec's now-notorious logo

But have hackers, like the infamous 'LulzSec' and 'Anonymous' groups, become demonised unfairly? After all, these sites are supposed to be secure websites housing, in some cases, very sensitive data and have been hacked open as if it were as easy as shouting 'open sesame' at the NHS database.

Yes, some of the hacking has been silliness. The news site PBS posted a story stating that legendary, deceased rapper Tupac Shakur was actually alive and living in New Zealand. This was obviously useless, borderline dangerous joking by hackers at the expense of PBS.

But a lot of the hacks have actually served a beneficial purpose - they have exposed serious, some might say criminal, flaws in the supposedly secure systems of these websites.

Hacking group LulzSec allegedly left this message inside the NHS database which holds the names, addresses and other personal details of millions of people:

"While you aren't considered an enemy - your work is of course brilliant - we did stumble upon several of your admin passwords".

"We mean you no harm and only want to help you fix your tech issues".

If these apparently harmless hackers can hack in so easily, though, what's to stop a more malicious group from gaining access to the details of anyone on that NHS database?

Similarly, the group has highlighted serious flaws in the security of the government's 2011 census database; which surely holds enough information about each and every one of us to put all of us at risk of identity theft.

Whilst I would never condone what these hackers have done - after all, Anonymous put the PlayStation Network down for a month, at the estimated cost of some $100million to Sony - which could have repercussions for their employees.

And whatever their stated intentions, we should always be wary of any group which is openly admitting to accessing databases of personal information. It only takes one rogue, less noble member of LulzSec to sell on these personal details to someone unscrupulous to put everyone at risk.

But these hackers have shown us just how fragile these 'secure' databases really are. Sony held PS3 users' credit card details in its records, yet secured them so poorly that some bedroom-dwelling teen might have made off with the lot. Government bodies like the NHS, too, must be secure enough to stop any intrusion.

If they are going to force us to hand over our personal information, the least they could do is look after it properly.

Hacking is obviously illegal, and the arrest made today shows how seriously the authorities are taking it. But some blame must lay at the companies' cyber-doors.

If this spate of web attacks results in more secure databases for all our personal info, they may just have done us all a favour.

I'm not trying to argue that this teenage hacker is some modern day martyr. But this is one area in which the law clashes with ethics - we must all question whether it is really right to punish him when his actions may have helped get us all better protected.

Why Ocarina is 3DS' Time to Shine

3DS has had a rough launch. For almost 4 months, its 15 mostly mediocre games sat lonely on store shelves while DS Lite and even PSP outsold the 3DS. As launch periods go, it was barren to say the least.

Today, though, the Legend of Zelda returns. Widely heralded as the best game of all time, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is looking to do for 3DS what the title did for Nintendo 64 all those years ago (1998, for the record). Does it succeed, or is it time to move on?

Not only is Link's greatest adventure still as magical as it is epic, it's actually matured with age thanks to the abilities of the 3DS system - and not just the graphical ones.

It's not really about the graphics - even though they are luscious in eye-popping 3D and more bright and beautiful than they ever were on N64 (and you really will worry about your eyes popping when arrows soar straight at your face). No, what's most startling about OOT 3D is just how well it shows off what 3DS can really do.

There's nothing worse for ruining a game than getting stuck. With any other game on any other console, the solution would be to slam the console or controller down and scurry off to the laptop to look up the solution. Not any more.

Thanks to the recent 3DS online update, you can suspend Ocarina of Time 3D with a quick press of the Home button, then launch the Web Browser. In seconds, you can go from traversing the wild plains of Hyrule to trawling the depths Gamefaqs.com for the answer to the next puzzle. Once you've found the solution, another couple of clicks and it's as if the game was never paused. Just like every good idea, it suddenly amazes you that no-one's thought of it before.

Sure, you might have a laptop or a smartphone you could have used. But then you'd probably get distracted and check your facebook or get sucked into Twitter, never to return. The beauty of the 3DS, as Zelda so brilliantly outlines, is how it integrates everything you need for gaming - and gaming alone.

Sure, Sony's PSP, or upcoming PS Vita, both offer millions of multimedia bells and whistles; music, movies, apps, you name it. But 3DS is a Nintendo machine. A games machine. It exists only to make gaming as perfect as possible. The mid-game Web Browser is just one small (inspired) step towards that goal.

See those icons? You can suspend your game and hit those

Not content with running to the internet for the solution? Well, you can use the Game Notes feature instead. This works the same way - suspend the game and hit the icon in the menu - and allows you to draw Pictochat style notes about the game and save them for later. The real beauty of this, though, is that it keeps a photo of your current game on the top screen. Handy if you need to write down a number, name, a clue or a certain order. It's ingenious.

Yes, these features work with other games, too, but with Zelda, the various bright ideas packed into the 3DS just seem to click into place. It's like the 3DS grew up in the space of one title release. Gone is the DS with a prettier screen - in its place is a smart, innovative and much more sophisticated system geared towards delivering a first-rate, painless gaming experience.

In short, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just the game to experience how Nintendo's handhelds have matured.

For Nintendo, it may have been 13 years, but it seems Link's still working his magic.

Has PSN's downtime ruined the PS3?

At some point last week, PSN finally came back online after 22 days of PS3 gamers being left in the cold, offline wilderness.

It's back, but it's still a bit broken. Playstation Store is closed. The servers seem a bit jumpy, and my PlayStation Android app doesn't really, er, work.

Sony have promised that when PSN is fully functioning, owners can choose two of five free games to make up for that rather unfortunate matter of everyone's credit card details now sitting on the hard drive of some dark room dwelling borderline sociopath somewhere in Ohio.

On top of that, Sony PS President Kaz Hirai and his fellow executives apologised publically with a bow; a deeply significant gesture in Japan's culture of humility and integrity.

Too little, too late? Well, it might be. But we can't even get our free games yet, because the Store is still down.

The whole sorry episode has seen Sony shambling through problems like these. It's no wonder that PS3 trade-ins have increased an astonishing 200% since PSN went down, according to EDGE magazine, based on official retail figures.

PS3 had been having a good year until last month. Between exclusives like Gran Turismo 5, LittleBigPlanet 2 and the Uncharted 3 announcement, the PS3 was hot property. It even threatened to topple the Xbox 360's dominance, often overtaking it in sales.

They say a car is only as fast as its driver, though. Give Vettel a Red Bull F1 car, you get victory. Give me a Red Bull F1 car, and I'll give you an explosive, bloody mess, not a world championship.

Well, Sony ain't Vettel. They've driven the PS3 machine from a stable, advantageous position into the dirt track, and it may take a lot more than a couple of hand-outs of old games (LittleBigPlanet 1? Really?) to restore gamers' faith.

At the end of the day, we're all grown ups here. We don't hold certain companies or consoles in some beloved, quasi-weird position of love. We just want to game. It's understandable that many have probably defected to Microsoft's Xbox, where the online is always on and the credit card details always un-leaked.

To win over the gaming crowd again, Sony need to do something special - and I'm not sure they have it in them, any more than gamers have it in them to trust the company again.

E3, the annual games convention usually bursting with announcements, is only a couple of weeks away - and for PS3, it could be do or die.

Does liking technology mean hating the world?

So, it's Earth Day today, apparently. To honour it, I've been tweeting from my laptop while using my PS3 on a 40" TV and charging my phone, all at once. Again.

It's ironic that the rise of consumer technology has come about at the exact same time as the eco-revolution.

At one time in the mid-noughties it was estimated that computers took 12% of all the world's electricity useage. While it may sound fairly small, that figure means that for all the lights, shops, factories,businesses and heating systems in the world, computers still took this huge chunk of power just for Liking biscuits on facebook and watching iPlayer.

For the average tech junkie, you'll probably find any of the following running all at once in one room: a TV, games console, smartphone charger, laptop/PC, iPod/mp3 player, stereo, wireless box, freeview/Sky box. My living room is beginning to resemble the NASA launch centre.

And these are thirsty, thirsty bits of kit. An Xbox 360 will use 1000w of electricity every four hours; a PS3 every three. And while I don't know how much my HTC smartphone needs in juice, I do know it takes longer to charge fully than it does to run flat again.

Surely, then, you can only be a technology fan if you hate the environment, don't believe in global warming, don't care or all of the above.

Well, to a degree. But it isn't our fault.

Yes, we can try to do our bit. We can use rechargeable batteries, we can put our laptops on 'Power Save' mode and we can dim the telly. But there is so little information out there about how much power our tech actually needs that it's difficult to even think about it, let alone act.

I only know how much a PS3 uses because some time-rich anorak plugged it in to a watt-measurement device and put the results online. I certainly don't know how much an iPod, or a TV, or my laptop uses, but I'm sure it's a fair chunk.

Why don't I know? My computer lists endless, incomprehensible features on its side, like 'up to 1308 MB DVMT' (I don't know what this means) as well as listing its green credentials - 'Energy Star Approved' (I do know that this doesn't mean much, since it's on almost every electrical product ever), but nowhere does it say how much electricity it uses.

In these eco-conscious times, green transparency, so to speak, is long overdue. It's high time companies like Sony, Samsung and Apple started listing how much power items need right on the box.

Why is it only washing machines that are energy rated? Computers, TVs, phones and games consoles should be marked from A* to F, too.

Not everyone will notice, not everyone will care. But at least we'd all have the option to make the green choice. It's certainly better than buying ever more powerful devices and wondering why our electricity bills are through the (poorly-insulated) roof.

I could go on, but I'm going to use my last sliver of laptop battery to watch the ice caps melt on YouTube.