Source: To read the whole thing just click the link.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/324853/featuresuncharted-3s-linearity-is-a-strength-not-a-weakness/

Opinion: Naughty Dog's adventure shouldn't be slated for being straightforward, argues Chris Schilling

Happy Uncharted week, folks. Yes, Drake's Deception is here and it's predictably brilliant, Naughty Dog once again marrying breathless action with breathtaking scenery in a swashbuckling Saturday matinee spectacular starring the loveably genocidal Nathan Drake.

As fun as Uncharted 3 is, however, it's not without its flaws. The game is a little too fond of those awkward running-towards-the-screen sequences, and is not above throwing in a few cheap difficulty spikes to extend its runtime. Like bullet-sponge enemies who can shrug off three sawed-off shotgun blasts...to the face.

And while we admire the new animations, Nate's newly-found love of wall-touching makes him look like a man staggering home after a night on the sauce, regularly stretching out towards the nearest vertical surface as if to prevent the ignominy of a concrete faceplant. Oh, and while we're at it, "oh, crap" is hardly the wittiest of bons mots.

Yet the criticism most regularly levelled at the game - enough for Naughty Dog creative director Amy Hennig to pointedly defend its approach - is its linearity. As we reported yesterday, Hennig claimed that branching level paths and dialogue trees would have a negative impact on the force of the game's storytelling.

"It's about having a very clear, linear story arc that doesn't allow for a lot of the dilution that is created by player choice in some cases," Hennig explained. "We always call it 'wide linear' - within the path that we give, you have a lot of choice within it, it's not just hit this button, and this button, and this button."

Of all the things to have a go at Uncharted about, to single out its linearity is crackers.

For starters, that would be forgetting the wonderfully flexible gunplay. Taking place in expansive combat bowls, its encounters offer plenty of room to manoeuvre, with a verticality to the environments that's all too rare in the genre. The ship graveyard around the midway point is a case in point, as boats bob and sway and Drake is able to dive underwater to avoid bullets, or even swim carefully around the floating hulls to stealthily take out single patrolling enemies.

Indeed, the intelligent behaviour of your pursuers means you're not just crouching behind waist-high walls and waiting for a goon to pop his head up. In fact, it's almost a relief on the rare occasions this does happen. Until you realise that his mate has looped around behind you with an AK-47 trained at your skull.

But even ignoring the combat, the fact that it should happen now is odd. Criticising Uncharted for being linear is a bit like having a pop at Call of Duty for...well, being linear. It wouldn't be the same if the player was allowed to wander around aimlessly.

The method the developer has chosen allows it to set the pace, and it's telling that the game's weakest moments are those where it doesn't signpost your next objective well enough, leading to sequences where you're bumping up against walls and doors waiting for the button prompt in the bottom-right that tells you you're in the right spot.

The propulsive force of the storytelling is such that these moments frustrate more than they would in other games, holding you back from the next revelation or the next spectacular set-piece. These rare moments of freedom all but prove that Uncharted is better precisely because it's linear.

And if the game occasionally guides you down the right path with subtle camera shifts and other smoke-and-mirrors trickery, so what? When the action is this spectacular, this cinematic (that's an oft-overused term in games criticism, but boy does it apply here) you won't care that you're just tapping X every now and again and moving the analogue stick a bit. At one point during the Chateau level I genuinely let out a little shriek of combined terror and delight.

To read the whole thing just click the link.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/324853/featuresuncharted-3s-linearity-is-a-strength-not-a-weakness/

I agree entirely.

I agree.

great article...U3 is just so awesome i could cry!

i concur

As a story whore, I approve of this message.

geez... whiner.. someone gave it 8 lets whine about it.. pathetic... next up reviews about reviews...

People who say linearity is lame and praise these open world games as blatantly superior are f*cking retarded, no offense. There is nothing wrong with a tight linear game, in fact it's usually better imo. Games where you can do anything tend to get a bit aimless and boring for me.  I don't get this all of a sudden hate of linearity like it's a bad thing.

So basically you call people who bash linear games retarded and then you go on to bash open world games... I have every right to think a linear cinematic game is rather boring and not be labeled as a retard because of it.

Anyway the people who hate linear games have hated them for a while. People have been complaining about how linear call of duty, final fantasy, halo, etc.'s campaigns are for quite a few years now. Its just the uncharted fanboys have been whipped into a frenzy because the bashing of linear games has now hurt uncharted 3's precious metacritic.

Yeah, well certainly Uncharted 3. I think some review used the phrase "tactically linear" for their Battlefield review, and that was what most of Uncharted 1 was, but with 2 and particularly 3, ND has given us areas to explore when we fight, so the fights themselves aren't overly linear (okay, there are enemy spawn triggers) but the storyline progresses linearly, which is very good for a cinematic game like Uncharted!