They changed the rules by not letting you drop down at all.

The problem with that puzzle is that when you're told you need to clear the boards, they actually show a pretty clear path to the other side of the door.  I jumped straight to that lamp post and tried to take that very clear and obvious path...except the game didn't let you jump.

That is retarded.

That was a giant failure on their part because rather than thinking, "oh, since I can't jump, I should just shoot the boards and then I'm sure it will let me go" I'm instead thinking "why can't I jump?"

If they wanted to set up that fight so badly they should have just had the enemies pop out as soon as I jumped on the lamp pole and then not let me drop off.  They would be changing the rules but at least there's the immediate threat there showing me what I need to do (not die).

Again, that was just a shitty horrible puzzle that they just failed miserbly on.

They changed the rules by not letting you drop down at all.

The problem with that puzzle is that when you're told you need to clear the boards, they actually show a pretty clear path to the other side of the door.  I jumped straight to that lamp post and tried to take that very clear and obvious path...except the game didn't let you jump.

That is retarded.

That was a giant failure on their part because rather than thinking, "oh, since I can't jump, I should just shoot the boards and then I'm sure it will let me go" I'm instead thinking "why can't I jump?"

If they wanted to set up that fight so badly they should have just had the enemies pop out as soon as I jumped on the lamp pole and then not let me drop off.  They would be changing the rules but at least there's the immediate threat there showing me what I need to do (not die).

Again, that was just a shitty horrible puzzle that they just failed miserbly on.

Hmmm, I'm still trying to figure out what's the complaint here. I just completed the game recently and no, the path wasn't obvious. It's clear that Nate wouldn't be able to make the jump because the distance was too great between the far side of one of the boards on the pole and the other side of the door (well, are you talking about the board that falls after you jump on it or the ones after swinging? If it's the ones after swinging, it's even worse. How is that obvious? http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/5784/testqo.png ). Plus, the difference in height was far too great (or was it the angle? anyways).

You were just trying too hard and thinking too much ahead maybe? I mean, just with a little look with the right stick, you could see the boards on the door... and since you can shoot while hanging, well it should have been intuitive. I don't know, for me that's how it seemed to be.

At OP, I hope you're enjoying the game so far. Take your time, it'll be worth it.

One of my big problems with Uncharted and Uncharted 2 is you can't judge distances.  Sometimes you can make fantastic 20 foot jumps, sometimes you die when you drop 10 feet.  On the right of that picture, it looks like there's an obvious path you take around the area.  It's obviously not now that I know what you're supposed to do, but not knowing I was supposed to shoot the boards and not actually get to them I was looking for the path to jump over there.

The moment I became stuck on that lamp pole, I thought the game was bugged because:

1. there was no apparent reason why I couldn't jump from it other than they didn't want me to.
2. it had never happened before.

If they gave me an actual reason for not being able to just drop (like let me drop, but die) or just set up the encounter chain of events better it would have worked much better.

Once the fight started, I was fine with being forced to stay on the pole, it was a cool encounter, but when I'm just platforming around it was bullshit.

Better not play a game that actually has challenging puzzles then :p, you'll smash something for sure.

Puzzles shouldn't be challenging because they're badly designed, they should be challenging because they're just a good puzzle.

Seriously, that was just a shitty puzzle.  They completely changed the rules of the game for no apparent reason other than they just didn't want you to drop off the pole and that's a shitty thing to do to the player. 

They should have either let you drop off the pole and made the only angle to shoot those boards from the pole, they could have let you drop from the pole but just kill you because it's too long of a drop, or they should have made the enemies pop out as soon as you touch the pole.  All three of those are simple solutions to the shitty puzzle.

It's actually funny that people love a game so much that they refuse to see anything negative or admit that it might have a few flaws.  Uncharted 2 is an amazing game but it has its fair share of flaws.

Well I never said it didn't have flaws, I just find it hilarious that you think that was such a ridiculous "puzzle". To me it was a straight forward portion of the game that flowed with the rest of it, I don't know why you are so angry about it.