Is it me or are Naughty Dog 'overrated'?

So back in the 90's Naughty Dog jumped onto the scene with Crash Bandicoot, a rare Playstation platformer that wouldn't have been out of place on the N64, I mean it was great, I have no idea why that type of platformer never took off. From memory the sequels were good too... but then... the PS2 happened...

And along came Jak & Daxter... the platformer the Playstation had been waiting for... well apparently. But to me it was... utterly lacking in creativity and imagination. I mean you play as a blond man... a blond man... they could have chosen anything... a hosepipe called Sidney... a shaven rat... a piece of lemon... anything... they settled for blond man... never mind, they slapped a Kazooie rip off on his shoulder for good luck. And it worked, because everyone with a pulse liked that game. Except me.

The levels were every bit as generic as the cast, Generic Snow Level #1, Generic Fire Level #1. But to make it worse there we NO bosses, NO moves to learn, NO real plot. It had nothing, it wasn't even funny! I didn't play the sequels, but they were meant to be even better so I must really be missing something...

Okay, fine, one game that everyone likes... but I hate... but then came Uncharted 2... I liked Uncharted 1... so Uncharted 2 must be amazing right? Well... no... ahem... I mean Nathan Drake is one of the most sadistic, evil protagonists in gaming history, he goes on a genocidal killing spree, murdering hundreds if not thousands of people that are simply doing their job, working for a generic scarred Russian, that, by the way, has an identical goal to Drake... to pillage a priceless treasure! I mean he is murdering for greed, because he was betrayed, nay!, outwitted!, by Mr Generic-Englishman. I mean Drake is so vicious, so repugnantly evil, that he will make sarcastic jokes as he kills men! Hitler himself wouldn't do that! Satan would have more self respect!

And to make it worse the devs thought, "hmmmmmmm... we need a supernatural edge, like in Indiana Jones... lets add some goat men for some reason!", so we have this tacked on scene where our sarcastic dick head of a protagonist fights huge goat-people. It's just ridiculous! Where the supernatural was utterly grounded in history and recognized myth in Indiana Jones in Uncharted it's just random, badly written nonsense...

But the gameplay was **** too, NO variation... at... alllll... clear a room, clear another room, clear another room, clear a room, clamber like a chimp, clear a room, clear a room. Again no bosses, no skills to learn, very little variation in enemy types. Sure they toss a helicopter in here, or a frustrating falling building bit there... but these are either bland as **** or just too short to appreciate. For a varied 3rd person shooter Gears of War 2 ripped Uncharted 2 a new hole.

So fine...! Two Naughty Dog games that I hate that everyone else loves... so this weekend I went round a friend, we bought The Last of Us... well what can I say... Naughty Dog has surpassed itself, they have managed to cobble together an even less likable protagonist than Nathan Drake. A man with the charisma of a fridge magnet. I mean in the few hours that we played the game guess who killed the most non infected...? Our good friend, the protagonist, Mr. Generic. Pumping steel into the cranium of anything with or without a pulse.

Okay the game itself seemed good enough but the writing... was... dire.

Throw some almost plagiaristic 'Karting' games for both Crash Bandicoot and Jak. A skid mark of a genesis game. Some of the least likable characters of all time (Australian woman in Uncharted 2). And an apparent fetish for milking the living **** out of every franchise they come up with before moving on and we have THE most overrated developers ever!

Boom!

Wow, that was long. Does anyone agree, meh, I don't care, I just wanted to vent. Vent accomplished.

Reply 1

NathanW18

I pretty much disagree with everything that you've said. We're all free to our opinion, though.

Naughty Dog are my favourite developer. I've played almost all of their games since the original Crash Bandicoot and I don't dislike any of them.

Reply 2

FavouriteWW

Did you expect Joel to be happy and jolly in TLoU? His daughter died and he's still traumatized by it. He's living through the apocalypse so he's not exactly going to be happy and jolly.

Reply 3

Tom_green_day

This gen I've only played Uncharted: Drake's fortune and The Last of us.
Uncharted started pretty ****ty and I almost gave up but at one point there's a puzzle regarding roman numerals on the floor. If you've played the game you know of it. From that point onwards, the game is spectacular and I couldn't put the controller down. It becomes incredibly tense and exciting, as well as pretty challenging. I loved it from then onwards.
The Last of Us was incredible but you'd expect that so I won't tell you why.

Reply 4

noggins

Yeah, perhaps they are just a little bit... I played the original Crash Bandicoot in it's hey-day and loved it. Fun little action-platformer and still a fairly enjoyable game today. Jak and Daxter on PS2? I was a young adult by the time they released that and I dismissed it as generic platformer for kids featuring unlikeable animal character heroes and my opinion of the series hasn't changed very much since then. Uncharted series? I played some of the first game and immediately thought "it's just Tomb Raider with a bloke in a white top. What's progressive about this?". I've briefly played the sequel too, plus the multiplayer on 3 which has a perfectly fine deathmatch with various modes available and they are good action-adventure games all in all, just nothing very original from what I experienced. I'll finally get round to play testing The Last of Us before the end of the year with a bit of luck.

Reply 5

ozzyoscy

The games I've played (Uncharteds and Jaks) have been very good for me. They haven't had an impact that stays with me forever, but certainly very good.

Reply 6

Solemn Rain

I wish they could revisit the crash Bandicoot series :biggrin:

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 7

F1's Finest

Crash bandicoot on ps1 was simply epic. The other sequels like CB3:warped, Crash Bash, Crash Team racing were also brilliant too.

Was I the only person to think that Crash Bandicoot 2 (Cortex strikes back) was lacking compared to the others?