I am now.... 44%? of the way through, in one sitting

I'm not even... tired of playing it yet.........

they improved and polished p much every aspect of the first game, down to the storytelling

chloe!!! is good. I mean, I'm not thrilled on how she's made to be the Sexually Appealing "Exotic" Lady, but also, she is good

Chloe is so great

I kinda wish... she and elena ended up together.......... sry nate

I'm a sucker for "two snarky exes get together"

the gameplay is fun and the environments, both the ones made for fightin in and in general, are much improved

it's no longer "field with some chest-high rocks"

but of course you can still tell there's an enemy up ahead by all the cover scattered around... not like they could really avoid that tho

the climbing! is! better, because they do a better job of showing what IS climbable, by doing things like making the pipes blue and such

and by not..... randomly putting chains in that look no different from ones you can climb.........

not perfect, there are still times where I'm like ???????, and there have been a few puzzles that are... awkward to execute

such as "toss explosive thing into the river in such a way that it gets stuck near car then shoot it"

which I only figured out because.... the explosive kept respawning

it took me maybe 3 or 4 tries, just throwin it down there, until it got to the right spot

mainly because you can't _actually_ throw it, only set it down at the edge

the story!!! ok ok wow. the villains are way less bland, they actually have personality besides "kinda evil nbd"

I mean, they're not winning any awards for deep characterization, but they seem more like people and less like cutouts

the quest for the artifact is much more interesting. you gradually get fed more information as you go, and also this time it makes way more sense that a bunch of guys are out to kill you

I mean. ok, in the first game, dude wanted the gold so he hired some guns

but it got really.... ???? with how many men seemed to be there EXCLUSIVELY to kill nate

now, here, there's an actual conflict going on. also the villain is blowing up places. it makes sense that there'd be people here to murder him, because they were already there

the graphics are.... gorgeous. I dunno how much it's been remastered, but I do know people thought the original already looked fantastic

so it's just... more? fantastic? anyway there's very little that gives away the fact it used to be a previous-gen game

the only time I could really tell is when the camera zoomed in on the enemy's face and you can see they basically just gave him a flat texture there

I love it so far, I can see why everyone else loved it when it first came out

also. I flipped through nate's lil journal

I'm so glad I did it's hilarious

then I accidentally turned myself into skelzor and then un-turned myself into skelzor

if/when I play this a second time I might enable it again.....

I hope skins still stay on during cutscenes, I want skelzor to make out w/ chloe

did you notice how Harry really, really wanted the Drake D? THE THIRST.

alas, the way the game engine works, cutscenes are prerendered. U4 is rendering in real time so if they have skin unlocks in that, it'll work

beltsquid: oooo..... fingers crossed for U4 skelzor

almost typed "D4 skelzor". maybe he'll be in the next episode of dark dreams don't die

officialbizness: he's such a cranky aussie

Josh Scherr keeps teasing us with the fact that there exists a version of Nate and Chloe in the hotel room with Lazarevic instead, voiced by Graham McTavish, that they did to punk Nolan North

why will they not give this to us

(Nolan North would have dug it.)

it was meant to be one of the extras but they couldn't fit it on the disc

curse you disc space.........

did they just murder tenzin with a monster

I'm mad

oh thank god he's alive