Uncharted 2 Day#6: Seige of the Monastery

Day 6 is moving towards the end of the game. There is a very nice if confusing set piece to start, and then it’s tons of climbing and shooting. The shooting here is pretty good; there are lots of interesting goon distributions to force me to use different strategies. Still, the climbing continues to suffer from too naturalized elements that I mistake for background or vice versa. And there’s a puzzle moment which is more annoying than it should be because of bad feedback. Spoilers within.

Back on the truck heading after Craig, and it’s the start of Chapter 21. This scene involves hanging on to the back of a truck shooting guys. I’m killed once because I forgot there was a truck behind me. I start taking out guards, but my truck keeps exploding for some reason killing me. Oh, I have to jump from truck to truck. It seems that shooting people is a bit optional here but there are a ton of trucks around me and the scene is all about recognizing when to make the jump to the next car. It’s a neat premise, but the moments when you have to jump are quite subtle. I get to a part where I’m going up a hill with no truck around me and I just keep blowing up.  I just decide to jump and I guess right, because I end up on a truck with a grenade launcher.  Elena’s truck appears behind me,  and I get to grenade launcher a bunch of jeeps and truck to protect her – that is OSSIM. A set piece knocks the launcher away and I have to jump on Elena’s truck. In CS, we gun it up to the lead truck. A thug on the lead truck pulls an RPG and blows our truck up.  Off a cliff we go. The lead truck drives away and CS Drake and Elena climb up the side of the cliff sans truck. We CS see the monastery in the distance where Craig is loaded off the truck and the client gets the dagger.  Drake pulls Elena to her feet and they start towards the monastery.

There’s an overhead shot of the monastery as we begin chapter 22.  Drake and Elena are CS climbing up the cliff alongside it. I get control back as Drake makes a “nice view” joke while Elena climbs above him (“I meant the mountains” — oh you’re so funny, Drake!) I get on to the ledge and it’s crawling with guards. I stealth kill a guard from below, and then stealth kill one more before I’m spotted. I kill the rest and head upstairs. There are more guards up there. I stealth kill one by shimmying along the cliff side and then I’m spotted. I kill a bunch of guards to get to a bridge.  There’s a machine gun turret on the other side of bridge; it shoots on a period, and I have to run across the bridge when it’s between shots. I make it around the turret and kill everyone there, then use the turret to kill the oncoming wave and protect Elena as she comes across. We have to use some two-man some pulley to open a door.  We get through to find a broken bridge. I have to climb down to get a rope to throw up to Elena (so she can climb down) and then we have to cross a thin beam to the other side. I cross with no problem, but we end up on a ledge that seems to be a dead end surrounded by cliffs. I jump to my death once, but then find a handhold to jump to. I make a series of jumps up. She then jumps and I catch her. On this new ledge, I have to push a statue to get up to a higher area. That leads around a wooden balcony and up a rope. We’re back in the monastery again, and CS see Schaffer being moved into a tower. We try to move toward him, but we get to a locked door and have to find other way around.

Getting around the door is lots of climbing and jumping with monkey bars and such. On the way, I stealth takedown one guard and then get seen by the rest of that pack who are station all around the inside of a gutter tower. It’s a long fight as I’m trying to shoot my way into and down the tower, and it ends with a set piece of a rocket launcher blasting away, opening the locked door from the inside.  Elena makes a comment about subtlety, but if set piece opened the door, was there any other way that scene could have gone? More guards appear, and I die once in the subsequent fight because I drop out of cover when I don’t want to. I kill those guys and get to the other side of a bridge. I kill more guards inside the tower on the other side. The red lasers of snipers appear and Elena says something about a ladder, but I don’t see it and get killed by said snipers. I find the ladder when I respawn and we  dodge red lines as we climb up. We have to get across another bridge, but the snipers will kill us if we try. Elena sees an empty sniper’s post above us. I climb up there and find a number of sniper rifles and a clear view of the snipers gunning for us. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to zoom with the rifle, and I’m killed many times while I experiment by snipers and their friend, the RPG guy. I finally  look at the manual to learn that zoom is R3. I snipe the RPG guy first and as he dies, he takes down the whole tower he’s on with a bad missile shot, leaving two towers left. I  kill the rest of the snipers and then have to stop thugs from crossing the bridge to Elena. I climb down to fight them, die there, and HAVE TO RESTART FROM SNIPERS. This happens like 4 times–  fuck you, game. Finally I decide to use the sniper rifle to take them ALL out (snipers and bridge guys) and it works! We  start to cross the bridge, and we see the client taking Carl into the building on the other side, so that’s our next stop.

We run across the bridge, and the bridge begins to collapse halfway through. It’s another train like climb as bridge collapses beneath me and I have to vertically scale the remaining pieces. Elena catches me at end and pulls me up. We  open doors into a dark staircase. Inside, we CS see the client and the area where they are probably holding Schaffer, on one side of a big open field full of goons. It looks like I’m supposed to stealth from the way we’re hiding, but I’m not sure how to make it across the large open field so I just fight. I die fighting a few times because there are LOTS of snipers to take out, but I do it after a long battle. We double open a door and fight inside. We beat that handful of thugs quickly and go out of the building into an alley. That takes us into a new building and Drake says CS that Schaffer is upstairs. Ten to one says he’s dying.

It’s chapter 23. We fight our way up to Schaffer and find him in CS. He’s dying, shock of shocks. He asks if they found the expedition and when Drake says yes, Schaffer tells them to get the dagger, find the path to Shambala and destroy the stone. Before he dies, Schaffer tells Drake he has to believe in order to succeed.  Elena asks if it could all be true; Drake says Schaffer believed and that’s enough for him. Elena says they should split up — she’ll look for the entrance to Shambala while Drake gets the dagger back. We split and I faced with a climbing puzzle. I jump to death once trying to swing on rope, but then I do it. I get back outside, and that’s followed by a little gunfight when I screw up stealth. There’s  more climbing when I see a door that actually doesn’t open. When I get to a rooftop, I see some guards shooting something else, and kill them all with a single grenade for a sweet many-with-one-grenade-kill achievement.  I come down to see a pack of armored guys coming at me and they kill me three times.  But the the fourth time, I don’t think they come. Is that shitty DDA or did I move faster that time? Oh well, I run into a big room and in there I have to take out some mini-gun guys. I throw three grenades at them, which does nothing, and then run past them. Along my way, I find my very own mini-gun, and I kill the machine gunners with it. I die once from here from sniper fire. I use RPGs  for the first wave next time and then take everyone remaining out with the minigun.

There’s a little bit of exploration after they are all dead to get to the next part. It involves climbing (with one leap of death) to get into a burned out building. I climb around inside to climb out another side. Drake and Elena have a conversation (via radio) about the yeti monsters.  While shimmying across a ledge,  Drake sees thugs running from the monsters. I continue up and it’s an interesting exploring climb that gets me to the tower. I get to top and CS of Drake climbing on a beam above the main room. Below, the client talks to Flynn and Chloe. The client is upset that Flynn can’t find entrance to Shambala and threatens him as he leaves. Flynn follows, leaving Chloe alone.  Drake comes in and tells Chloe to give him dagger. She does, but in exchange, she tells Drake to take the client down. He agrees and she runs off to come up with a story of how she lost the knife.

Alone in the room, I have to find the entrance to Shambala here. There’s a puzzle to move blocks (shapes associated with elements) in front of the correct murals (also associated with elements).  All of these relationships are in my journal, but it’s a little confusing as murals and pictures of the murals  in the journal don’t totally match. I get the blocks into place (I guess, there’s nothing else I can do to them), and then have to turn wheels with symbols on it to match symbols of the color of the creature in my journal. This is quite hard because the symbols are small, the colors are not clear,  and you can’t look at the journal when you’re turning the wheels. It  takes forever and I have to stand right in front of the TV but I get it. When I do, a cylinder in the center rises and I put the dagger in it. A door opens in the wall, and when I climb up, I see the spot of the entrance from the balcony. I tell Elena over the radio, and zip down a line across to the near tower, seeing a yeti in the frame. I climb, dying once totally from hitting the wrong button. I climb toward the entrance I spotted earlier. There are lots of guards with a machine gun turret, and it looks like a fun fight. I die once from a sniper, but then it’s a great long fight to kill the rest of them (with a nice RPG to destroy the turret for me).

Elena arrives as I get to the entrance seal. I put dagger in, and we see the actual real entrance to Shambala open on the other side of this level. We zip down off of this plateau and see goons killed by yeti. I climb down to start heading toward the  entrance, but I’m tired, so I call it a night.