Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PS3 – Review
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PS3 – £29.99 delivered
Review by Amitai Winehouse (twitter.com/amitaiwinehouse)
If you’ve logged onto the internet (who really “logs on” to the internet anymore?) over the last two weeks, you’ll probably have realised that quite a lot of people like Uncharted 2. Not just like, like, but like, like like. Are they correct to do so? I suppose it’s my job to find out.
From the minute you boot up Uncharted 2, you are almost assaulted by visual beauty. One of my major complaints about video games these days is the focus on “realistic” colours (apparently most video game designers live in some sort of wasteland devoid of vegetation (London)). In Uncharted 2 however, there is a larger variety of colours than on a Dulux chart. The main menu, something I have touched upon in prior reviews, is similarly well designed and colourful. The same can be said for the user interface, which provides you with the information you require and is mildly more refined than the original Uncharted.
There is a stunning level of visual quality and detail to every facet of this game, from the way the water looks to the impressive half-tuck of Nathan Drake’s shirt, and occasionally you can feel almost overwhelmed by how close to reality this game really is. There are a couple of disappointingly glassy eyed characters, which almost puts you off some of the cutscenes. However considering this game is apparently using most of the potential of the Playstation 3, I would not be surprised to see this as the most visually impressive game of the generation. I am happy to say that I have not, thus far, seen anything as pretty as this in my short time as a fan of video games.
For a game that essentially has taken the Indiana Jones formula and provided a new mythical artifact, the story doesn’t seem particularly hackneyed and whilst the ground has already been trodden before, the fact that you get to be the cool, suave treasure hunter is quite nice. That said, the game doesn’t do anything particularly daring with the narrative, and you could be forgiven for expecting something slightly better.
There is a reason why the narrative works so well, and that is a combination of the quality of the cutscenes and the acting within. Nolan North (who plays Nathan Drake) brings a level of confidence but yet likability to a character who is as far from an average man as can be, but is still someone you can identify with. Those surrounding him are similarly agreeable, and you do feel a connection to the characters, to the extent that when there is a threat that one may be taken away from you, I personally found myself hoping and praying that a relationship would go a certain way or a certain character would avoid life-ending peril which I find to be impressive when this narrative is part of a media form where the representation of you dies repeatedly in every play session without a bat of the eye.
It is here that a direct comparison can be made to what Will experienced when writing his “Wet” review (read it here). Whilst both games draw heavily from cinema and the characters in both are intended to be archetypal characters for films of their particular genres, Uncharted 2 does not lazily copy and paste Henry Jones Jr., give him a new name and ask Nolan North to read lines that kind of sound like things he would say, but really aren’t things that sound natural or “correct”. Naughty Dog have created new characters, written movie standard scripts for them and sent them out on a Blu-Ray to enthrall the player. Most of the written work is genuinely witty, to the extent that I don’t want to spoil any of the one-liners for you. Not even video game funny either, properly funny.
“Style” is one of the very few ways in which several positives of the game can be described, and there is a palpable sense of style in the cutscenes. A side-effect of the fact that all of the acting in this game was mo-capp’d means that the cutscenes play like a movie, with little touches adding whole new levels to the various characters and making them seem almost like fully formed human beings.
I’ve not even mentioned the gameplay yet, and despite a few niggles, there is very little here that should significantly cause you to consider not purchasing the game literally right now. If you’ve played the first Uncharted, something which I feel should be a standard game for anyone who owns a Playstation 3, you will understand the basic mechanics of the game. It’s a third person shooty-puzzle-climby thingy, in which you generally move from gunfight to gunfight, broken up with climbing sections and puzzles, with story interspersed throughout.
However, if you have played the first Uncharted, you would be mistaken for thinking that Naughty Dog have been resting on their laurels and not improving. Everything, and I do mean everything has been tightened to a ridiculous degree, with the shooting particularly more agreeable. Grenades are now useable at the same time as guns, and Sixaxis has not been shoehorned in, meaning that occasionally you actually hit people with grenades.
The pacing has also been vastly improved. Whilst previously there would often be periods where you’d have shootout after shootout, to the extent that they almost became second nature, chapters play very differently in Uncharted 2. Below is a summary of my thought process during an average chapter:
“Oh god oh god I am being chased by a truck with a machine gun on it oh god I am going to die help me please god help aaahhh phew escaped, hmm, how do I get up there? Pole climbing time, now swing like a monkey for me Drake. Wheeeeeeeeee! Uh-oh, there are enemies down there, should I sneak around and snap necks, or do I want to shoot some fools? Neck snapping time, oh now there’s some story, yay.”
The stealth gameplay adds a considerable amount, and when the basics are down, I personally found myself using it more often than not, choosing to conserve ammo for when it was required. That said, there is no longer the apparent worldwide shortage of bullets that was seen in Uncharted 1, and it makes the gunplay far more satisfying when you no longer have to question whether you can really afford to shoot certain people.
The only real complaint I can have about the gameplay is the difficulty of the puzzles, but I do not believe the intention of these is really to challenge the mind in any significant way. To once again go back to the pacing matter, they are to break up the more stressful situations. Another minor complaint that some have had is that the final boss battle seems almost anti-climatic, but I did vastly prefer it to other final boss fights in recent memory for being slightly less frustrating.
For a primarily single player game, the multiplayer component is also rather good. I will admit here, confession time, that I am not a very good at video games, but the various ways in which you can approach people who are far better at this stuff than you are is astounding. For people who twitch a bit out of fear when playing online, it’s really nice to have modes like the RPG Deathmatch, in which 1-hit kill is essentially the name of the game (my twitchiness has probably killed a handful of former team-mates by mistake, to whom I apologise to here and now). That said, I don’t really play multiplayer often, so I can’t compare to other games, so my opinion might be slightly ill-informed here.
Really, it boils down to whether I believe this game is value for money, and to that extent I think it is. Seriously, if you don’t already own this game and you own a PS3, go and buy it. If you don’t own a PS3, there are a load of bundles out there with this game included, which I am sure Lewie could find far better than I could, and it’s nearly Christmas, so why not treat yourself? There are plenty of other good PS3 games out there, so it’s not like this one game has to justify your entire purchase.
As a game, I would consider this to be my game of the year thus far. I am almost sad that to the average consumer it may be lost in the Modern Warfare 2 shuffle, because I personally believe this could end up being a far better game. The way in which this transitions between story and gameplay is incredible, and as an all-round package, I would be surprised if anything equals Uncharted 2 this year. Go and buy it.
For the purposes of this review I played and completed the single-player campaign at Normal difficulty, which took around 14 hours. I have since then played around 6-8 hours of competitive multiplayer modes. If you are interested in playing some multiplayer online with me on ye olde PSN, my username is winehouselufc.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PS3 – £29.99 delivered
