Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Well, that didn't take long. I began playing Uncharted 2 just two days after beating its predecessor, and by the end of that day, last Saturday, I had finished 18 of the game's 26 chapters in six hours of gameplay. Actually, "gameplay" is loosely defined here, because the game includes ninety-one minutes of cinematic cut scenes. That's a full length kids' movie! And those cinematic cut scenes don't even include all of the scripted in-game events - buildings toppling, helicopters crashing, bridges and trains falling apart just behind you - that also feel very movie-like. The game was so fast-paced and addicting that I barely even had time to "stop and smell the roses," if you will, and by the time those six hours and eighteen chapters had elapsed, I wasn't ready to consider this game worthy of all the praise heaped upon it. And when things slowed down a bit, and it took me four more hours just to get through the final eight chapters (not due to difficulty, but instead due to some lengthier firefights and puzzle-filled rooms), I began to wonder if I even liked this game any more than the first one. How foolish of me! Only after finishing off the final boss last night and watching the final credits roll did I finally realize what a magnificent and special game I had just blazed through. In hindsight, the scope and story and depth of this game make the first game look entirely plain by comparison; the first game still holds up as a solid one, but if you've played this second one first, I don't see how you could ever enjoy the first one with the bar having been set so high. So, yeah - play the first Uncharted before playing this one, or don't play it at all! Let me quickly compare and connect the two games. The biggest improvement in the actual gameplay is the hand-to-hand combat. In the first game, taking out an enemy with your fists was a fickle exercise in timing, especially if you wanted to land a "strong combo." This time around, it's way more simplified, and so much cooler. Just wail away on the same button and watch as Drake delivers a cool and calculated sequence of blows. Dodge your enemy's slow motion punch with a quicktime event (easy! so easy!) and then land the finishing blow. If you're hanging from a ledge and there's someone in front of you, pressing the "punch" button will allow Drake to grab him and throw him into the abyss below in one fell swoop. If you're using a waist-high wall as cover, and an enemy is on the other side of it, the "punch" button will let Drake reach forward and smash his adversary's face into the wall's edge for an instant kill. Easy and awesome, all at once. In terms of gunplay and environment traversal, Uncharted 2 really doesn't change much from Uncharted, but I don't think it needed to. Still, there were a couple of notable improvements and expansions. Using grenades is a whole lot easier, as they've gotten rid of the silly "Sixaxis" controller gimmick in which you tilt your controller to angle the throw. There are also a few new weapons like crossbows and miniguns in addition to, I believe, all of the old ones. Finally, when traversing, you can now grab onto horizontal poles and swing from them to other poles or to ledges, a tried and true 3D-platformer ability that was noticeably lacking in the first game. When it comes to story and characters, you're getting the same type of energy-and-action-at-the-expense-of-emotional-depth tone present the first time around, but once again that's a perfectly appropriate tone for a video game. All of the main characters that survived the first game are back for this one, albeit in more limited roles, as there are a couple of new characters as well. Friends, love interests, rivals - you name it. To end this recap, I want to revise an opinion I had regarding this series. After playing the first game, and while playing the second, my thoughts were essentially, "This is great, but I'm not doing anything I haven't done before in a video game. I'm running around, climbing walls, getting into elaborate cover-based firefights, and solving puzzles, and all of it's been executed very well, but all of it's been done before. What legacy will this series leave behind? Is this really taking gaming to new heights or new places, or years from now will we just look back on Uncharted as something well-made but otherwise formulaic?" I had the same basic doubts about the "instant classic" label after playing through Infamous. But now that I can recall the entire second game as an overall production, its legacy - the groundbreaking contribution it has made to gaming history - is perfectly clear, and that's the overall "interactive cinematic experience," for lack of a better phrase. The game flows seamlessly between inevitably triggered events and gamer-controlled action. An enormous explosion will knock Drake flat on his ass in the middle of a firefight, but as he rolls for cover (uncontrolled) you'll still be able to aim his gun and fire off a few shots. You'll be riding a train winding around a very scenic and non-repetitive mountainside, but as soon as you get to a certain car, there will be an event that knocks an enemy off to the right and over a thousand-foot cliff facade. No matter how much time you take to get to said train car, and no matter how much of the mountainside you have seen, the game will seamlessly "decide" that there is now a thousand-foot drop on your right hand side. I know that's just good event scripting, but trust me when I say that it's done so simply and thoughtlessly that you don't even notice it while it's happening. Tiny details and minutia like that, I guess, are what make this such a great game. There's a fair share of mid-gameplay dialogue in which Nate or an ally will say something witty or topical as you approach a certain environmental feature, be it a ledge or a gap or whatever. But if you die and have to restart from a recent checkpoint, the characters will have an entirely different exchange of words at the obstacle. It's like the game developers said, "let's go out of our way to re-entertain the gamer on a retry attempt." Well done! It's chiefly the production value, then, that absolutely carries this game into that rare "must-play" status. The biggest problems I had with the game, aside from occasional frustration at dying late in a firefight and needing to restart it, were two glitches that caused me to require a checkpoint restart. In one, an AI ally simply never appeared to open a door, and I was stuck in a small area for about ten minutes before realizing that I had fallen victim to a glitch. The other glitch was a straight up game freeze that occurred while I was climbing a staircase late in the game - presumably, a load error. Oh well. To put it in a nutshell, if Uncharted was like Star Wars, then Uncharted 2 was like The Empire Strikes Back; the first one is a very solid effort that introduces you to the characters and sets a great tone, but the second one builds on the groundwork laid out by the first one with more intricacy and complexity and is ultimately remembered as the superior product. Let's just hope Uncharted 3 - which you can bet I'll be buying for full price and playing immediately when it comes out in November - doesn't turn out like Return of the Jedi.