Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Nathan Drake and the Temple of the Sophomore Effort
10/13/2009 4:45 PM | 31 Comments | Page 2 of 2
User Ratings (2 total)
50% Buy | 50% Try | 0% Fry
My Rating
What's Hot: Excellent gunplay
What's Not: Disappointing storytelling; Tomb Raidering
Fortunately, the gunfight through that doorway picks up the slack for the Tomb Raidering. Uncharted is a variation on the Gears of War model: third-person; based on a cover system; enemies soak up a lot of damage; grenades and headshots; scrounging for ammo; changing weapons more often than socks. A couple of new guns add a splash of variety, but this is still very much a game about an AK-47 in one slot and a 9mm pistol in the other.
The escalating enemy difficulty gets a bit annoying by the time the game is over. It combines enemies that are tough for no other reason than it being later in the game with corridors that are long and narrow because it makes the tough enemies tougher. This means a lot of replaying, often with the goal of remembering where a guy is going to go and taking him out first. For instance, that guy with the grenade launcher keeps killing me, so the first thing I want to do is kill him after I stealth-kill these two guys here. Then there are the new enemies at the end that will make you long for the zombies from the original Uncharted. Did Naughty Dog hire the developers of the original Far Cry?
Nate and Chloe contemplate the God of Pulling Levers to Open Unlikely Doors
The real innovation in this Uncharted is the amount of detail in the settings. The gunfights that really stand out are fought in ruined cityscapes and small villages. This is a gorgeous engine, pressed into service for some incredibly detailed level design. The city levels are put to particularly good use in the some of the multiplayer maps, where it seems like none of the detail has been sacrificed.
The multiplayer is surprisingly solid, considering this is developer Naughty Dog's first foray into online gaming (should we bother counting the Jak racing game for the PlayStation 2?).
Uncharted 2 has a wide variety of modes, ranging from the usual deathmatch to team battles over capture points to co-op, including its own version of Gears' Horde mode and
Halo 3: ODST's Firefight. Although it doesn't have the varied weapons and enemies from those games, the co-op has more variety, with a plunder mode (grab treasure and bring it back to your base while artificial-intelligence bad guys spawn) and full-blown co-op scenarios based on the single-player game.
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang?
It's too bad that the main appeal of
Uncharted 2 is merely as a shooter. Having played through the story once, I have no desire to revisit it. There are too few memorable moments and not enough meaningful character interaction. The dramatic tension is strictly artificial, based on a gunshot wound being critical or a grenade being lethal simply because the story calls for it. I just spent 10 hours shrugging off bullets and shrapnel, and now they matter because you want me to think a character might die? Sorry,
Uncharted 2, but I'm not falling for it.
Early in the game, Nate and Chloe reach the top of a shattered hotel in a war-torn city. There's a swimming pool up there, still full of water. Naughty Dog knows you're going to jump into the pool. They handle it beautifully, with a childish playfulness guaranteed to make you smile. And then you get dumped into a scripted bit where you run from a helicopter until you get to the magically spawning RPG. Oh,
Uncharted 2. I don't mean to be so hard on you, but it's not 2007 anymore. If you want to tell me a story about your characters and tie it into the gameplay, you're going to have to do it in a world that gave us
Batman: Arkham Asylum,
Brütal Legend and
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
