uncharted 2: among thieves
Matthew Cash
The first Uncharted was arguably the first game to truly show it's power. It's sequel was highly anticipated before it hit shelves and the reviews were giving it GotY awards up the ass. In fact, it's the #1 most awarded game of all time. Thankfully, this isn't the mainstream being stupid and Uncharted 2 had proven to be the game I wanted it to be and much more. It followed every criticism the players said about the first and fixed it up. The problematic gunplay? Gone. Fucky faces? Gone. The best graphics on the system to date? Check. (Not counting Killzone 3 as it's not February 22 yet) There's all that and so much more to this experience that it is, in my opinion, the single game worth getting a PS3 for.
The first thing you see is Drake sitting in a train car, bleeding out in some snowy wasteland. Not even 30 seconds later, he's flung out the back and is able to grab on to the railing to avoid falling to his death. As he climbs his way up, you have no idea what's happened to him or what will happen to him, you just continue on through it. As the sequence goes along, Drake has flashbacks to previous parts of the story in which he's searching for Marco Polo's lost fleet. Like the first game, it goes beyond that simple premise until he's looking for things that just keep becoming introduced. It may sounds sloppy, but, nope. It's not. It once again is actually a brilliant story, arguably the best of the two games. Also, once again, it's pulled off my some phenomonal voice work that somehow manages to trump its predecessor.
The gameplay is what we came here for, however. It brings great pleasure for me to say that it truly has fixed every last one of the issues from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The gunplay has been upgraded to support smoother aiming, more ammo for your weapons (which frequently ran out in the first game), and easier-to-kill enemies. The exploration has been heavily modified to have Drake grab everything you want him to when you want him to, not that crap where he simply doesn't grab that was in the first. The cover system has been revamped to become fully functional and less frustrating. Like, for instance, when you tried to hop off of cover in Drake's Fortune, only to go to another form of cover that exposes you and gets you killed. The puzzles are a little bit more challenging (though not too hard, really) and showcase a bit more though than, "push this button, flip that switch".
So, yes, the gameplay has been improved. There's times when you're playing when you realize something... you're actually watching a cutscene. The game blends these two things together so seamlessly that it really is like a movie, most notably Indiana Jones and the inspiration of Indiana Jones, those 1930's action/adventure film serials. Then the best thing about it is that it's incredibly fun. So fun that I got my Platinum trophy in that game without inserting another game until I had completed it all. Unlocking weapons and skins like in the first game has been revamped with a tidier system with more weapons items, videos, artwork, and more. There's even a stats menu in this game, which is weird, but I love stats! Oh, and I just thought of something... why didn't inFamous have stats when it was an open-world sandbox game? That's not the point, though.
The point is that even the 10-hour adventure through the single-player isn't all you get. You also get some intense 5v5 multiplayer complete with unlockable weapons, skins, and perks to get you playing for a long time. There's 2 different co-op modes and several competitive modes such as things from a Capture-the-Flag type game to traditional Team Deathmatch and some more interesting ones like Gold Rush where you try to grab an item and return it to base, but AI enemies are attacking you to prevent you from doing so. There's also another interesting mode named Chain Reaction, which is closer to Battlefield's Conquest mode, but one team has to take control pints 1-5 in that order while the other team counts down from 5-1. So there's definitely some gameplay variety here and it's addicting enough to keep you playing for hours.
Now, we must cover the presentation. As if the aforementioned ability to seamlessly go from gameplay to cutscene wasn't enough, it succeeds by being downright beautiful as the system's best looking game. Add the voice acting which is Nolan North, Emily Rose, Richard MacGonagle, Claudia Black (Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins), and many other people as their best performances with stunningly realistic motion capture work and you have Uncharted 2's perfect presentation. There's no framerate drops, no screen-tearing, and no overall gameplay bugs and glitches, so that's great.
For my verdict, I have to say that Uncharted 2 is the best game I've EVER played in my life. I've played most games from the Atari age of gaming to now and never before have I had a game that's been created with so much care and attention to detail and great gameplay such as this. For it's success in being such an enjoyable piece of entertainment, I'm now going to give it the score I never thought I'd give out.
Score: 11/10
The first Uncharted was arguably the first game to truly show it's power. It's sequel was highly anticipated before it hit shelves and the reviews were giving it GotY awards up the ass. In fact, it's the #1 most awarded game of all time. Thankfully, this isn't the mainstream being stupid and Uncharted 2 had proven to be the game I wanted it to be and much more. It followed every criticism the players said about the first and fixed it up. The problematic gunplay? Gone. Fucky faces? Gone. The best graphics on the system to date? Check. (Not counting Killzone 3 as it's not February 22 yet) There's all that and so much more to this experience that it is, in my opinion, the single game worth getting a PS3 for.
The first thing you see is Drake sitting in a train car, bleeding out in some snowy wasteland. Not even 30 seconds later, he's flung out the back and is able to grab on to the railing to avoid falling to his death. As he climbs his way up, you have no idea what's happened to him or what will happen to him, you just continue on through it. As the sequence goes along, Drake has flashbacks to previous parts of the story in which he's searching for Marco Polo's lost fleet. Like the first game, it goes beyond that simple premise until he's looking for things that just keep becoming introduced. It may sounds sloppy, but, nope. It's not. It once again is actually a brilliant story, arguably the best of the two games. Also, once again, it's pulled off my some phenomonal voice work that somehow manages to trump its predecessor.
The gameplay is what we came here for, however. It brings great pleasure for me to say that it truly has fixed every last one of the issues from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The gunplay has been upgraded to support smoother aiming, more ammo for your weapons (which frequently ran out in the first game), and easier-to-kill enemies. The exploration has been heavily modified to have Drake grab everything you want him to when you want him to, not that crap where he simply doesn't grab that was in the first. The cover system has been revamped to become fully functional and less frustrating. Like, for instance, when you tried to hop off of cover in Drake's Fortune, only to go to another form of cover that exposes you and gets you killed. The puzzles are a little bit more challenging (though not too hard, really) and showcase a bit more though than, "push this button, flip that switch".
So, yes, the gameplay has been improved. There's times when you're playing when you realize something... you're actually watching a cutscene. The game blends these two things together so seamlessly that it really is like a movie, most notably Indiana Jones and the inspiration of Indiana Jones, those 1930's action/adventure film serials. Then the best thing about it is that it's incredibly fun. So fun that I got my Platinum trophy in that game without inserting another game until I had completed it all. Unlocking weapons and skins like in the first game has been revamped with a tidier system with more weapons items, videos, artwork, and more. There's even a stats menu in this game, which is weird, but I love stats! Oh, and I just thought of something... why didn't inFamous have stats when it was an open-world sandbox game? That's not the point, though.
The point is that even the 10-hour adventure through the single-player isn't all you get. You also get some intense 5v5 multiplayer complete with unlockable weapons, skins, and perks to get you playing for a long time. There's 2 different co-op modes and several competitive modes such as things from a Capture-the-Flag type game to traditional Team Deathmatch and some more interesting ones like Gold Rush where you try to grab an item and return it to base, but AI enemies are attacking you to prevent you from doing so. There's also another interesting mode named Chain Reaction, which is closer to Battlefield's Conquest mode, but one team has to take control pints 1-5 in that order while the other team counts down from 5-1. So there's definitely some gameplay variety here and it's addicting enough to keep you playing for hours.
Now, we must cover the presentation. As if the aforementioned ability to seamlessly go from gameplay to cutscene wasn't enough, it succeeds by being downright beautiful as the system's best looking game. Add the voice acting which is Nolan North, Emily Rose, Richard MacGonagle, Claudia Black (Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins), and many other people as their best performances with stunningly realistic motion capture work and you have Uncharted 2's perfect presentation. There's no framerate drops, no screen-tearing, and no overall gameplay bugs and glitches, so that's great.
For my verdict, I have to say that Uncharted 2 is the best game I've EVER played in my life. I've played most games from the Atari age of gaming to now and never before have I had a game that's been created with so much care and attention to detail and great gameplay such as this. For it's success in being such an enjoyable piece of entertainment, I'm now going to give it the score I never thought I'd give out.
Score: 11/10