Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Listen, I'm not going to lie.  I don't like cover-based shooter games.  I prefer my shooters to be first-person thank-you-very-much.  Even though I don't know how to aim, and if equipped with a real gun, I'd be more likely to shoot myself in say, the foot -- staring down the barrel-ish of a weapon makes a lot more sense to me than trying to awkwardly control an avatar with a camera behind him, wildly shooting enemies en masse.

It was then, with trepidation that I placed Uncharted 2: Among Thieves into the PS3.  I had received the game as part of r/gameswap, for which I had traded the ostentatious Final Fantasy XIII for Game of The Year UC2.  I felt like I had come out better for the deal, seeing as attempts to replay FFXIII caused mild nausea and abdominal discomfort.  However, would I be able to overcome the cover-based, third person shooting aspects of the game? 

Well, before even getting into combat, a little background on Uncharted.  Once upon a time, Lara Croft with her pixelated bazoombas had taken the gaming world by storm in the Tomb Raider series.  But Lara's exploits had been well played, and even turned into movies - so perhaps her sagging tits were perhaps stopping her from cranking out a new game every five minutes (as seemed the case during the initial deployment of the series).  But the niche for jumping around ruins and collecting treasure amongst archaic traps a la Indiana Jones existed, and Naughty Dog (of Crash Bandicoot fame) had just the remedy to fill it with Uncharted.


Rocking the five o'clock shadow.

However, instead of boobtacular Croft, female and gay gamers were treated to the rugged masculinity and adventurous wit of Nathan Drake.  The character reeks of archetypal writing and contrite characterization, but he's fun - the kind of fun you would expect when watching an action/adventure movie, or playing a game that is like an action/adventure movie.

The game plays out in three separate ways.  The first is a "puzzle" scenario of getting Drake from point A to point B by using his oddly refined acrobat skills to leap from conveniently designed ruins and buildings with noticeable footholds.  During this component of the game, you are also inclined to look for shimmering spots on the ground of treasure - since you are, after all, a treasure hunter.  I didn't find many, because usually I was trying desperately to find the hidden foothold or bar or railing to climb so I could move the plot around.

Then when you come across one of the four character models for hostile enemies, there is the battle.  While you can be stealthy (sneak around cover and perform a melee attack), more often than not you will find yourself wading into a sea of enemies intent on shooting you.  They have unlimited ammo and patience, so you cannot hope to wait them out.  The game gives you plenty of places to hide behind - or take cover behind - and then pop up and shoot a few times, take cover, rinse, repeat.  Or, like me, you can run in and mash the melee attack button and see how many of the enemies you can take out.  Either way, battle involves less strategy and more patience and skill (you know, being able to aim).

Finally, you are treated to plenty of lengthy cut scenes with some quality dialogue (again, for an action movie).  The voice acting is actually pretty good in the cut scenes, though the extraneous dialogue during battles was pretty lame.

My main complaint is that for all of the excellently rendered environments and detailed graphics, there was still only one way to get through each environment, and sometimes trying to find it was like seeking a needle in a beautifully constructed haystack, wherein I couldn't enjoy the world around me because I had got so frustrated trying to find the climbable surface to move forward in the game.

There's a multi-player aspect of the game, but since I despised battles in single-player, I have a hard time thinking that I will enjoy playing in those scenarios with other people.

One compliment I have to offer though is that after dying - which I did quite a lot of - the game had a reasonably quick reload to a very recent checkpoint.  I like this a lot, because the game essentially was saying: "yes, jumping between mountains would likely result in your death, and we aren't going to punish you for falling, just try again, sweetheart."

All in all, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was worth the time I put into it, and I'll probably give it another go on a harder difficulty level, but I'd be surprised if this was a game I ever tried to go Platinum for...