The Tomb Raider games are awesome. Just because some gamers may not care for a series and it continues to put out sequels does not mean that it is "stale" or needs a reboot. If that were the case, I demand a reboot of the Madden, Devil May Cry, Halo, Soul Calibur, and Grand Theft Auto series, since I don't care for them, which obviously means they've grown stale and tired. When a series tries to remold itself to suit gamers that are not within its current fanbase, it alienates both. Case in point: Resident Evil 5. That game was pure shit, and RE4 wasn't much better.
 
Tomb Raider 9 looks to be more similar to a survival horror (which I thankfully like), but may rely more on combat because of that. They even redesigned Lara Croft, which pisses me off because I thought Crystal Dynamics did a great job of finally nailing the right look for her in Underworld. But yeah, Uncharted fanboys or whatever hated Underworld, so now they're going to fuck up the series.  Bastards. Tomb Raider: Legend and up are so much better than Uncharted. :/ Not everyone wants to run and gun through an entire game.

 So, I'm nearly finished with Uncharted 2.. and I have to say, I'm less than impressed with the game. It's not a bad game at all, and some of my favorite games' core mechanics are weaker than those implemented in either Uncharted game, but I can't help but think that the game just isn't that much fun.

For one, the Tomb Raider-esque exploration is totally broken. This is due mostly to the fact that areas aren't very puzzly, which tends to make me ask why they're even making me traverse the terrain in such a fashion. It feels like a waste of time. Another reason is because the controls aren't very accurate. Drake is constantly running in the wrong direction when I initially move the analog stick, which tends to cause him to run off ledges and whatnot (thankfully his autograb for ledges works really well). I also miss a lot of jumps because of this.. although most are near misses, since Drake grabs onto the nearest ledge within a half mile when he leaps. This causes him to teleport to the ledge and it looks really unpolished.

I actually booted up Tomb Raider: Underworld following my Uncharted 2 gaming session last night, and I still feel that Tomb Raider's leaping from ledge to ledge is more exciting because the spacing between jumps is more consistent (no teleporting to fudge with the distance you're capable of jumping), and you have to actually aim your character in the general vicinity of the jump to make it. The end result is that Lara jumps believable distances and it looks like she solidly grabs the ledge when she lands, not to mention that the game is quite specific on whether you made a jump or not. No "net", more realistic jumps, and heights that sometimes double what Uncharted offers leads to more exciting jumps.

Naughty Dog should take notes. If you hold my hand through the jumping mechanics, I'll have to ask you why you even put them there in the first place. What if Mario magically teleported to a platform anytime he missed a jump? Kinda kills the fun, huh?

Another gripe I had was that I wasn't very happy with the instant deaths that happened during combat. In not talking about stuff like taking a rocket to the face--that's understandable. What I'm talking about is stuff like the signs on top of the train, the train car exoloding once you clear it of enemies (it could take infinite damage during the fight, but only two hits after the fight? How was I supposed to know that?), and your car catching fire and exploding during the car chase. All of these had little to no warning the first time they happened, which guarantees one death right there. Subsequent retries are because there is just too much stuff going on to he able to concentrate on that.

"Doesnt that make it epic?" you ask. No, it doesn't. "Epic" is the feeling you get when you get really close to dying and make it through a really crazy situation, maybe dying once or twice. It should be noted that fear of death is fun, actually dying is not. Retrying a situation more than once drains the fun out of it. Therefore, dying ten or more times makes the situation go from epic to an epic pain in the butt. Unfortunately, all of the Uncharted 2 epic chases involve this in one form or another.. which is weird because the first one did not.

In my opinion the story sucks in both Uncharted games, whereas its characterizarions and dialogue are pretty great. Thankfully, the latter matters more to me than the former, so I can still push my way through the game. The game is also quite pretty.. but honestly, that's pretty low on my requirements for an enjoyable game (with the exception that character animations need to not suck). I will say that is possibly the very best motion captured animation I've ever seen in a game.

I think what aggrivates me most about Uncharted 2 is that it's been rated so highly, with a metacritic rating no lower than 90%. That's bullshit. It's not a bad game, but it's far from being that good. I don't expect too much out of games in general; they just need to be fun.. but when the majority of a game's reviews are 100% (which appearantly means that Naughty Dog employed God as the game director), I expect it to be better than this.