Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

If you haven’t played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune by now, stop reading and go play it. If you own a PS3 there is no reason for you to not have played that game. No, it is not necessary to play the first game to understand the second. But, much like how God of War II completely improved the gameplay of its franchise, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves obliterates the original. 

It is essential to play the first game solely for the purpose of appreciating the work that Naughty Dog put into this game. The original Uncharted was the best looking console game out there, until this one. The members have been quoted in saying that they actually used up nearly all of the PS3’s capabilities for this game. Taking advantage of the cell processor, the designers and animators at Naughty Dog were able to utilize the havoc engine and add the layers necessary to showcase the scenery. The cities, the village, the jungle, and the icy peaks all show off the commitment and skill involved in the game’s creation. 

Presentation
Rather than focusing on story—chances are that you've already got an idea how the game goes—I'll start with presentation because that is something this game really does well. The first Uncharted showed how good water could look, this one uses snow as its canvas. The way it sticks to the characters as they move through it, leaving a path and how it fades on their clothes is jaw dropping and meant to shock you with its impressive beauty within the first 10 minutes. Character models are incredibly detailed with the dirt in their pores, the facial expressions and character modeling, and the well-orchestrated dramatics of the game will make you stop looking at the mirror and start loving this game instead.

The different environments, varying from a jungle similar to the first game’s setting to icy peaks of , bring a lot of refreshing taste to the game. The jumping and shooting in the constantly changing environment brings out the adrenaline of the moments and even on a second play through I get excited running and gunning through the war torn streets in Nepal. The gunfights in city streets are extremely exciting and rewarding and with the countless moments where a vehicle is chasing Drake down or you see him dangling off a crumbling ledge, or in a collapsing building, with the help of a very coordinated camera you feel the rush and it truly does feel like you’re playing a movie. 

Part of that lies in how well the characters move and act. It’s as though there were real actors playing the parts, oh actually they did. The voice actors put on the motion capture suits and acted out their parts, making the movements of the characters during the cut-scenes much more, well, human. The movements of game characters often comes across as stiff or less realistic, but the creative direction behind Uncharted pushed for the more cinematic effect and it really makes a difference in how the characters are presented 

And the visual presentation isn’t all that this game does well. The voice acting is superb with some of the best in game banter between characters. Nolan North returns as the voice of Nathan Drake and does an outstanding job of bringing out his snarky personality and remarks. And it’s not just Drake that stands out, but all the great voice work of the other characters work well to bring out their own personalities. In game cut-scenes bring out the chemistry between characters. Someone at Naughty Dog must have taken a class in Characterization because you can see how the interactions between the different characters builds their realism. It makes them a little more believable, even in the moments where there is absurd chaos and wild explosions everywhere. Naughty Dog’s Creative Director said that the other characters were like satellites to Nate, floating around him and bringing out different aspects of his personality with their interactions, flushing out his character. For instance: Sully serves as his curious greed, Elena his moral compass, Chloe the adventurous thief with a realistic outlook, and Flynn as the side willing to get his hands dirty. It’s all really good writing. 

 
Gameplay
The story itself is pretty good too. Sure the plot may seem familiar—in fact it feels like an adventure straight out of the Indiana Jones series—but the creative presentation and direction of the gameplay and in-game cinema helps keep the story fresh and original. The characterization helps ground the characters and make them more believable, while the plot itself uses a factual tale as its foundation. Marco Polo sets out on his return voyage with a fleet of ships but makes it home only with one. Drake and his crew are set on finding the treasure of the lost fleet, and much like any adventure game find themselves searching for something even greater. The twists, double-crosses, dramatic rescue attempts are all predictable, but its how you get to these points that is so original. Having to climb along rooftops or scale street signs to reach a building that is just going to collapse so you can just see where to go next is part of the adventure and what makes the story so endearing. 

But there is more to this sequel than just presentation. Uncharted 2 takes the gameplay of the first and tweaks it enough to make the pains go away. Their refining of the cover system (not to mention grenade-tossing technique) was like aspirin to a headache. The moments where you’re struggling to shoot the heavily armored enemies storming toward you with shotguns onboard speeding train that continues to wind and turn, throwing off your shot, will still refrain from being as frustrating as the final firefight of the previous installment because of how well everything works together. Playing through the first game was fun, but in the areas you shoot the seemingly endless hordes of walking flak jackets, the game pretty much pushed you into a corner and you were more or less forced to stay in the same spot until each enemy was dead. Then the platforming segments would take over till the next firefight, rinse and repeat. 

That’s not to say it wasn’t good, but I didn’t care for the bullet sponge enemies and how the AI kept them from really taking much advantage of the situation. Most of the time was spent waiting for the perfect headshot, and in some ways that was the fastest method of progressing. For this reason I enjoyed the platforming more than the shooting. The new installment decreases the number of bullets an individual can take, improves their AI so that they are constantly flanking you and forcing you to new cover. Occasionally it throws a heavily armored individual at you and the opportunity to take the enemies out with some stealth kills or other unorthodox methods. There are some new weapons to try out with the additions of a shotgun-like pistol and a riot shield to soak up some head-on gunfire. The enemies, of course, can use them too making for some more interesting combat situations (you can actually run over a guy crouching with a shield). And the gunplay is constantly blending with the platform jumping, there are very few moments where you feel you that you can relax and just jump around till the next open area to fill up with enemies, in fact there are spots where you have to constantly flip over street signs and hang from them to take out your enemies. 

Multiplayer
And then there is the multiplayer. When I first heard that this game had multiplayer, I was a little apprehensive as to how it would be executed. It caught me off guard how well Naughty Dog did. The multiplayer is flat out fun. It’s simple and doesn’t bring any new modes to the table but that’s pretty much how the rest of the game is. It brings the familiar and does it well. The different modes of competitive multiplayer keep me coming back for more; Team Deathmatch may be the simplest, but it’s my favorite. Uncharted’s take on capture the flag is fun but can often play as a lengthy stalemate or brief domination. One of the disadvantages of having it based on teamwork is a lot of the people on PSN either don’t have headsets, or are too annoying to escape the wrath of the mute button. 

But if the competitive stuff isn’t your thing, then jump onboard for some co-op. It shares the treasure hunting mode where you try to retrieve an idol from the hordes of AI enemies, allowing you to use some creative methods of catch and release on the “flag” with your partner(s). Speaking of hordes, it also has the ever-popular “horde mode” from Gears of War. Named simply as “survival” you and two other players team up for ten rounds of progressively harder enemies; should you succeed to the end, the rewards are bountiful. I find this to be my favorite in co-op and why not, right? Halo copied it and Uncharted does just as well here. Finally there is the scenario part of co-op that allows you and two others to play through sections of the single player together. It strays slightly from the storyline of the campaign but the scenarios are familiar and it definitely brings a little flavor to the campaign if you’ve already beaten it. 

Conclusion
Now if you’ve read this far and said, “okay, sounds like they improved the original but there’s nothing really new that this brings to the gaming industry,” I would say you are mostly correct. The game does lack originality. In fact that would be my main criticism of this game. To use the phrase “its evolution not a revolution” would be accurate in describing what Uncharted 2 is in the gaming industry. However, its evolution is similar to going from apes in a jungle to civilized human beings. It brings many familiar aspects and ideas from countless other video games that we have seen time and time again and is superb at recreating them. 

You could play a game that is unlike any other and really breaks some boundaries in innovation but fails in making the game really fun or poignant. You could play one that tells a story you’ve heard before, gives you a short and unrewarding campaign, but has a new mode that counterbalances the shortcomings. Or you could play Uncharted 2 that may lack originality, but makes up for it by improving on all the ideas of its predecessors. Even the moments in the story where the writing would seem cliché or predictable, it’s done in a way that makes you accept the fact that you saw it coming and still want more. You aren’t playing to find out what happens next so much as how it’s going to happen next. A frequent question I asked was: What is Drake going to do to get out of this one? 

There’s a lot of other aspects of this game that I would love to cover but the review would just get excessive. All I can say is that if you own a PS3, this is a must buy. It isn’t perfect, but Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is much closer to perfect than anything else. (It’s actually keeping me satisfied enough to wait till Christmas for Modern Warfare 2 if that says anything.)