Just another reason to own a PS3
Before I picked up Uncharted 2 the sum of my experience with the first game was about 20 minutes of the demo. The game looked great and the movement/ animations were great, but I found the gun-play and some other mechanics too tedious for me to continue playing. Uncharted 1 is on my list of games that I am guilty for not playing all the way through. Thank goodness however it turns out you don’t really need to have played the first game to enjoy the second one. There are enough nods and references to the first game that some die hards will appreciate the subtle nuances but not enough for people new to the Uncharted universe to get lost.
The lead character Nathan Drake is the Indiana Jones of our generation. He is brilliant, suave, good with a gun and easily tricked time and time again by people who get close to him who are just using him to get to some ancient trinket. The plot is throughout history really famous people like Genghis Khan and Hitler were so powerful because they had a shard of a special stone called the Chitamani Stone and a really really bad guy is after the whole stone because it’ll make him god like. Yeah that’s it, seems a little flimsy right? Well the plot gets a lot thicker with a number of characters with their own reasons for being there, chasing clues in different locales and massive MASSIVE set pieces!
The graphics are breath taking. Some of the best stuff on the PS3. This game is really a show piece. I found myself sometimes going back and looking around at the buildings and architecture and just admiring the amount of love and work that went into it all. I swear i don’t think i can remember ever seeing a single texture twice! Everything has been amped up from the first game. The motion capture work and the voice acting along with the facial animations really fleshes out the characters and makes them believable. I cant remember the last time I actually cared about what was going to happen to a digital character! There was this commercial I saw the other day where this guy’s girlfriend thought Uncharted 2 was a movie and surprisingly its a close analogy! This game is fun even when someone else is playing it!
The music really plays a big part in the build up and crucial moments of the plot. These days music in a game can make or break the atmosphere and they don’t drop the ball here anywhere!
The gun-play has improved vastly over the last game. gone are the frustrating camera angles and ganky gun-play and the fact that i played the whole game all the way through where gun-play was unavoidable for 90% of the game is a testament to the game-play.
The VGAs were recently on and they chose Uncharted 2 for Game of the Year. I know this awards show, like many others is more about product placement than actual recognition of hard work and talent in the gaming industry, but I want everyone out there to know that not only does UC2 deserve the award, but if you reading this, you own a PS3 then just stop reading and go out and rent or buy this game now! you won’t regret it. Great single player and solid multi-player these is something for anyone who loves games here. Single player storyline only took me 6 hours to pass.