Greatness from all beginnings.
Nathan Drake is back, with his mentor Victor Sullivan, and this time he travels the world in search of the legendary lost city the Iram of the Pillars in the Rub' al Khali desert. The plot draws from the archaeology days of T. E. Lawrence. The story this time really drives home the relationship between Drake and Sully. The flashback near the beginning of the game show us how the two characters met each other.
With its great graphics, detailed environments, well constructed character models, superb voice acting (especially from Nolan North) with solid performances all around, really fun multiplayer, outstanding soundtrack that fits the locales perfectly (the familiar main menu theme is present once again), Drake's Deception, the second of the sequels to Drake's Fortune, is truly one of the best games of 2011, up there with the likes of Gear of Wars 3 and a load of others for PlayStation 3, save for some notable exceptions. 2011 must have been a very rough year and a very tough year for the video game industry and even me.
Gun play feels as tight as ever, complimented by the many action set pieces. There are also lots of awesome dynamic camera angles that feel like you're watching an action movie (like Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, First Blood, etc.). Nate can throw grenades back to enemies in this game, which is very useful in tight situations with lots of enemies. Like the brutal combo, throwing grenades back, however, never appears in future games, even though they were very useful mechanics.
As for the antagonists, Katherine Marlowe is forgettable and bland, with her right hand man, Talbot, being more memorable, but only because you keep running into him. He also just seems to be everywhere and comes off as OP. One could even say they're just like Gabriel Roman and Navarro from the first game. Charlie Cutter is still an interesting character, though too bad he doesn't appear with Chloe Frazer for the second half of the whole game.
Like the train plane sequence in Uncharted 2, the Stowaways chapter is a highly memorable scene. It has Nate hanging out of the back of a plane with a load of cargo. This scene was remade into an arena in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. Another memorable scene is the familiar convoy segment, only this time, horse riding is thrown into the mix. Despite the linearity, there are still opportunities to explore. Some areas like the desert though, feel more open compared to others. Also, like the first game in the series, it tends to overuse quick time events. They are also far more common this time around. The sandstorm segment is very difficult due to limited vision. It doesn't help that enemies can still hit you easily despite the poor visibility. The whole section with the ship graveyard is complete filler since the whole point was to save Sully from a bunch of pirates only to find out he was never there.
The multiplayer treasures were a pain to collect, as they were 100% random and required pure luck to get, fortunately they're not required for 100% but they're needed for DLC trophies. Also, the multiplayer servers have been shut down, losing all your characters, banners and leaderboards. Thankfully co-op is still available due to the game having 2 player splitscreen, but the Thrillseeker trophy cannot be obtained, making it impossible to get the platinum trophy as well.
This is an amazing end to a signature franchise...until five years later. Now let's go for it!
