A "LMX" Review
Nathan Drake; a few years ago this name would have meant nothing to anyone who considered themselves a gamer. Then Naughty Dog decided to turn him into an action adventure superstar following in the footsteps of such greats as Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. That was back around the launch of Sony’s Playstation 3 console, where we were introduced to
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Here we stand a few years later, enjoying the second mesmerizing installment in what is surely a franchise we’ll see a lot of in the coming years.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the follow up to 2007’s surprise hit,
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and with the second title comes a lot of familiar ground. Before we get to the main body of the review, I will summarise
Uncharted 2 for those who don’t have time for the full review.
Uncharted 2 is a game that will grab your face, jam it onto the screen and keep you fixated constantly, only stopping occasionally to remind you it isn’t taking itself so seriously with some in-game humour, as well as fourth-wall breaking humour. This is what makes it a great game; it never stops dazzling the eyes and the ears, making it a sensory delight to behold. Breath-taking visuals, accompanied with some of the best voice acting and possibly the best original score video games have been graced by in 2009.
But that is enough idle chit-chat, time to get down and dirty with this game. It should be mentioned that this isn’t a game that is going to get into your psyche and give you something to think about. There is no deep, plot-twist filled storyline here, but even though the story itself is nothing out of the ordinary the game manages to carry itself with enough charm that you’ll take interest in the story. It runs along the same path as an action movie; something a game would normally struggle with. Why you ask? Well generally an action movie only has to do it for two hours at most; a game needs to be able to hold itself steady for at least nine hours in some cases. So if you are wondering if
Uncharted 2 does that, I can safely say that it does- or at least it did do so for me. The story-line itself is kind of jumpy in terms of continuity, upon picking up your control and playing as Nathan Drake you actually will find yourself at a point in the story that you’ll loop around to in around Chapter 16 or so. And before you do that, you’ll jump forward a bit between the first two chapters which establish Drake’s relationship with Chloe and friendship with Flynn. So it manages this quite well, though you might seem a bit confused at first as to why you don’t go make to the train in the first place it all makes sense as you progress through the game. The story also keeps things interesting by taking you to several different locales, maintaining a fresh feel to your surroundings. You will also find yourself running into a couple of familiar faces from the first game throughout this one. The story builds to a decent climax, but without spoiling anything, this is probably its weakest point. It successfully builds a threatening villain but ultimately you can predict how it will end. Either way you look at it, the storyline is definitely strong enough to hold and engage your interest. The characters each have their own charms, and their little chatter with each other are both amusing and engaging to listen to and watch.
Specifically in terms of characters, Drake is your typical treasure hunter. And as a result of this, he isn’t necessarily the most perfect character. He is flawed, and definitely on the clumsy side whilst still being somewhat full of himself. You’ll find yourself chuckling as his own confidence fails him, or even clinging to the edge of your seat when you aren’t sure if his abilities will pull him through. It definitely helps that his voice is perfectly delivered by the talented Nolan North. With the help of an ensemble of enjoyable characters, the story is entertaining from start to finish. Chloe Frazer adds a more dynamic, tough girl edge that Elena didn’t really deliver on in the first
Uncharted. Heck, sometimes she seems more on the ball than Drake could ever dream to be throughout the game. Harry Flynn is a slimy character, and as expected of all slimy characters he has his own agenda that he is determined to satisfy. Zoran Lazarević is the villain you’ll find yourself opposing; he is a tough as nails ex-Soviet intelligence officer. And of course, your old pals Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan will make appearances in the game as well. The diverse characters really help hold the story together, and their interactions on screen are so well written that you’ll be experiencing any number of emotions at any given time throughout the game.
Ask anyone about
Uncharted 2 and you’ll no doubt be met with gushing comments about the visuals, and deservedly so. Naughty Dog has gone through such effort to detail and populate Drake’s world with beautiful towns, temples, and caves which you will be working your way through. This reviewer can nearly say with maximum confidence that this game was the best looking game of 2009. That is not to talk down any other titles; it is simply the fact that this game looks so good. You’ll find yourself staring in awe at some moments, in particular the moment you climb to the top of a building and the camera will pull out so you can see what Drake can see. The lush jungle that you see looks brilliant, vibrant and lush, the helicopter in the sky and the temple in the distance where you shall be heading. It is easily one of the most amazing moments in gaming for the year. As you are running, gunning and jumping for cover the world will astonish you, a true example of how high definition can look in its entire splendor. The game is a sight to behold in its full 720p glory. They didn’t even need 1080p to showcase its visual prowess, so one can only wonder what
Uncharted 3 will look like in a few years time.
To help give you an idea of the environmental transitions you will undergo, you start by climbing up a train dangling over the edge of a snowy cliff and any minute it could potentially fall into the icy depths taking Drake along with it. But afterwards you’ll jump back into the past and find yourself busting into a Turkish Museum with Flynn, evading guards and taking them out as silently as possibly whilst scaling buildings and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Not long after this you’ll find yourself in a ruined city, fighting against Lazarević’s men, until you are fighting your way along a moving train which covers a lot of terrain in a short time (jungle, tunnel, snow) until your build your way to the game’s climax in an ancient city (but I’ll never say where!). The visuals rarely give you a chance to catch your breath, so try not to get too distracted by minor details in the world when you are trying to escape Lazarević’s men with Elena while running (and unarmed) through the rain as you desperately try to survive
This game controls with the upmost fluidity of controls, there is no second guessing if you have played
Uncharted 1 either as only a couple of minor things have changed. No longer will you find yourself tossing grenades by aiming with the Sixaxis function on your PS3 controller (one thing that I can safely say I’m happy was gone) and instead you will be using the joystick which is much more efficient in a squeeze. You also will not be tilting the PS3 control (again less Sixaxis functionality) as you walk across narrow planks of wood or fallen logs across gaps and chasms, another welcomed change. Overall though, it is easy to say that I was indescribably happy to see that Sixaxis had been done away with, often in the first game it presented itself as more of a burden than anything else. Which explains my joy for Naughty Dog making sure it was eradicated. Otherwise, most of the usual controls apply left joystick to move and right joystick to swing the camera around. Hold L1 to aim, and press R1 to fire, tapping the R1 without touching L1 lets out a classic Drake Hip Shot. R2[/i] will provide you with your reloading. The X-button will jump, climb and vault. The square button will be hand-to-hand combat. The triangle is to interact with objects and occasionally pick them up in some cases. And circle is to roll and take cover (as well as drop down a ledge if you are climbing). They feel a lot more responsive compared to back in
Uncharted 1, but that may just stem from the fact that Naughty Dog have adapted to the PS3 controller. Either way, the game handles brilliantly.
Apart from the visuals and character, this game will blow you away with its sound and music. Top notch soundtrack accompanied with a brilliant sound effects and some talented voice acting. I found the voice acting to be such a fantastic draw point because each voice gave each character an individual character, and the best part is none of the voices were utterly horrible (which is something most games suffer from these days). Obviously, Nolan North was great as Nathan Drake but there were a few other stand-out characters that had very talented voices behind them. Emily Rose has seemingly found the sweet spot with Elena, who now dishes out cheekiness just as well as Nathan Drake can deliver it himself. Claudia Black (Chloe) and Steve Valentine (Harry) are great at their characters, Claudia portrays the new tough girl with little trouble and Steve sounds great as the slimy Harry. Whilst Graham McTavish plays a good villain (contradiction?), having said that, throughout the game he did appear to have the voice that was least interesting. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; he just came across as your sort of stereotypical villain hell-bent on destroying and/or conquering everything. Something that we’ve all heard before, plus his voice does start to get on your nerves during the final boss fight where he will constantly yell “DRAKE!” as if he is struggling to get your attention. But I assure you, your attention will be squarely focused upon him.
Voice-work aside, the dazzling sound effects will have your eyes quite pleased (or saddened, depending on how you react to some good quality gun-fire sound effects). But musically, this game nearly stands with some of the other games that are often recognized for having brilliant soundtracks (such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Halo and The Legend of Zelda) and perhaps in a few more installments it will stand proudly amongst them. Greg Edmunson handled the composition of the soundtrack, and I still stand by my statement that Nate’s Theme is one of the classic theme tunes to come out of gaming from the last few years. Some may say that it is full of cliché action music such as that found in the tracks “Bustin’ Chops” and “Cat and Mouse” but it also features some more subtle tracks such as “Breaking and Entering” or the soft, but powerful “Marco Polo.” This is a soundtrack that easily sits up there with some of the greats. The soundtrack easily carries itself through the game, managing to one-up the soundtrack to
Uncharted 1. One can only wonder how long it’ll be before each
Uncharted game is pinned with a title song performed by any number of singer/bands. But that is yet to be foreseen, but at the rate this franchise is picking up steam it is certainly not impossible. All I can say, is that I hope to see Greg Edmunson return for Drake’s inevitable third outing, and that he brings along his usual action packed but emotional score. Can I rant about Nate’s Theme some more? I suppose not, but seriously it is certainly a song to have.
Action-adventure games generally do not have much in the way of a lifespan, at least not one that will see you picking them up for several months after you first finish it. But unless you search up and down through out the game and have a final completion time of twenty hours on your first
Uncharted 2 play through, then you are already guaranteed to be playing it again. First a slightly annoying feature of its lifespan, you’ll be required to finish the game on Hard to access Crushing (which is an utterly unforgivable game mode). And that negative is certainly one that you’ll find nagging at you if you seek to punish yourself with Crushing mode (as well as earn that Gold Trophy), so it can be frustrating that you can’t play it from the get-go. It isn’t that big of a deal, because it does encourage you to beat it on Hard only to find another challenge lies before you. The treasures return in this game, a total of one hundred and one treasures a scattered throughout the game for Drake to find (I suppose he is a treasure hunter after all, and he seemingly gets no treasure in the story anyway), this includes the return of the Strange Relic. So finding them will have you scratching your head at some points, especially now that can be hanging off objects and on places you can only reach by swinging their with ropes only to find a triangle button will pop up for you to press. As well as this, you’ll be encouraged to earn in-game cash to buy any number of bonuses such as behind the scenes interviews and footage as well as the ability to buy skins for in-game so you can play as Harry or Doughnut Drake. The game will beg you to come back and play it again, until it has leeched all the time it can from you, and even after that it has one last trump card.
The online multiplayer in this game was at first dismissed as a rushed attachment to capitalize a popular buzz in the online world. However, it has surprisingly turned out to be a enriching experience that is full of activity and fun. You have a few options as to how you tackle the online. You can go for straight out deatchmatch in up to five versus five action, or tackle elimination (last person standing wins), plunder (essentially capture the flag), turf war (capture target areas, each area will give you points), king of the hill (capture and defend a specified area for a designated time), chain reaction (points will appear on a map, as soon as a team captures one another will appear and the current will disappear). And if standard kill each other style isn’t enough, the game has even included a co-op feature. The co-op modes on offer include general co-op (which will allow you and up to two others to play through one of the three missions on offer), survival (you and up to two others fight of waves of enemies) and gold rush (you and up to two others collect treasure and return it to your chest whilst defending your teammates from gunfire). One final bonus is a machinima mode that allows you to record and edit your own animations with in game footage and characters, surprisingly fun and probably built off the popularity of machinima after Red vs. Blue took off. Need I go on about the rich experience that online seeks to offer? As well as that, you will rank up and gain levels which grants you access to special abilities that affect you in-game, such as how accurate you are with weapons or how much ammunition you can carry. Beyond that, the in-game cash can also be spent online to buy characters to use in deathmatches or to buy the special abilities to enhance aspects of your character. Naughty Dog also recently patched it to include a ranking ladder as well, so now you can see where you stack up against your fellow PSN users either on your friends list or worldwide.
Ultimately, there is little doubt that
Uncharted 2 was one of the most brilliant games released during 2009. Some may even go so far as to say it was Game of the Year. And this reviewer is most definitely one of them. Breath-taking visuals, powerful soundtrack, compelling characters, and a thoroughly enjoyable online mode. It would be a wise decision to find a way to experience this game, sure it will not be for everyone but even those who do not enjoy it should be able to vouch for the detail and effort that Naughty Dog has poured into this. It is safe to say that with this game, we usher in a new gaming mascot. Nathan Drake, welcome aboard.
PROS
+ Absolutely stunning visuals.
+ Powerful, swelling, emotional soundtrack.
+ Engaging characters.
+ Unlockables galore
+ Nathan Drake still in fine form.
+ Dazzling environments.
+ Constantly in your face, whether its action or story.
+ Brilliant cover system.
CONS
- Beating Hard mode just to get Crushing mode can be frustrating.
- Climbing can still prove to be a trouble without some careful observation skills.
- You may reach the end and feel it was a bit short.
- Relatively typical villain, much like
Uncharted 1.
- Some annoying new enemy types.
- Semi-monsters make a return towards the end of the game.
- It had to end, and
Uncharted 3 is years away.
*Kyran Morrison*
*IMAGES COMING TOMORROW*
