Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review: Almost Perfect

Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted 2 Among Thieves” leaves you breathless.  It’s tough to find a  game that mixes well proven game development techniques and leaves a solid impression on you. This is something that you can’t really understand this until you play the game.  With a much longer single player experience than the original, stronger visuals, tightened gameplay, on-line co-op and multiplayer, it’s near impossible not to like “Uncharted 2.” 

The actual single player campaign is a linear affair – move from point A to B, take out bad-guys, and collect treasures. If you have the patience, searching for all the treasures in “Uncharted” will extend your single player experience even further, as some of the treasures are well hidden and are in places that you would least expect.  As you start the game, you will spend the majority of your time trying to figure out how Drake ended up on a train that’s about to fall into a crevice that makes the Grand Canyon look like a sand box.  After you go globe trotting, you will be confronted with the main antagonist in a climatic battle in the lost city of Shangri-la.  You will travel to museums, the jungle, on top of trains, under forgotten sewers, through temples, and jump from one moving jeep to the next.

With hardly a dull moment, “Uncharted” continues to borrow a lot from the Hollywood style blockbuster movies we know and love.  It is the one game that your girlfriend, or mom, may actually sit and watch you play without getting bored.  The story is always engaging and you build a fondness for all the characters; even the villains.  The banter between Drake and the other denizens of the “Uncharted” world is always fun to hear. You can’t help but wonder if this was the movie style presentation that Kojima was aiming for in his ”Metal Gear Solid 4″ game.  The Borneo stage where you fight the Hind-D helicopter will be engraved  in your  mind as long as you have the brain cells to retain the action sequence.  What really drives your eye balls crazy is how well Naughty Dog was able to handle the transitions between gameplay, cutscenes, and back to gameplay in this 720P title.  Everything happens so smoothly that it catches you off guard, shocks you, engages you, and then gives you control again without making you feel too disconnected from the on-going chaos. Another example of this is when you have to escape from a building that just had it’s guts blown away.  It begins to crash into another building and you are expected to kill off baddies and get out at the same time.

Kudos to the level designers as the stages bring a level of detail that you just don’t see in other titles.  Even though “Uncharted 2″ is not presented in 1080i/p, it still leaves you amazed when you consider some of the approaches taken for visual appeal.  The water looks amazing still, and while it was the main killer feature of the first game, snow takes on a whole new life in “Uncharted 2,” as there are several tons of it encasing amazing vista style locations.  Even the NPCs admire the view.  There are too many scenes to mention here, but trust me when I say that this game is breathtaking from beginning to end.  That’s a great part of this game, you are never sure when “Uncharted 2″ is going to end.   When it finally does, you’re half disappointed.

New to ”Uncharted” is the online multiplayer and co-operative gameplay modes that can help extend the life of the game.  It seems like it was the missing element from the first game.  On the same token, you’re a little amazed that multiplayer and co-operative game play modes are done so well.  All the standard modes that you would expect in an online multiplayer exist, but Naughty Dog was still able to put a unique twist on each mode.  Plunder is like capture the flag but you have to capture a large chunk of gold and drop it off in a safe box to gain points.  In online co-operative games you can play with partners and take on the AI in waves, as the game throws progressively harder enemies at you.  While multiplayer and co-operative gameplay doesn’t do anything that new, you will still spend a lot of time playing and enjoying it.

The online multiplayer and co-operative modes do not sacrifice any of the environmental interactions from the single player game.  You can also perform all the sneak attacks, cover fire moves, and just about anything you can do offline.  However, to what end?    It makes for very interesting online gameplay as you monkey across walls to get to the perfect sniping position.  As you win games online you will earn money and level up.  Leveling up gives you cash and access better boosters.  Boosters are necessary because they give you enhancements so you can have an extra edge during online multiplayer battles.  You can liken  it to the perk system from Modern Warfare.

It’s been said time and time again, that “Uncharted” takes everything we know and love about games and does it even better.  Presented across beautiful locales, new multiplayer modes, and wrapped with solid gameplay and presentation, it becomes clear why this title has been marked for Game of the Year nominations already.  “Uncharted 2″ proves that you don’t always have to build the next “Fl0w” to be innovative.  There are some forward thinking developers out there who realize that re-inventing the wheel is not necessary to move forward in the over-crowded gaming genre of action adventures.

Rating:
“Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” was developed by Naughty Dog and published by SCEA for the Playstation 3 on October 13, 2009.

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