Spectacle, above everything else

I had no right to say that I was a fan of Naughty Dog’s work if I had only played the last of us games, so this summer I made up my mind that I was going to knockout the Uncharted games.

The first game just blew me away from a technical aspect. Just the set-pieces in the games and the way the game looks and feels was shocking for the time that it was released. However the game lost me hard. It really is the worst one of the trilogy, and obviously so. Without getting to into it, it really felt like a tech-demo for the second game, and that’s why I’m writing this. I put the game down and immediately picked up Uncharted 2, Honor Among Thieves.

OVERVIEW
Just off the bat, blown away. Without spoiling it, the game starts off on a 2 cart train with one cart hanging off the edge of a cliff. You as Nathen are climbing your way up as rocks and parts of the train are braking around you. Just unbelievable. The game then flashes back to where the story began and periodically flashes forward to that train wreckage to remind you what you’re looking forward to. I’ll be honest, the story is good, not great. It’s no The Last of Us, and that’s good. These first two game know what they want to do, and they do it so extremely well. You’re not here to have the most gripping betrayal heist story you’ve ever seen. You’re here to play as a struggling man in his prime gang fighting on a crumbling building as a helicopter is firing missiles at it. And that what I (and everyone) loves about these games. As a kid, were you ever rock climbing or climbing something and imagined that you were climbing a burning skyscraper to save the world? We’ll thug game lets you live that fantasy better then most other games I’ve played. I love the Arkham games, but scaling something as Batman (while feels great) just doesn’t scratch the itch that Nathen Drake climbing a signpost does. Movement in this game feels awesome. I was always excited to be climbing something and it never got old to me, and I think a big contributor for that is….

THE CAMERA
I’ve seen people dunk on the camera of the uncharted games, and I get the sentiment….in the first one. I LOVE the camera angles in the second game. Nate would be climbing on a cliff and the camera would pull out and show me the sheer drop and I love that crap. The Uncharted games were one of the first games that combined the cinematic elements of the cutscenes with the gameplay and I love it all, I eat it up. But this was a little bit of a Pandora’s box, well, maybe not a little bit. I’ll say it, half of these game should not be as cinematic as they are. It’s being repetitious and annoying. The cinematic aspect works in Naughty Dog games, and almost never works in any other game. But yea, the camera is incredible, and never got old, especially in the endgame and the train sequences.

COMBAT
It’s fun, maybe one too many shootouts…. Ok, 13 too many shootouts
That’s all I really have to say

All in all, what a wonderful game, just so short and tight and it’s doing everything right.