Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Reviewed by Z

Hey people, this is my review of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s no pictures… sorry. Since this is the first console game I’ve reviewed, and moreover, a game that I beat at a friend’s house 40 miles away, I can’t really take any. And I don’t feel like jacking other people’s screenshots, so I’ll try to keep the review short and sweet to compensate for it.

Let me say first and foremost, this game is very fun. I was not as blown away as a lot of people apparently were, in fact I would hesitate to say that any particular part if the game is all that amazing. But this is a game that is definitely more than the sum of its parts.

Let’s start with combat, since that makes up the bulk of the gameplay. Uncharted 2 is your standard third person shooter, aim, take cover, throw grenades, or just spray around corners without looking. You can hold one gun and one pistol, which is fine, but Nathan Drake seems to be deathly afraid of ammunition. I found that most of the game I ended up running around with whatever gun the enemies were carrying at the time, just so I didn’t have to worry about running out. It sounds like a reasonable enough way to play, but seriously, the guy refuses to hold more than 14 shots with a desert eagle! I can fit more than that in one pocket. The amount of ammo you can carry is generally inversely proportional to how useful the gun is. The deagle and sniper rifle can only carry a dozen and a half or so bullets, where as the 9mm can carry around 80 shots. The majority of fighting I did was either with the AK47 or the M4, both of which hold 150 bullets max. There were more than a couple of firefights that I had to switch to pistol and start running around like a maniac picking up weapons.

I think my biggest gripe with combat is how it is so over the top. As the game progresses, the enemies you fight go from easy, to hard, to ridiculous, to downright stupid. This is a recurring theme I noticed in the game. It tries sooo hard to get you to take it seriously, but continuously shoots itself in the foot. There’s these guys in body armor that’s about half a foot thick who wear ten helmets and come at you with Terminator-style miniguns. The first one you run away from, the second you use the environment to kill, but then you have to actually start killing them. These guys can survive 3 RPG’s to the forehead. Then you have to fight multiples of them, then you have to fight these yeti-man things, then you have to fight minigun dudes and yetimen, then yeti men start using crossbows that do more damage than grenades, then they start flinging explosive tree sap at you. The way it escalates really made me start to philosophize on the subject of difficulty versus fun. That’s not to say that the game is too hard, it’s just too much, I see no reason why the had to completely crank the combat up to 11 for every fight like that. I did a test, on normal it took over 50 bullets from my m4 to take down a yetiman.

There’s also melee, and along with that there’s an entire stealth mechanic that is so poorly done I’m not even sure why they bothered. The idea here is if you catch someone off guard and melee them, it’s an instant kill. The thing is generally you might stealth 2 or 3 dudes, then, once you’re spotted, the other 50 that weren’t initially there will barge in and unload on you. The notable exception is when you’re hanging from a ledge or taking cover around a corner. Then you can “stealth” kill someone, even if they know you’re there… tossing them over the edge or slamming their head into the wall, those moves were actually useful. Melee itself becomes pointless after about 2 hours of gameplay. In fact, by the end of the game, about 75% of the enemies you fight will drop you to strong-breeze-kills-me status if you attempt to melee them. I think a list of most damaging enemy attacks would be 1) Rocket to the Chest, 2) Attempting to melee a guy with a riot shield and him shield slamming you, 3) point blank shotgun to the face.

Luckily combat isn’t everything. There’s also the story, and the platforming segments. Platforming is usually well done. Lucky for us Nathan drake is apparently some wise-assed offspring of a Kevlar vest and a spider monkey. You jump around, grabbing ledges by your fingernails and swinging from bars like a gymnast constantly. And when you’re hanging from a ledge (which you will be, a lot) you aim in a direction and if Nate reaches out towards it, you know you can jump to it. It’s a good system, the problem is it doesn’t really work if you have to jump to a ledge behind him, and the even bigger problem is he doesn’t do it if you’re standing or doing you gymnast routine. Most of the time it’s obvious where to go, but definitely not always. Luckily there’s a hint system that I felt like was mocking me at first, but came to rely on by the end of the game. I remember one part in particular at the beginning of the Monastery where you get all cocky in a cut scene then it’s like boom, you gotta get around this locked door. After jumping to my death about 10 times trying to figure out which of the bricks on this brick building I would actually grab on to, I just shoved my thumb in my ass and waited. After a couple minutes the chick I was with turned around, pointed, and said “I bet you can climb that column there”. Lo and behold, on the back of this column is a brick I can grab on to. There were also a couple of times where I’d follow a path (the game is very linear by the way). And I’d reach the end, and figure okay, apparently I have to jump to something, I just have no idea what. So I’d take a running jump and TA DA! Monkey man grabs a sign, or a rope, or a brick, or whatever.

Graphically, the game is okay. It’s not going to knock your socks off, and is by no means a step forward in technology, but the scenery is very well done, and the environments are well designed and interesting. The voice acting is top notch, and while I’m not a fan of Claudia Black, at least she was better here than in Dragon Age. The cut scenes are apparently the biggest fucking deal on the planet as far as this game is concerned. I just don’t see it. I can appreciate all the work that went into making the cut scenes as realistic as possible and all but… okay no I can’t. There was nothing all that amazing to them. All these people talking about how you can really feel the characters personalities and sense relationships between them and blah blah blah, they’re high as hell. Sticking with the game’s mantra, they’re good, not great. And probably cost a fortune.

This is a game that wants you to take it seriously. It wants you to care about Nate and his love triangle thing, it wants you to be sad when Jeff the dipshit gets shot and you have to lug him around. It probably didn’t want me to cheer when I thought Elena was dead. They have super serious cut scenes, with a super serious plot, and some African warlord wants to do some super serious bad stuff. But then you have to fight yeti’s with grenade crossbows, and single handedly defeat an army (NOT AN EXAGGERATION). And there’s some shit about how the bad guy wants to be immortal, just like a bunch of other dead dudes, so after he drinks the immortal juice you have to kill him. There’s a part in the game where you get shot, and you’re all slow and limpy and bleeding everywhere, but it doesn’t fucking matter, because your health bar is still full. After being shot and being “near death” I proceeded to get shot about 45 more times and it barely fazed me.

This is the starship troopers of video games. It comes at you with a straight face, but unless you accept it for the mindless action movie that it is, you’re going to be very confused. Plus the plot is really stupid.