The evolution of my impressions when I finally finish a game is sometimes startling. As much as I try and avoid it, I tend to hear lots of other people’s opinions about a game before I can even get a moment with it myself. Objectivity goes out the window when I walk into an experience with expectations of what it will be, or should be, and Uncharted 2 was no exception to that. I had heard very good things about it, so when the loading screen finished and the game began it was already climbing up a steep hill where I expected a game to be with such high praise. And the thing is, by the end of my play through, it had matched up very well with my prejudices, but it took a while to get there.

A sequel to the exclusive Uncharted, Among Thieves puts you in the shoes of intrepid explorer and Young Indiana Jones-esque Nathan “Nate” Drake. There is adventure to be had and treasure to be found, and who are you to stand in the way of a fictional character and his dreams of following in the footsteps of so many famous explorers and looting as much as humanly possible? Mechanically, the game is a third person shooter, blended finely with elements of 3D platforming and puzzles. It feels less about mastering the mechanics, however, and more about the idea of interactive cinema, making each movement and interaction with characters or the environment eventful and keeping you only moments away from something new throughout the entire game.

The first five chapters of the game do it absolutely no favors. My first time with the game brought me through what felt like a sparse and boring set of tutorials on the various mechanics the game had to offer. Gun play, stealth and crawling all over the environment in between short cut scenes with characters that I felt had no sympathetic or interesting qualities. While the overall gameplay experience does not evolve significantly, the small steps that the game takes in drawing you in once you get past the first few chapters make all the difference. Visually, the game has you hooked right from the beginning, with one of the most cohesive and artistically grabbing technical achievements I have seen in a game so far. While it does feel like it has a uniqueness about the art style, the attention to detail in the way the environment looks, sounds and feels gives credence to the experience that the developer is trying to shape. The world feels epic, large, ancient and dangerous when it needs to. While the world is basically a linear funnel that you are marched through, it never feels like an endless alley that you are simply plodding safely down, but rather a guided experience through a vast, open world. Although, the fidelity of the environment can also be a bit misleading, with almost every surface and ledge seeming to be explorable, and so rarely does that turn out to be the case.

What the game seems to lack in the first sections it gains as it continues, with all the elements of the game coming together to make a cohesive and rarely tedious experience of thwarting enemies and scaling a beautifully crafted environment. It is much more difficult to describe exactly what the game does right, because it is as much about the timing of events and the satisfaction you are given when you are able to make a leap across a huge platform, roll and take down a room full of enemies in a sequence that is guided and simple, but visually and mechanically satisfying. It is far removed from any experience I have had in this particular genre before, and while it does fall into the tropes of standard game playing quite frequently, it satisfies a halfway point between where games have already been and where they are going in terms of the way the game plays and is presented to you. Instead of showing your character rocked by an explosion in a cutscene, it unfolds in real time and tosses you aside only to pick yourself up and find a new way. You move forward in one section, only to be chased down a narrow alley by an armored car that forces you to explore the run-and-gun mechanic and sees you only just escape the exploding vehicle violently throwing itself towards you. The positions of all the elements, like the characters and cameras, has a style and blocking that feels cinematic, even when you are in control of what is unfolding on screen, and there is something satisfying about having that experience that speaks volumes about the quality of what is being delivered.

While the story of the game seems to be getting high praise, it feels a bit more National Treasure than Indiana Jones. Complex and ancient clues are solved with ease as a quick plot-movement scene to get to the next exotic locale. While the first few characters you are introduced to feel almost lifeless, some more familiar faces for fans of the series appear as a welcome change to the obvious “anyone that speaks with an accent is likely evil” montage your are forced to sit through up to that point. By the end, it is a competent story and the characters do become likable and even sympathetic, but it still all feels a bit serial and like the events that transpire don’t really have a lot of consequence to the characters’ development. The ending, which I will not spoil, is also a bit jarring to me, and the enemies and interactions in the final chapters break the gameplay experience in such a way that the story has less of an impact.

It is a bit disappointing that the most interesting puzzles in the game are solved during the cutscenes in this way, as the puzzles that the game provides otherwise feel pointless and simple. The traditional adventure puzzles are usually a make the shape, or put the square peg in the square hole in terms of difficulty, and the platforming (which is essentially a puzzle all its own) is only challenging during the first stage of finding the starting point in which you are supposed to climb. Once you know where to start, it is essentially a game of hold the analog stick in a direction and continue to press X until you have reached your destination. This isn’t to say that traversing the world isn’t interesting and engaging, because it is. In the same way that Prince of Persia or inFamous had a simple but elegant way of crawling all over the environment, Uncharted makes you feel like you are interacting with your surroundings in a meaningful way, giving you a sense of scale when you have reached the top of a large building, or keeping you on edge when the world is falling down all around you.

The combat mechanics in the game are surprisingly competent. The cover system works well, and is needed when the firefights become much more intense deeper into the game. Gun fire is pretty standard, and the weapons feel well balanced. Sneaking around is not always the easiest, but the enemy awareness never feels too cheated. You won’t be detected through walls (most of the time) and the enemies do not have some mystical knowledge of where your character is at all times. You can stealthily take down enemies in open areas with ease, and even have your partners draw the attention away from yourself to sneak up behind a group of them. The awareness of the enemy feels realistic, and it helps a lot with the strategy of the firefights. It’s unfortunate that the enemies’ reaction to your fire seems static and lifeless, as they take bullets like robots and rarely jump out of the way or change strategy after being littered with gun fire. The variety of enemies is also a bit of a letdown, as you will see the same grey attire and shaved heads throughout most of the campaign, and their strength and intelligence rarely falters. The level design and enemy amount and positioning seem to create most of the challenge, as the more difficult parts will place you in a more open environment with waist-high cover and foes that will not easily miss you darting around taking pot shots from behind rocks.

These gameplay elements are certainly strong enough to support a multiplayer component of the game that could have easily been omitted and still received high praise, and feels like the cherry on top of an already great single player experience. With only a select amount of modes, all of which work very well given the environments and controls of the game, the game is given a second life through free-for-all death matches and co-op mission modes that play like mini versions of the main game. Multiplayer also includes unlockable perks that enhance your ability to aim, shoot or move, and unlockable costumes and other fun pieces give further incentive to hop online and give it a try. The matchmaking seems to leave a bit to be desired, as you will be paired with experienced players with excellent perks and strange character models that you could only dream about, but it is a fun enough experience that it won’t detract you from coming back to earn your own stripes later on. The co-op experience is a blast, with an integration of the interactive cinema style of the single player in bite-sized portions that is difficult enough to challenge a small entourage of your friends (or randoms). It’s a great package and feels like something that I will come back to frequently, unlike pretty much every other multiplayer experience I plod through in most games.

While there are elements of the game that I feel come as a consequence of relying on the standard tropes and conventions of modern games, Uncharted 2 is a technical achievement that merits praise. The sound, look and controls of the game show an amazing attention to detail and give you a sense that each moment you are made to experience in the game was scripted and designed to be executed in that exact way. While that does mean the mechanics of the world do not lend themselves to many unique stories or interactions, what is there is engaging and exciting enough to match the feeling of an epic cinema presentation. All the pieces of the game are rendered at such a high technical level, but the game never comes to feel greater than the sum of its parts. It all blends very well together, but the flaws of the experience almost stand out that much more contrasted against the detail that went into it. Still, it is a game that gripped me early on enough to keep me playing, make my experience throughout become only more enjoyable as I continued and encouraged me to play again, with friends, and through the multiplayer.

But the last boss still sucked.

So what I’m really trying to say is…
Uncharted 2 displays all the elements that define this generation of games. It is high fidelity in almost every sense of the word, and does well to enhance the gameplay elements to contend the rest of the experience making it a cohesive whole. The story is sound, the characters engaging enough to keep you entertained and the mechanics work well to move you throughout the environment and the challenges without feeling cheated. It is the elements of interactive cinema that really drive the whole game, and it does it on such an astounding level that it is hard not to recommend the game to just about everyone that can get their hands on it. There is a lot of great moments to gather from this game, and the multiplayer is strong enough that it will continue to be something to enjoy with friends for a long while.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony and is available for the PS3. The game was provided courtesy of Sony and retails for $59.99. Single player game played through on Normal to completion. 35 treasures found. All multiplayer modes played through, and many many deaths occurred therein. Uncountable priceless artifacts destroyed.