Uncharted 2: Among Thieves . . . It Stole My Heart

I know.  That is a particularly bad title.  Also, I'm sure you're probably asking yourself why I'm only now getting around to playing this game.  The answer is simple.  This is the first time I've had time, and a Playstation, with which to play it.

Let me go ahead and let you know that while this is specifically a review about the second installment of the Uncharted franchise, it's also more generally a review of the first one as well, since I purchased the Game of the Year dual-pack and played both games sequentially.  Although, why would I have played them in any other order?  Hmm . . . .

Overview

Regardless, I should probably start with my thoughts on third-person shooters.

I really don't like them.  I find them clunky, unwieldy and aesthetically unpleasing.  Why would I want to spend the next 10 or more hours staring at someone's backside?  You know, unless it was a really nice backside. 

Motion Capture

Naughty Dog, the game developers, went to a lot of trouble to make me want to stare at another guy's back-side for well over 20 hours.  The motion capture in general is flawless, and all the more nuanced in the second game.  Furthermore, this game includes a lot more freedom in movement than many third-person games I've played before.  The camera rotates easily, and the cinematic feel of the game provides that you have more than ample opportunity to look at more than just Nathan Drake's backside.

Gameplay

Overall, the gameplay was remarkably smooth and enjoyable.  A few times, even though a particular puzzle was not difficult to solve, making the character perform the requisite actions was excruciatingly ponderous.  These were few, but noticeable (particularly in the first game, Drake's Fortune), but they hardly detracted from my enjoyment of the game once I resigned myself to dying a few times.

Game Design

As for the game design itself, it was beautiful.  I can't review it glowingly enough.  Each set felt immersive and the level of detail was simply stunning.  My only complaint was the seemingly illogical construction of some of the sets.  While I recognize that this is an action-adventure fantasy, many of the puzzles and locales simply didn't make any sense.  Of particular note is the puzzle which requires you to point a beam of light at specific points to activate ancient machinery.  While this might work with modern technology, I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief that a five-hundred-year old civilization had the know-how to get this up and running.

Monsters?  Really?

Also, there are monsters.  This was handled much more expertly in the second installment, but rather indelicately in the first.  In a game more-or-less grounded in the real world, it felt like a betrayal to find out that Incan gold really is cursed.  While they explained it (sort of) in game as some kind of infection, the more glaring plot holes (such as where all the infected people came from, or were we to assume that they were well over three hundred years old?) were never adequately filled in.  In fact, the plot holes were so offensive that I stopped playing the game for nearly a week until my ire had subsided.

The monsters in the second game make a little more sense.  Tied as they are to the abominable snowman (or yeti) myth, since the game is set in Tibet, I forgave the designers more readily.  However, they handled their monsters much more adroitly, so my pique was short and quickly assuaged.

Brass Tacks--Story and Characterization

The story, however, and the characters, are what truly make these games phenomenal.  Another developer could have gone a completely different route, and paid lip service only to a full fleshed out plot; or they could have invested less effort in voice and motion capture.  The level of investment that Naughty Dog displayed is truly remarkable, and adds a level of believability, and ultimately, playability into the game.

In each game, you play Nathan Drake, who, in the first game, is a loveable rogue searching for the mystery of his forebear, the eponymous Sir Francis Drake, of privateer fame.  The mystery, basically, is that Drake died childless--yet family history leads Nathan to believe he is his descendant.  Tied to that, is the mystery of El Dorado, which Francis Drake seems to have discovered.  So basically, you're on the hunt for the Golden City, plagued by baddies and trying to save both the day, and the girl.

The second time around pits Nathan against a warlord and a friend who betrayed him.  The story deepens, however, by the introduction of a new girl in Nathan's life, and the absence of the female lead from the first story.  In the second game, Drake is on the hunt for the lost treasure ships of Marco Polo, which lead him eventually to Shangri-la.

Morality?  In a Video Game?

I suppose one of my major complaints about these two games are the moral ambivalence that each displays.  Certainly, I'm not going to blame violence in video games for violence in the real world, but these types of games are woefully disinterested in the morality of wiping out thousands of people in the course of the adventure.

What is all the more worrying is the flippancy of it.  Perhaps you can make some sort of an argument for self-defense, as the bad-guys probably shot first (but certainly not always, and your character often takes the killing hand-to-hand), but the game designers make very little effort to explain why the character is there at all.  Beyond a nebulous sense of greed, that is.  Because, ultimately, he is a treasure-hunter.  A tomb raider; in the first game it is explicitly stated that Nathan Drake is killing people for the money.  He wants the goods.

The violence inherent to most games has never bothered me.  Modern Warfare is an example of a game that I love, the violence of which makes Uncharted pale in comparison.  Yet, I assuage my moral sense with the belief that there is some sort of moral continuum.  The bad guys are terrorists, the good guys are the forces of order.  But even then, the terrorists have some sort of goal. They're part of a complex moral order that has been aggrieved.  And while I probably disagree with their reasoning, at least they have one.  Nathan Drake's moral order is unbridled avarice.  And that bothers me.  Monsters?  Kill 'em.  Aliens?  Mow 'em down.  But human beings?  I'd like some nuance with my carnage, please.

Conclusions

Basically, I like these games.  They're not perfect, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons and I would never hesitate to recommend these to a friend.  Or even a perfect stranger.