Uncharted 2: Critics Blinded by Beauty?

Perhaps I’ve played way too many videogames. Considering I’ve been playing these things since 1974 and have been writing about games since the early 90s, I’d be quite content if I never see another ledge crawling sequence in my life. I was sick of it when it was called Tomb Raider and I’m even more sick of it now.

Ledge-crawling and gap-jumping is the film equivalent of a car crashing into a fruit cart. Perhaps you can get away with a ledge here and there without pissing me off, but Uncharted 2 beats you over the head with it. In fact, at the mid-point of the game, the main character Drake makes a comment like, “Not more jumping!” Yes Drake, more jumping. Lots more jumping. Lots more ledges. Apparently the game designers just didn’t have any original ideas when it came time for gameplay and were quite content to have you do the same thing over and over, just changing the sets from time to time with no inherent change in gameplay.

That all adds up to one emotion: boredom.

Glorified Rail Shooter

Rail-shooters enjoyed popularity back in the early 90s, before programmers had access to good 3D engines that allowed players to explore as they wanted. Rail-shooters like Star Wars Rebel Assault were the only way to offer top-notch, pre-rendered graphics while limiting the freedom of the player to a very narrow margin.

While Uncharted 2 isn’t nearly as limited as rail-shooters of yore, it still feels that way as the player has no options in how to tackle a problem, no alternate routes to explore, no decisions to be made.  You are simply along for the ride and must play the game as the designers intended because they are giving you no choice. That’s a rail-shooter… and that’s Uncharted 2.

A Cliché’ Simulator

In terms of story, Uncharted 2 starts off promising, presenting an interesting setup that involves the missing ships of Marco Polo. Such a great premise, but unfortunately it evolves into a disaster, slipping away from the writers and becoming so convoluted that you no longer care.

This is a situation where the plot serves only one purpose: getting the player to the next set piece. It’s as if the designers devised all the action sequence first and only then bothered to figure out how it all ties together, logic be damned.

Worse, Uncharted 2 revels in cliché to the point of laughable absurdity.  Anyone remember the crappy movie Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone? It was basically one long action movie cliché involving copious amounts of vertigo-inducing camera angles, endless grasping of ledges with one hand, etc. Everything you’ve seen before in bad action movies you will see in Uncharted 2, though the main difference here is that Uncharted 2 doesn’t end after 90-minutes of suffering, instead wearing out its welcome after 10 or so uninspiring and mercilessly repetitive hours.