Uncharted 2: Critics Blinded by Beauty?

How many times can I hang from a ledge, shimmy around a cliff and jump from pillar to pillar before it wears out its welcome? How many times are you going to show me Drake hanging by one hand? Hanging by one hand while holding someone else? Drake grasping the hand of someone else who was hanging by one hand? These scenes are repeated over and over again until you are simply numb to the entire experience.

Then you have the characters who populate Uncharted 2, all cliched personalities whose intentions you can see coming a mile away. Oh, that guy with the accent and moussed hair who is your partner? You don’t think he’s going to betray you, do you? What was your first clue? The moussed hair, or the accent? Then you have the bad guy of the game who comes straight from Nemesis Cliché School, complete with foreign name, bald head, facial scars, and idiotic minions. There isn’t one interesting character to be found in Uncharted 2 who isn’t paper-thin and completely transparent, derivative of movies and games it blatantly rips off like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone and Tomb Raider.

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How all of this can conspire to make Uncharted 2 a celebrated game among critics, heralded as a contender for Game of the Year, is beyond me. Perhaps I need look no further than Playstation Official Magazine UK who said, “…it’s obvious that Uncharted 2 is a 10/10 game after two minutes of the first level…” Indeed, if that’s all you play of it. If you’re willing to accept those initial two-minutes, which encompasses the entirety of gameplay for the next 10+ hours, you may be inclined to agree. I personally expected more than a dumbed down version of Tomb Raider with prettier graphics.

These Are Puzzles?

There are a few so-called puzzles in Uncharted 2 that make zero attempt to be different. Stop me if you’ve heard these before:

1.    Align mirrors so the sunlight bounces off specific objects.
2.    Align symbols so a passageway opens.
3.    Move an object on a pressure plate.
4.    Oh no, two pressure plates!

“STOP!”

I thought so.

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I remember when games of this type would periodically tax your brain for a solution, perhaps even forcing you to buy a strategy guide or hit up GameFAQs, but everything in Uncharted 2 is so obvious that only the greenest of gamers will have trouble solving problems, which is yet one more indication of a general dumbing-down of videogames that are increasingly holding the hands of players and leading them towards the end.

In Closing

It seems like every year there is at least one game that inexplicably becomes the darling of critics for no particular reason. In the case of Uncharted 2, the awesome graphics have blinded most to the obvious deficiencies and they are perfectly content to overlook everything else. In my opinion, its everything but the graphics that are important to a videogame. As I said earlier, you cannot say Transformers 2 is a great movie because the special-effects are first-rate. If that’s enough for you, then have at it. For myself, I like fresh characters, an involving plot, logic, freedom, choices and variety, none of which I found in Uncharted 2.

Here’s hoping Naughty Dog actually makes an attempt to deliver something original with their next effort. They obviously have immense talent creating a graphics engine, but now they need to break-free of weary conventions and elevate videogames to new heights… preferably heights without ledges.