Territory Unknown
Well, they've done it. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves finally bridges the gap between an action movie and a video game. Oh, and it's a damn good video game too.
Published: October 10, 2009
Easily the most improved part of the whole experience over the original, though is the game's pacing. What starts out as a flashback that sees Drake absolutely getting his ass kicked slowly unravels into a story where you can't wait to see what happens next and don't dare hope for it to ever end. Things are a little slow at the outset, but they quickly begin to build a head of steam that absolutely does not let up until the final credits roll. Every time you think the game can't top itself in terms of sheer spectacle or action, it proves you wrong. There's no zigging where you think things will zag, but even knowing what's coming, it still manages to deliver on a level that video games just haven't been able to do until now.
And then, when it's finally over, there's an entire online portion of the game to explore, and it's every bit as engaging as the single player and offers more replay value. Like the story mode, the online doesn't do anything especially different or unique, but it's honed the capture-the-flag, capture-and-hold and deathmatch modes to damn near perfection. The progressive unlocks (every match earns you cash, and completing specific sub-objectives like kill streaks or melee kills gives you bonus cash), the variety of competitive modes and near lag-free implementation of it all is a joy to experience.
Keeping everything mixed up are Boosts, unlockable bonuses that are purchased before a match starts for cash that can improve accuracy, ammo capacity, run speed and so on. These, like the skins you can buy for multiplayer matches, are unlocked as you level up from cash accrued during normal play. To help illustrate exactly what other players are using, you'll see a brief pop-up that lists their Boosts when they gun you down. And then there's the co-op experience.
Taking a page from Insomniac's work on Resistance 2, individual single-player environments have been broken out and retooled to make room for dozens more enemies and sub-bosses that increase in tenacity as you add up to two other players. They're little bite-sized challenges, sure, but they'll take multiple tries to complete, and once you beat them on Hard (a Normal option exists too), they can be tackled again on Crushing, which is easily the most difficult part of the entire game, online or off. For those that just want to cooperatively work toward more objectives, Gold Rush lets you take the capture-the-flag mechanic of grabbing an idol (which you can throw to your co-op buddies) and returning it to the home base and adds AI opponents.
Regardless of how you're playing the game, online or off, things look absolutely fantastic, made all the more impressive when you see a bunch of other players running around. As things tend to piggyback off the core assets of the single-player environments (with some minimal tweaks to the complexity of things) it's probably better just to freak out over the way the game looks during the main story. It looks crazy good.
Okay, okay, fine, I'll go into a little more detail. There's a lot of apparent digital voodoo happening in this engine, but things that existed in the first game like screen tearing are gone, replaced by an almost impossibly smooth framerate during most of the game. In their place are some of the most varied, detailed textures you'll ever see in a game. The lack of repetition is ridiculous -- it's actually something gave up on fairly early -- and the result is a game that sports one of the most resplendently detailed, natural-looking worlds you'll ever see. The fact that it's all streamed off the disc without an install beyond the initial loading screen scares the hell out of me. In fact, in one instance I actually skipped a major cutscene and the game loaded a completely different level instantly. Not only is that unheard of in a lot of PC games, it's pretty much never seen in console games, let alone an HD one where a sizeable chunk of the game hasn't been installed to a hard drive.
