This week, we’re looking back on 2009 and writing about our favourite games of the past 12 months.  Today: it bagged one of just three 10/10 scores this year, and rightly so according to Jennifer…

I didn’t actually expect Uncharted 2 to be quite so good. I suspect it was a mixture of stubbornness and cynicism, but I point-blank refused to believe, after all the hype, that it really would be that enjoyable. Daft really, considering its predecessor was one of the reasons why I bought a PlayStation 3. I was, of course, wrong to be so cynical. Uncharted 2 was a wonderful experience, and one for which I can honestly say, without any hint of poetic hyperbole, that I savoured every last morsel of it.

Much of its wonder is down to its sense of accidental adventure. Sure, Lara Croft had trodden a similar path before, but none of her tales really hooked me. It all felt just a little bit too routine and orchestrated. Lara seemed to know what was coming too frequently and felt all too comfortable in strange surroundings. This wasn’t the case with Nathan Drake; throughout Uncharted 2, he really didn’t want to be there. He just wanted the easy life, but instead was caught up in trouble and had to stick it out. He was immediately reminiscent of Broken Sword’s chief protagonist George Stobbart, an innocent man who just happens to get caught up in a complete mess. Both characters are flawed and sometimes vulnerable, which is what makes them both so captivating – you can identify with them to an impressive extent. Drake may not have been as innocent as Stobbart, but he certainly got caught up in a hell of a mess. I mean, the poor bloke even starts the game shot to pieces and perilously hanging from a cliff via a train carriage. This guy is not having a good time at all.

Throughout Uncharted 2 there are countless heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping (cliché overload, but true) set-pieces that show that poor old Drake never really gets a chance to stop and mull over his situation – he’s too busy either running or smacking into the side of buildings with a wincingly loud crunch. But oh, was it fun for me. I watched as poor Drake exclaimed “oh, crap!” at the realisation that yet another tank and militia army was out to get him, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Uncharted 2 sparked off the debate of games being like films yet again, but it’s really not the case. Uncharted 2 might have provided a cinematic musical score, a compelling but ultimately linear storyline and an emotional connection with its characters, but it’s like comparing apples to oranges. If nothing else, since when in a film does the hero screw up and have to restart again five minutes earlier? Yeah. Exactly.

It might have been no great innovation in the gaming world, simply building upon previous successes such as Tomb Raider and Gears of War. But Uncharted 2 has taken these ideas and combined them into a truly fantastic experience, making it without a doubt one of the most memorable and exciting games I’ve played in recent years.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

//Batman: Arkham Asylum (Review – 9/10)
I wasn’t a big Batman fan before this, other than watching the films, so it was a true testament to Arkham Asylum that as soon as I completed it, I rushed out to buy as many graphic novels as I could find. It was brilliant. So many other games based on superheroes had tried and failed to capture the ambience of the world they inhabited; this wasn’t the case for Arkham Asylum. It offered fantastic level design and narrative to keep you hooked, but the true beauty was the inclusion of those interview tapes. More than just collectibles, they unveiled more and more of the story, tidbit by tidbit. A glorious experience.

//Dragon Age: Origins (Review – 8/10)
The game I’ve put the most time in all year despite only having owned the thing for a matter of weeks, Dragon Age: Origins is an absolutely wonderful fantasy RPG. At times it feels almost never ending, with so many different twists and turns that can be taken, not to mention a near countless collection of side quests. It might not appear as open as the likes of Oblivion, but under the surface it offers so much more. A sublime experience that no RPG fan dare miss.

//Shatter (Review – 9/10)
Despite having a pile of other PS3 games I could have played on my shiny new console at the time, it was the simple, unadulterated pleasure of Shatter that captured my attention the most. Harking back to the arcade days of Arkanoid and Breakout while still adding some unique twists, Shatter’s mechanics were as perfect as will ever matter. It wasn’t about story or career progression; this was simply about beating your friends’ high scores. Simple, block-busting brilliance.

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: Naughty Dog’s effective simplicity in Uncharted 2.

Uncharted 2 tells an excellent tale. Its ending cinematic is probably one of the finest ever seen in games. It’s so good it even makes you momentarily forget about the outrageously duff boss fight you’ve just had to slog through. It’s got it all: it’s joyfully amusing, very charming and it closes the book on the game’s storyline whilst keeping everything nice and open for an inevitable sequel. It’s a textbook execution which, for some reason, seems to be impossible for contemporary big-budget blockbusters to achieve – just compare it to the weak, flimsy endings of Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2.

Much of its resounding success comes from adherence to simplicity. It’s a very conventional narrative in what is, on paper, an entirely ordinary action adventure: the story, and game, stay exciting from beginning to end because of Naughty Dog’s exceptional execution. There’s no unnecessary shock twist or any attempt to fashion the game’s wafer-thin narrative into an impossibly grand trilogy, complete with frequent and tedious cliff-hangers under the pretence of a bold narrative hooks. Instead, Naughty Dog invests their stock into creating a cast of characters and writing fantastic dialog.

The game is commonly described as cinematic, which serves as both a compliment and an unknowing indictment: too often relaying the joy of playing the game has been buried underneath celebrating the whizz-pop of its darling aesthetics. That’s partially due, I think, to the difficulty of tarting up the gameplay with simple words: saying it’s a cycle of simple jumping puzzles interspersed with cover-based shooting sequences make it all sound quite bland and uninteresting.

When you’re playing it’s phenomenal. Uncharted 2’s gameplay relies on its scenes of immense spectacle succeeding, which in turn depends on the player being sufficiently enraptured by its varied and towering ornate structures. I was. The ritzy explosions, car chases and dramatic camera angles are intertwined with the unravelling of the storyline and the act of playing the game itself. It all blends into a glorious, inseparable whole.

Its narrative success can be explained thusly: Naughty Dog deploy an awareness and understanding of pacing that’s generally only explored by periphery indie developers. It starts with a burst of adrenaline – Nathan Drake, the hero, regains consciousness having been shot and must escape from a train carriage dangling over a snowy cliff. After that it brings the action to an abrupt halt and raises it ever-so-gently for the next hour. When it finally bubbles over it stays elevated for roughly two thirds of the game, before, once again, slowing it down for another half hour. That’s not usually something you see in popular game design. Whilst it’s essentially an action game, the component parts add up to far more than a simple shooting gallery.

It all comes back to the ending. These concluding moments are the story’s denouement – many of the important story reveals are made apparent at earlier junctions – and as such it needs to tie all the loose ends together and leave the player satisfied. Uncharted 2 is a longer experience than most, coming in at over ten hours, and I found myself taking the high production values for granted, demanding more from the ending than I normally would. But it delivers, surprisingly, with little more than a conversation about keeping tears in jars and grading worry on a scale. Amazing.

So deep did my affections for its characters run that I strode through the game accepting almost all (clichéd final boss battle notably excluded) of its gameplay conceits. As an action game, Drake spends an awful lot of his time shooting henchmen in the face: I racked up over a thousand kills over the course of the game. For a lovable rogue, Drake seems to be an exceptionally talented and cold-blooded death merchant. Well, he would be, if Naughty Dog hadn’t ensured I was completely smitten.

Uncharted 2 achieves a rare feat: it makes you love its characters. Its comforting ending, providing the right amount of closure, is a rare treat in games and should be enjoyed by everyone.

By Daniel Lipscombe

I’m frog-marching into this review with a cynical head on my shoulders and a pessimistic hat firmly on said head, as apparently, and according to the hype surrounding Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, my mind is about to be blown.

After a cacophony of churlish squeals screaming “ZOMG this R Awesomez,” a part of me is looking at this game with a stern approach, scouring each moment for problems and bugs, hoping to find something, anything, that someone has overlooked in their quest for Marco Polo’s treasures. Surely it can’t be as good as they all say. It can’t be…

But my goodness, it is good. Overwhelmingly so.

It’s quite easy to get caught up in the hype machine, especially when you’re talking about a game like Uncharted 2. The original broke new ground in the action-adventure genre and taught our lovable heroine Lara Croft a thing or two, mostly when it came to storytelling. So many similar titles have fallen short when it comes to telling a cohesive and interesting tale, and when the original Uncharted told the story of Sir Francis Drake so well, hopes were high that the sequel would deliver equally.

This time, the story follows Nathan and his nefarious cohorts around the globe in search for the Cintamani Stone, a fabled giant pure sapphire with mystical powers, discovered by Marco Polo. Suffice it to say the story takes you to far away and wondrous places, while delivering a rollercoaster of ups and downs that any Hollywood movie would be envious of. Despite a few clichés in places, it’s highly original in its roots and leans heavily on the real life adventures of Polo himself. The only problem is that the story is delivered in early and late chunks, and there’s a disappointing gap in the middle section of the game. It left me wanting more; I wanted to more of the plot’s intricacies throughout, rather than in splurges at the beginning and end.

These intricacies add  so much to Uncharted 2’s atmosphere as a whole, with glimpses of artefacts from the first game, in-jokes that bridge both of the adventures and interesting plot points that leave you intrigued. It would be a shame to criticise the story’s middle sections for being a little basic when Naughty Dog has created such a rich environment for them to play out in. There are some great touches throughout the game that build on the characters and their traits. Open Drake’s diary and you will see information scribbled down in haste, notes in the margins that spill from his mind. And there are many humorous sections too, a favourite of mine being Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan’s passport photos with hand-drawn expressions provided by Drake to highlight Victor’s many moods.

Thus continues a witty, clever and natural sense of humour that flows throughout, with interactions that feel organic. There are sharp one liners scattered within the script, each bookended by sly, cheeky looks from the cast. It’s in the delivery of such a strong cast that Naughty Dog excels where so many fail. It’s a sentence often banded about, but Uncharted 2 actually feels like a movie. The cast of characters, albeit animated in a far off studio, is as real as you and I, and if it weren’t for the fact that this is indeed scripted, moments in the conversations would even pass as improvised – such is the talent of the writing team and the voiceover work, the latter being some of the greatest in a long time. Each line is spoken with feeling, with meaning. Even the cream of Hollywood talent that has graced past games cannot match the quality seen in this title.

[Continues...]

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