Last week I succumbed to the powerful marketing pressure being exerted upon me by Toys ‘R’ Us. Now, this might sound a bit strange coming from a 29-year-old dude. After all, “getting my Toys ‘R’ Us fix” hasn’t been part of my list of things to do since sometime in the mid 1980s. But, much as the toy retailer sold NES and Sega Master System games back in those days, today they stock Xbox, Playstation and Wii games, and last week they offered a buy-2-get-1-free sale on the whole lot of them.
I attempted to resist, but in the end, I failed. My failure resulted in three shiny new game boxes landing on my shelf: Halo 3: ODST, Brutal Legend, and the subject of today’s post: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a PS3 exclusive.
Let it be known right now that Uncharted 2 is, I believe, the best game the PS3 has to offer. Before last week, I would have told you that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune — the first game in the series — held that title. This only proves that developer Naughty Dog has not only learned from the success of that original game, but they’ve taken it to the next level with the sequel. For those of you who (like me) grew up on Indiana Jones, and can only shake your head at George Lucas’ wayward wanderings since, trust me when I say that Nathan Drake is your new Indy.
Nathan Drake, star of the Uncharted series
The Uncharted series is a third-person action and adventure game hybrid. It mixes one part Tomb Raider (the exploration and climbing puzzles), one part Gears of War (the shooting and cover mechanic) and one part Indy-style cinematic awesomeness. The result is one of the most epic games ever made, a moniker that can be applied to both Uncharted games with no hesitation.
In the game, you play the role of Nathan Drake, an adventurous young descendant of Sir Francis Drake who trawls the globe looking for the answers to some of history’s greatest conundrums (as well as great personal fortune, which has so far eluded him). In Uncharted 2, Drake gets involved with a group of adventurer/pirates who think they’ve uncovered a clue to the location of the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, and at the same time, unlocked the mystery of Marco Polo’s lost fleet. But nothing in Drake’s world is ever as easy at it seems, and before long he’s chasing an entire army of seriously evil terrorists who also seek the city and its hidden treasures. It’s like a summer blockbuster, except with twice the scriptwriting prowess, five times the length and 100% more interactivity.
Visually, so far as I can tell, there has never been a more impressive looking video game. Ever. Naughty Dog claims to have taken the Playstation 3 to its limits with this game, and given the number of jaw-dropping moments wherein I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I don’t have any trouble believing them. You can stand atop a skyscaper in Nepal and swear you’re looking at actual video footage of the landscape and mountainous terrain between you and horizon. The rain, water, snow and ice effects are all hyper-realistic, even affecting the characters in the appropriate ways — packed snow clings to their pant legs, wind buffets their hair, water soaks their clothing and makes it stick to their skin.
The gameplay is richly varied and never gets old. In between the climbing, jumping and exploring, and the shooting, ducking and fisticuffs, there are numerous set pieces where you outrun enemy vehicles, shoot at pursuing trucks with mortars, climb to safety from the wreckage of a derailed train and so on. You’re never quite sure what will happen from one moment to the next, and I simply lost count of the “HOLY SHIT!” moments. From start to finish, the game is an epic masterpiece. The “2″ in the title could be short for “Twice as good as the first Uncharted“, and it would be no lie.
The personalities of the characters — not just Drake, but the supporting cast as well — comes through better than in nearly any other game you can name, with excellent scriptwriting, frequent banter and funny comments throughout. Drake, somehow, managed to be thinking the exact same things that were going through my own mind during many of the game’s sequences, and proceeded to blurt them out before I could. He even uses a lot of the same expressions that I do. It’s kind of weird.
The game’s musical score, too, is fit for a big-budget Hollywood movie. Composed by Greg Edmonson, who is also responsible for the unique Western-fusion music of the Firefly TV series, the score is brilliantly done, classy and evokes just the right emotions at exactly the appropriate times. In a display of marketing smarts, they’ve already made the soundtrack available on iTunes, so people (like me) who can’t get enough of the music can go get their fix.
While it’s great that the PS3 has another exclusive title that can draw fans to its base, I find it personally disappointing that this game isn’t on the Xbox platform for one reason alone: The multiplayer. Unlike the first Uncharted, the second game has full competitive and cooperative multiplayer, with bonuses and trophies for each, and I’ve love to get into a game with my friends. Unfortunately, nobody I know owns a PS3, and playing with strangers (especially cooperatively) is never as much fun.
Still, if you do have a PS3, you’re a fool if you don’t pick up Uncharted 2. In my opinion it’s the best game 2009 has seen so far. I rarely finish video games, but I finished this one in less than a week. And now I can’t stop thinking about going back and playing it again, this time at the highest difficulty (“Crushing”) to see how I fare.
Next week I’ll be back to review Forza 3, so I’ll likely be gushing all over something else. One thing Forza gives me that Uncharted won’t, admittedly, is months worth of replay value. Oh, and did you see the Forza 3 Car of the Day on the 14th? Hello again, old friend!
I haven’t gotten into either ODST or Brutal Legend yet, but if I find either of them particularly compelling, I’ll make a note of it here. I expect ODST to be the typical Halo affair: Highly polished, highly enjoyable, and good for one campaign playthrough ever. I don’t know what I expect from Brutal Legend, except to say I had no interest in the game at all until I played the demo, which was fantastic. But now I hear that the demo is only representative of maybe the first 1-2 hours of gameplay, so I dunno. We’ll see what happens.
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Chief Oddball
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MichiganMom
Desperate, Sony Finally Goes Mad
By Chief Oddball on April 28th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Filed under Commentary ··· 3 Comments
Well, I have to hand it to Sony’s Playstation division. They are now executing a slow burn as they desperately try anything their marketing department can think of to sell more Playstation 3 game consoles, except nobody really cares — probably because the PS3 costs a fortune, there are almost zero exclusive games worth playing on it, and there are two alternate (and very worthy) choices for gaming hardware that both come hundreds of dollars cheaper.
After the former leader of the game console war fell to a distant third place in sales behind Microsoft’s Xbox360 and the Nintendo Wii, Sony realized that all the soulless hype, empty promises and bullshit excuses they’d invented were not going to sell their consoles. Apparently, even though the Blu-ray DVD player built into the PS3 is a great value when considering the price of standalone Blu-ray players, Sony miscalculated by thinking that every gamer also cared about Blu-ray. When they forced gamers to pay inflated prices for Blu-ray hardware in the PS3, Sony was stung by the fact that nobody really seemed to give a shit. So the company’s desperation tactics began.
First it was the PR stunts and the exaggerated PS3 launch days in Europe, which practically nobody attended. The PS3 is also priced at a ridiculous €600 in Europe (over $817 USD), so it’s no wonder the buyers…well, weren’t buying. Then, anxious over the massive sales let-down, Sony executive Phil Harrison showed up at a Marillion concert and hijacked a charity auction, raising the €100 opening bid for a new PS3 to the absurd retail price of €600. Silence followed. One guy bid only because he was promised the console would be signed by the band, but when no other bids followed, he started begging others to outbid him and save him from his mistake. No one did.
Next it was stopping all sales of the 20 GB low-end PS3 model in North America, because consumers were favoring the high-end 60 GB unit 10-to-1. Gee, maybe that’s because the low-end model doesn’t feature wireless networking and, unlike the Xbox360 Core system, isn’t even upgradeable to support it! In my mind this alone kills the low-end PS3’s usefulness for online gaming unless you happen to have Ethernet cables strung all through your house. Canceling it was smart. Offering it at all, thinking its low price would save it, was stupid.
Now, today brings us evidence that Sony’s marketing execs may have really lost their marbles. Their team is apparently using the “forcibly apply crap to wall and see what sticks” playbook, because to announce the upcoming game God Of War II for the PS2, they held some kind of party involving a decapitated goat, throwing knives and live snakes. This utter insanity was all featured in Sony’s official Playstation Magazine. Of course, this has drawn the ire of international animal rights activists, who tend to belong to their own very special cult of crazy, but I won’t go there right now, because it would ruin my fun.
At this “party,” Sony asked guests how far they would go to get their hands on a new Playstation 3. Their magazine article says, “How about eating still warm intestines uncoiled from the carcass of a freshly slaughtered goat? At the party to celebrate God Of War II’s European release, members of the Press were invited to do just that.”
Orrrrr…how about just going down to the store and buying one? Last I checked, stores were filled with dozens of dust-covered Playstation 3s that no one wants. Seriously, you don’t have to go far at all to “get your hands on a new Playstation 3,” because anyone who wants one hasn’t got a shred of competition. Meanwhile, entire stockpiles of Nintendo Wiis are still selling out the day they arrive in stores.
Way to go, Sony, on blowing the lead in the game console war, and in further squandering one of the most valuable brands in corporate history. You guys fail at life.
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