I've decided to lump my reviews of the last two games of The Uncharted Trilogy (tomorrow it will officially be The Uncharted Quadrilogy) because 1. I'm out of time and 2. The gameplay is relatively unchanged. The first game deserved it's own review just because of how it influenced Triple A gaming, yet whilst there is a marked difference between Uncharted 1 and 2; it's only in terms of plotting and pace.
Uncharted 2 picks up a while after the first game, though it was released in 2009. Drake is called upon to look for the long-lost treasure of Marco Polo by his former friends Chloe and Harry. This naturally takes them across the globe on a sprawling adventure filled with action set-pieces and casual murder.
Perhaps the most amazing part of this game is that I no longer hate Nathan Drake. Not because he stops wisecracking and being really bad at relationships. He's still doing that, to the point that he inexplicably has not one but two love interests who're just so wooed by his continued idiocy. But now he clearly has the moral high-ground. Whilst I rolled my eyes when the obvious poor-man's-Sean-Bean inevitably betrayed Drake, it turns out the chief villain is a Serbian warlord with a private army of other warlords.
There's even a whole (beautifully designed) section in Istanbul where you have to stealth past museum guards and you're not allowed to kill any of them because they're just minding their own businesses. Compare this to the previous game where you're slaughtering thousands just because they had the audacity to be on the same selfish treasure hunt that you're on. Here, it's obvious you're fighting in self-defence. I wish you still had the option to be non-lethal, but at the very least I feel Drake has somewhat of a justification when the body-count ramps up.
Of course, it's still racist. The only people you can throw your complete trust onto are white Americans. Even Chloe is English, which means she switches her allegiances back and forth to the point where if I was Drake I would've dropped her like she was on fire. At least James Bond occasionally throws in a well-spoken villain. Throughout the entire Uncharted series (thus far) Drake doesn't kill a single American. Because American's can't be evil, right? It's not like a lobotomised walrus foetus with a blonde wig has a serious shot at being the next president of the United States. No, it's obviously the Serbians that're evil because they started a war. Because America has never started a war before...
But I suppose this is all part of the inherent xenophobia present in Hollywood, which the Uncharted series keeps trying to ape. Why anyone would try to copy Hollywood is beyond me considering I've met six year olds who write better than Hollywood. Yet incompetent scripting aside, Uncharted 2 feels superior in it's set-pieces. I actually remember several moments from this game, whilst in the first one the only set-piece I can remember is that awful vehicle section. There's the excellent opening sequence on the ruined train that immediately grabs your attention, there's the stealth section in Turkey, the platforming bit where you use lights and mirrors to solve an enormous puzzle, the part on the moving train, the section in a Tibetan village, and the final level. If I remember that much of a game then it's obviously doing something right.
Again though, just like in Uncharted and just like in The Last Of Us; there are some parts of the game that just go on forever. The penultimate section going through a series of ancient Tibetan temples feels like it's half of the game. Not to mention there's an extended platforming section which is welcome but ultimately completely irrelevant. It's only there as a side-quest so when you return you can encounter obvious plot twist #980. Then again, I think the reason why I always finish a Naughty Dog game thinking it could've been at least two hours shorter is because the gameplay and story are so separate from each-other. I hardly remember any of the actual gameplay in The Last Of Us because all the memorable moments are cutscenes, stealth-sections with zombies, and the occasional setpiece. Uncharted's more action-orientated focus actually works better than The Last Of Us's harrowing character drama because you can actually play the action parts.
This being said, the cut-scenes often had several moments where I was sitting there thinking "why aren't I playing this sequence?" If you're worried that the player might miss content or not be interested then you need to re-work your game or else you may as well just make a movie or TV show instead. If your Maths lesson is boring then chaining pupils to their chairs won't help. You need to change the lesson.
Maybe I'm going mad, but after completely trash-talking the previous game's combat...I'm actually starting to enjoy it in the sequels. Perhaps it's because you can now properly aim with grenades, there's a wider variety of enemy types, the game stops throwing you in combat arenas where you're surrounded, checkpoints seem to be closer together, or maybe I'm just used to it. Plus melee combat is actually much better. I use it in combat now, rather than just shooting everyone like the unimaginative hack I am. This is because the game does away with the silly 'brutal combo' mechanic which I could never get to work. Here it's your typical 'attack' and 'block' buttons and it functions so much smoother.
There's a stealth-system now, but it needs much more work. There's still no dedicated 'crouch' or 'creep' button, but at least you can now melee enemies from behind cover. Grabbing enemies whilst hanging on a ledge and pulling them off will never stop being fun for me...even if it's kinda psychotic. I still have a pet-peeve for games with stealth where all the takedowns are lethal. If I'm just going to creep up and snap the poor guy's neck then I should have just shot him.
Lastly, the ending is exactly the same. Out of nowhere comes a supernatural element that doesn't fit with the rest of the game, and it's revealed that there's a perfectly logical reason why the treasure has been lost. It turns out that the artefact being searched for has a vague magical power that drove the initial founder of the treasure away and tried to ensure no-one ever found it again...though why the hell would you still leave clues?! Both Francis Drake and Marco Polo were clearly assholes...
But even the conclusion is better, because whilst Uncharted was essentially a waste of time for Drake since he didn't get the treasure. here the armed mercenaries make this personal. The antagonist will clearly be very dangerous with the artefact, and so Drake's quest changes from being a treasure hunt to being a prevention mission. I can actually get behind this, whilst in Uncharted 1 it would've been completely in character for Drake to, upon finding out the treasure was cursed, say: "Sod it, I'm out of here." In Uncharted 1 Drake didn't know that one of the antagonists was planning to weaponise the curse, whilst in Uncharted 2 it's obvious that's exactly the reason why the antagonist is going after the treasure.
So overall this is an improvement on the first game in every way, but it's still fairly mindless. Yet sometimes mindlessness is fine. It's exactly the same reason why we occasionally need Hollywood movies. I think the only reason why I'm still reserved to this series is because it's become the norm rather than the exception.
Uncharted 3 was released in 2011. Reunited with Chloe and Sully, you pick up new character Charlie to once again find the treasure of Francis Drake. Because there apparently were only ever two historic explorers. Why not invent the lost relics of Walter Raleigh? Or just invent a new explorer? Again, this takes us across the world whilst having to fend off a villainous private army who keep ambushing you because they're clearly budding video-game voice actors trying to assassinate Nolan North for taking all the good jobs.
Whilst Uncharted 2 had plenty of room for improvement, I feel it was unsuitable for a sequel. What I liked so much about the previous game was how it seemed to nail it's intention: to create a semi-interactive, semi-cinematic blockbuster. Not quite a complete game, not quite a David Cage-em-up. Adding or taking anything away would ruin this slightly salty sweet spot Naughty Dog had found.
So Uncharted 3 can only go for the alternate option: staying exactly the same.
There's nothing really wrong with this. The James Bond franchise is the same movie repeated again and again but with minor changes. But the best James Bond movies were the ones that at least attempted to shake up the clichés. Aside from a few nice additions, Uncharted 3 is really just a find-and-replace. I'm actually looking forward to Uncharted 4 because it promises to show an older Drake alongside his brother played by Troy Baker. Or as I like to call him: PLEASE MARRY ME TROY!!
Well, OK, they've expanded on the hand-to-hand combat - for both better and worse. I like the new take-down animations; particularly the ones where you can take a gun from your victim and where you pull a pin on their own grenade. But the melee combat itself has become reminiscent of the 'Arkham' games, and I've said several times before how I don't like this style of combat. This shift in style works OK in melee-only situations, but is a nightmare in fire-fights. Some enemies run up to smack you in the face whilst you're shooting behind cover, and suddenly you're in melee mode - meaning you're forced out of cover to be peppered with bullet-holes. What's worse is that it takes a good few moments to tear yourself out of melee-mode so you can just use your shotgun, during which time you'll receive even more bullet-holes.
But the worst of it is how they'll occasionally randomly be a massive dude who entirely uses melee attacks and forces you into melee-mode and takes about a hundred punches to down - during which time you have to repeatedly watch the same animation of you blocking him. I know you could only be bothered to introduce one new enemy type, Naughty Dog, but you didn't have to show him off all the time.
And that's it for the gameplay front, really. So I guess I have to spend the rest of this talking about the story.
The opening is ridiculous. It takes place in London as interpreted by someone whose only seen London in direct-to-DVD Danny Dyer films. Nathan Drake and Sully walk down a cobbled street with a red phone-box wearing suits like they're in a Guy Richie movie. They enter the most stereotypical pub filled with people who all look like Jason Statham, and proceed to engage in a shady business deal that involves a metal briefcase filled with pound notes. Then a pub-brawl breaks out because of course it does. Just for once can Nathan Drake go to America and kill Americans? Please?
The plot then flashes back to Nathan Drake as a child, in a compete rip-off of Indiana Jones 3. In fact, the whole plot lifts heavily from The Last Crusade. If nothing else, this makes me like Sully even more, and it's nice that this time he remains with you throughout the whole game rather than vanishing after the first act only to show up again right at the end. Though...actually they're ripping off Sean Connery from The Last Crusade! And there's a recurring set-piece where you fend off a swarm of insects just like that scene in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull! Sue them, Spielberg! Sue them for everything!
Though, I have to admit that, again, they've fixed the issue of Nathan Drake being a psychopath. This time, the people going after Drake (who all wear suits and are English because of course) are the whole reason why he's after the treasure. If they didn't keep interfering, then Drake probably would give up, but these guys just keep showing up and keep having to make things personal. In the end I didn't care about lost artefacts; I just wanted to punch these people right in the face at last.
Honestly, aside from the sections where you climb around and explore beautiful ancient ruins, my favourite part of this series is how it ties itself to history. It's clumsy, yes, but it makes me want to pick up a book and find out more about these ancient civilisations and fascinating voyages across the high seas. Plus, I did a history-nerd squee when Uncharted 3 mentioned John Dee. Google him. He's like if Rasputin met Dumbledore.
Also, I know the developers couldn't possibly have predicted the future, but the fact that a huge chunk of this game takes place in Yemen (where there's a great famine/mass destruction as the result of Saudi Arabia and the US incompetently trying to bomb ISIS) and there's one part that takes place in Syria. Yeah...awkward....
Overall, it's still an Uncharted game, but I really don't have much to say on Uncharted 3 - which is why I lumped it into the Uncharted 2 review. It takes what was good with Uncharted 2, improves a few things, makes a few things worse. It really is a Hollywood sequel. If Uncharted 4 is like this then at least next week's reviews will be easy peasy...
