A lengthy, more philosophical, detail-oriented review about the most smoothly excellent game I've played in a long time
The difference between a good/enjoyable game and what I like to call a game that is an experience is sometimes difficult to describe. Great games, masterpieces, have a texture to their sound, their script, their music, their visuals, their gameplay. If this texture is consistent throughout, then every element complements the other. This, I would argue, against Ebert or any other old-fashioned critic who believes an interactive medium can never be art, is the metric which differentiates a game between 'art' and simple entertainment.
Uncharted 2 has a texture that is consistent throughout. I would call it art, and this art is really a case where the devil is in the details:
-The voice acting is superb, largely because of Nathan Drake. The little utterances when he almost slips or when he guns someone down or when he sees a tank ("Why'd he have to bring a tank?") combined with all of the playful banter provide an extremely immersive experience. You really feel like you're right there with Drake and Chloe and the other characters, almost like a third (or fourth) companion. It's quite hard for me to overstate how much this banter adds to the game; it gives an ambience to a game's characters, gives them depth. As a small aside, said banter was also used with great success in Dragon Age 1 (and possibly 2; I haven't played it).
-The script is perfect, by which I mean it accomplishes exactly what the game set out to do: to create a rollicking Indiana Jones-style adventure set in vibrant jungles, snow-capped mountains, a city wracked by civil war, ancient temples rife with Buddhist and Hindu imagery, and all other manner of exotic locales led by a genuinely likeable adventurer and a cast of supporting characters who, if not the most unique, play their roles with seeming relish. This particular point is of great import to me because I simply cannot abide terrible dialogue - it's a game killer for me. I can never understand why game companies don't hire writers - they're cheap.
Moving on to the technical aspects:
-The animations blew my mind. Actually, I barely noticed them, which is what ultimately, in a moment of peaceful reflection, accomplished the blowing of my mind. Nathan jumping from rickety wooden pole to rickety wooden pole, scrambling up a wall and nearly falling when a handhold crumbles to dust, walking with great effort due to a gunshot wound, reloading his gun - be it pistol, shotgun, shotgun-pistol (the "pistole"), grenade launcher, or any other of the game's varied weapons. Everything is smooth as silk and completely realistic.
-The material texturing (if that is the proper term) also contributed to the immersion. When Nathan jumps in a pool (jesting, "Hey let's play Marco Polo!") and climbs out ("Fish out of water!"), his clothes are soaked. When he wades through snow drifts, a dusting of snow sticks to his jeans. Combined with massive levels - that have no loading at all! - these little touches gave every environment a deep, wondrous feeling of completeness. It was easy to believe that such places truly existed.
-The set pieces in this game are just outright good. Fabulous. I complained, about the original Uncharted, that it could have really used a few boss battles to spice up the pacing. It seems I was not the only one because this was handily corrected for Uncharted 2. Running from a tank as it shoots walls out, or dashing across a train as it moves through a lush jungle (and then a tunnel and then a snowy mountainous region) culminating in a battle with a Hind attack helicopter - these are just plain fun.
-Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of this game were some the climbing puzzles. Essentially, you find yourself at some ledge, know where you need to go, and have to investigate in order to find just how to get over there. This little investigation - looking for ropes and hand-holds and other signs of where to start the climbing - was a unique experience. Such puzzles in other games tend to be super obvious. In Uncharted 2, they were not - though they were rarely frustratingly hard (and if you fail or take too long, a helpful tip will point you along the right direction!)
I could go on, but I daresay my review is waxing on the long side by this point, so let me finish, as the critic in me demands, with some of the negatives:
-The cover and climbing mechanics are a bit, uh, sticky. As best as I could tell, some of it is tied into the camera which works 95% of the time. But sometimes I'd want to jump from ledge A to ledge B and it would only let me after I rotated my camera. Which is a bit unintuitive and noticeable when redoing a climbing section.
-The companions (at least AI ones), though excellent in terms of story, were sometimes obstructive in terms of the gameplay. Their bullets don't seem to do much damage, and I actually had one kill me because she jumped onto the ledge from which I was hanging, knocking me off and sending me to my death. A small annoyance, but the game's immersion is otherwise so good that these small annoyances are rather magnified.
-I made this complaint in the first one as well, but the climbing is very "on rails." I died a few times because I tried to drop to a ledge that was, like, a foot drop, and BAM DEATH! Because I wasn't supposed to go there. It's also not always consistent. Sometimes, for example, you can leap 20 feet across. Other times a 10 foot gap cannot be made. Sometimes you can fall 20 feet and live, other times a 10 foot fall will kill you. These are rare but noticeable and are part of the reason the game got a 9.0 and not higher.
So, that is all. A very lengthy review, but one, I hope, which has served the purpose that I originally set out. And if you were wondering: get this game, play it, the purchase, at $20-$25, is a no brainer now :)