Saturday, February 12, 2011

UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES


I need to get rid of all the games I bought and never completed. I have like 12 of them waiting. That's why I've pushed for finishing Uncharted 2 in the last weeks, and I finally completed it this morning.

To be honest, I'm impressed with the level of visual quality and master crafting of the development team. The game is excellent in many ways. However I don't feel it deserves the 96 it currently has in Metacritics. The users score (8.9) looks more accurate to me in this case. It's not that I didn't like the game, it's just that I value design innovation above anything else, and Uncharted 2 barely has some. I've seen all his game mechanics in other games, sometimes even better implemented. The game features them nicely, well polished and perfectly integrated, which is remarkable but it's the type of thing you expect from an experienced team like Naughty Dog.

I'd say the best of the game is the effort they made to make it look and feel like a movie. Good visuals, sidekicks to exchange witty comments, the lack of HUD and many other details help the game feeling like a Hollywood flick. No wonder some moviemakers bought the rights and are currently on pre-production. However, IMHO, the plot is not good enough not even for a B-movie. It's really nice for a game because it supports many level design decisions, but for a movie you need some more both from the plot and the characters. Let's see what happens.

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