The Drake's Progress: Uncharted 2 Single-Player

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was a wonderful game. It was balanced, well-written, and player-friendly; it had a great story and high replayability. But, after playing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, I never want to touch Drake's Fortune again. Nathan Drake is back and in great form.

Among Thieves' basic gameplay isn't much different from Drake's Fortune's, but the accumulation of small tweaks and changes has made the second game far superior to the first. As Mr. Hollis-Lima mentioned, the combat in the original Uncharted was comparatively basic: Duck, cover, shoot, repeat. It was fun – and later levels did mix it up a little – but it was also the least compelling part of the Uncharted package. Among Thieves has just as many gun fights as its predecessor, but these battles are far more interesting. In Drake's Fortune, strategy often came down to selecting which rock, piece of masonry, or log you would hide behind for the duration of the violence. Enemies always knew where you were – Drake would enter a room and immediately the bullets would begin to fly. In the new game, however, Drake often manages to enter rooms undetected, allowing the player to pick off a few enemies with stealth moves. Though the first Uncharted featured a rudimentary stealth system, I used it maybe three times in the course of the adventure. Here it's vital. Hand-to-hand combat has also been improved, though not quite so dramatically as the stealth.

The improvements to combat don't stem just from the changes in mechanics; equally important are the changes in combat environments. The areas in which Drake fights are now far larger and more sophisticated than they were in Drake's Fortune. In most battles, there are several viable strategies, from stealth to sniping to rushing the foe. In addition to the "normal" scuffles, Uncharted 2 has several wonderful action set pieces. Though the events are quite scripted, the player still has a degree of freedom within the madness of (say) a fight in a collapsing building. Where many developers would put in a cutscene or a QTE (i.e. an exercise in timed button-pressing), Naughty Dog trusts players with full control.

One of the best things about Uncharted 2 is its remarkable attention to detail. In one early mission, for example, Drake has to sneak into a museum without killing anyone. When he attacks a guard from behind, he does one of several special non-lethal attacks that appear for that level only. Later in the same mission, the game forces you to throw a hapless guard off a roof and into the water thirty-odd feet below. I doubt most players will particularly care about the fate of their innocent victim, but someone at Naughty Dog thought about him. If you look down from the roof, you can see the unlucky man swim to safety. There are plenty of similar details in Among Thieves. Several puzzles require the player to flip through Drake's notebook for hints; if you look at earlier pages in the book, you'll find several funny jokes and a few callbacks to the first game, plus Drake's list of past girlfriends.

I don't want to speak too much about the plot of Among Thieves, as the game doesn't deserve to be spoiled. I thought the artifact du jour wasn't quite as interesting as its Fortune counterpart, but that character development was extremely well-done. The first game's plot had Drake fighting mostly Asian or African pirates; in this game there's a bit more ethnic diversity. Most of the villains are (gasp!) white.

More than one Uncharted player has commented on the disconnect between Drake the Everyman and Drake the Videogame Hero. Yes, Drake kills hundreds of trained soldiers in his adventure. This is, after all, a shooter. Yet, somehow, Nate still seems fallible and human. Nolan North's voice acting has a lot to do with this – if a grenade comes towards Drake, he is going to yell or curse, not just coolly evade – but so does the gameplay. You spend a good portion of the game scrambling away from more powerful enemies, including tanks and helicopters. And surviving the game's final fight requires much frantic dodging of a faster and stronger enemy.

I suppose I should talk about graphics. They're gorgeous. All the characters look, if not realistic, then plausible. It's very easy to believe in Drake and Company. Especially impressive is the game's train level, as the jungle, villages, and lakes you so quickly pass by look as good as everything else in the game. I have never before been so impressed with a game's appearance. Most of Drake's Fortune took place in the jungles and ruins of an uninhabited Pacific island, allowing Naughty Dog to showcase their beautiful tree and water effects. Among Thieves doesn't entirely dispense with the wet jungles, but Naughty Dog has new graphical toys to show off. Much of Among Thieves takes place on the heights of cold mountains and the snow effects are incredible. Drake and his companions get believably dusted with snow, the footprints left behind look realistic, and the mountain weather varies from clear skies to whiteouts. Uncharted's world, for all its concessions to jumping and shooting, feels real.

Uncharted 2 took me about twelve hours to beat, but it seems to have excellent replayability. There's a level select (Thank you!) and 100 well-hidden treasures to find. I'm at sixty-six right now and enjoying myself – treasures aren't just scattered about; you have to think like a game designer to find them. In addition to the treasures, you can also change your hero's appearance: If you want to go through the game as Francis Drake's skeleton or one of the female leads, you can do that. Even better, you can give yourself (almost) any weapon you want. If ever you want a minigun, you can have it. I beat Uncharted 2 almost a week ago, but it's still all I want to play.

Were Uncharted 2 "merely" a single-player game, it would remain the best game I've played on the PS3. But Among Thieves is not just a one-person experience, it has an extremely good multiplayer component as well. My multiplayer review arrives Friday.

Charting the Untold Potential of Video Games

Before Mr. Keeley posts his (appropriately) epic, two-post review of the anxiously awaited "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" next week, I feel that we should take a look back at the game's predecessor, "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune."

Back in 2007, calling yourself a Playstation 3 owner was not saying much. The console's price was through the roof and its game library did little to make it more attractive. Those who had owned previous Sony consoles, however, knew that one bright spot was guaranteed to appear: the next franchise from game developer, Naughty Dog. Ever since the mid-nineties, this company has consistently created franchises that were brilliant, fresh and thoroughly well-made. The launch of "Uncharted" not only turned things around for the PS3, but history will likely prove that its innovations marked a shift in the way video games are made.

Naturally, a lot of the buzz "Uncharted" had at the time was based on its graphics. Any gamer knows that this is damning with faint praise, as good graphics only make good games great; if the game was a mess, pretty pictures would not save it. Still, this was to be expected, as the PS3's big selling point was its power. "Uncharted" did not disappoint in the visuals, either. In fact, approaching this topic with a purely technical mindset will lead one to underestimate just how much Naughty Dog achieved with the graphics in "Uncharted."

Anyone who has played an older game set in a jungle knows how hard it is create one. Video game environments work like film sets – they are not so much concerned with being realistic as they are with seeming realistic. With video game jungles, this generally results in optical illusions, backdrops and conspicuously solid walls of trees, designed to suggest the density of a real forest. It rarely works. With "Uncharted," however, a key innovation was made: the chaotic layout of a forest directly influenced the gameplay. Jagged rock walls, fallen trees and ruins all became platforming puzzles, not merely scenery. This way, the game often benefited from what inhibited past games. Of course, the PS3's power did not hurt; one promotional video boasted that each leaf on each tree cast its own glossy reflection of sunlight. Significant? Hardly. Impressive? Definitely.

Naughty Dog's art design must be praised, as well. The team did not take the PS3's power, then naively pursue photorealism, like so many do. "Uncharted," in all its facets, is punctuated by wonderfully heightened realism. When a bad guy gets blown up, the physical reaction is not entirely realistic; he fires high into the air, then seemingly hangs there as his animation ever so briefly enters slow motion, then he abruptly slams into the ground. Would a real grenade victim do this? Hell no. Do you wish a real grenade victim would do this? Hell yes. This applies to areas beyond animation. The color palette in "Uncharted" is bursting with bright greens, blues and, in the later acts, reds. Even an abandoned Nazi compound is punctuated with subtle hints of color, reminding the player that they are most certainly not playing "Gears of War."

Nothing, however, was aided by Naughty Dog's technical prowess more so than that one element that just about every game sorely overlooks: story. The story is the heart and soul of "Uncharted." Like "Metal Gear Solid 4," which came shorty after it, this game sought to use next generation technology to blur the lines between story and gameplay more so than ever. This is the greatest innovation in "Uncharted" – a quality so elusive and intangible that it often gets overlooked. After all, publisher cannot put "Oh yeah, and this game has a story that actually bothers to try," on the back of the box, no matter how truthful it may be.

"Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" tells the story of Nathan Drake (Nolan North). He is a treasure hunter that claims to be the descendant of Sir Francis Drake. He heads to a remote Caribbean island, on a tip that the lost treasure of El Dorado is there, courtesy of documents attributed to his supposed ancestor. Once there, hoards of pirates, greedy businessmen, bounty hunters and questionable friends stand between him and the treasure (which is not all it seems, either). To add to the fun, the snarky Elena Fisher (Emily Rose), a TV host, is brought along for the ride.

It may not sound like Oscar bait, but this story is all you want it to be: full of twists, turns, narrow escapes, tense standoffs and sharp dialogue. The story is everything the latest "Indiana Jones" should have been yet, somehow, these video game developers easily bested George Lucas; they resisted the urge to let their technology get in the way of the story. Here, the technology allowed the story to flourish – to be told with a striking, new level of personality and cinematic flair. If any one work represents video games' succession of film as the next great storytelling medium, it very well could be this one.

So many things are done correctly here. First, the game's writer (Amy Hennig) was the project's director, top to bottom. This means that the person who is responsible for the story saw its creation through to the final product. Failure to keep the writer involved throughout the process is a fatal flaw for many video games' stories. Second, the actors reportedly enjoyed a privilege unheard of in the game world: an openly collaborative role in the game's production. Many of Drake's in-game comments, for example, were ad-libbed by North. Making actors actively engage with the material is a vital step toward creating convincing characters, and the final product bears proof of this. Third, the Naughty Dog team had the wisdom to supplement motion capture data with animation. I am not sure how typical this is, to be honest, but that obnoxious, "floaty" quality that so many games' mo-cap performances suffer from is absent in this one. The characters move with genuine weight and astonishing fluidity, facilitating the wonderful performances from North, Rose and their castmates.

Video games may yet become an actors' medium, if "Uncharted" is any indication.

Some readers may notice that I have discussed little about the gameplay thus far. "Uncharted" has its weaknesses in this area. The duck-and-cover gunplay mechanics are ripped straight from "Gears of War" and, many times, the player finds him or herself trapped in an area, fighting off seemingly endless hordes of enemies. (Incidentally, the enemies are every race but White. It makes the game feel a bit strange, once one notices this...) Yet, it is difficult to fault Naughty Dog here. The gunplay may be unoriginal, but it is extremely polished and, often, quite fun. "Uncharted" blows "Gears" away in terms of personality, and discounting personality's affect on gameplay would be unfair. Also, the copious platforming sections suffer from no such deficiencies; they are wonderful feats of subtle and entertaining level design. With the aid of some very adept in-game camerawork, the game makes scaling ruins and rock walls challenging, tense, visceral and satisfying.

Ultimately, the gameplay in "Uncharted" tends to get sold short because it borrows so heavily from other games for inspiration. Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find many games that execute these gameplay mechanics so incredibly well as Naughty Dog's. It is another instance of a sort of quality that is not tangible enough to be boiled down to a bullet point; "Uncharted" truly must be played to be loved (or, at least, seen in person). It does not help that your typical, jaded gamer will roll his or her eyes at the suggestion of playing a game for its plot, either.

Two years later, however, the release of the game's sequel seems to have garnered quite a bit of excitement. This has manifested itself in surprising ways (surprising to those who do not know the game, at least). The game's cast is beloved, as their packed Comic-Con panel earlier this year proves and, when the gaming press interviews Amy Hennig, something interesting happens, as well: she is asked the sort of in-depth, script-related questions usually reserved for film directors.

"Uncharted" may utilize time-tested gameplay mechanics and storylines but, through incredible digital alchemy, the developers create a truly unique entertainment experience of unquestionable quality. The men and women at Naughty Dog are easily some of the biggest talents in their field and the work that they are doing is not only a feather in Sony's cap, but it is the stuff of creative revolutions. Games like "Uncharted" are forcing people to reassess where games stand in the ranks of storytelling media and, with the sequel releasing this week, the revolution is surely just beginning.