In War, There Are No Winners

It is the policy of this blog's editor that slurs against any group of people will not be displayed, unless part of a decidedly relevant quote. Accordingly, any potentially offensive language herein is presented for the sole purpose of cogent discussion. Any user comments that do not also meet this criterion will be deleted immediately.

Just over a week ago, the video game world found itself in an unfamiliar situation: Embroiled in criticism over social responsibility, not at the hands of an activist parents' group or an overzealous Florida attorney, but from within.

In an attempt to hype the imminent release of its Modern Warfare 2, developer, Infinity Ward released this promotional video:

What followed was widespread criticism in the video game press and extremely heated controversy among their readers, as evidenced by the comments sections in those respective links. (For those who did not notice, the acronym for the activist group at the end of the video happens to spell out a slur against homosexuals.) This entire incident has raised a number of questions about where the video game community stands in relation to the rest of our culture, when it comes to acceptance of gays. It is, obviously, a tough question to tackle, but comparing video games to the two other media that this blog covers – film and television – may, at least, provide some perspective.

Film typically enjoys more creative freedom than the other two media – a fact that can likely be attributed to it being the oldest of the three. The critical and popular success of Brokeback Mountain in 2005 said a lot about where the film industry stands on the gay rights issue. Despite the fact that I, too, consider the film to be quite good, it is difficult to be convinced of Hollywood's sincerity on an issue that is often wrapped up in petty political squabbles; Brokeback may have merely been embraced on grounds of single-minded political predilections.

Last year's Milk is a great example of this phenomenon. I never stopped wondering at all of the adulation such a mediocre film received, especially when two of its weaker aspects, its screenplay and its lead, were the objects of much of that praise. Anyone who has seen Rob Epstein's well-loved documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk knows how fascinating Harvey Milk's life was. I was astonished to find that Dustin Lance Black's screenplay for Milk, however, hit each bullet point in the man's history with only the most perfunctory concern for character or plot. Furthermore, anyone who has seen real-life footage of Harvey Milk knows that he did not display many stereotypically gay characteristics. Yet, Sean Penn, in his Oscar-winning role, saw fit to give the man limp wrists and a highly mannered style of speech.

If the Oscars' handling of high-profile gay films is any indication, the film industry's concern for gay rights remains rather superficial. Nevertheless, it is hard to ignore the industry's continued interest in tackling the gay rights issue head-on. Even if it is unintentional, such behavior prevents the industry from alienating the GLBT community. When even crude, inflammatory fare like "Bruno" is careful to make its pro-gay stance clear, it is apparent that Hollywood is making conscious efforts to this end.

Television networks have made equally conscious efforts in this area – in fact, many have called them contrived in certain instances. When a study by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) stated that SyFy was one of the lowest-rated networks, in terms of portraying homosexual characters, the network took swift action. It assured the public that it would make a conscious effort to include more gay characters in future programming. Many, like myself, found this concerning, as it implied that the network intended to intervene in the writing of their shows, in order to impose this initiative. Obviously, I fully advocate efforts to diversify a television landscape that is still ruled by rich, white, straight characters, but those efforts should really originate at the creative level, not the executive; forcing writers to comply will likely result in a proliferation of shallow, token characters – not to mention bad storylines.

Still, SyFy's approach is doubtlessly typical. It is difficult not to notice the sudden abundance of gay (supporting) characters on network television. Glee, FlashForward, Modern Family, Mercy and surely a number of other new, fall '09 shows featured gay characters in their casts – a phenomenon that did not seem to occur last year. It looks like the television industry's embracing of the gay community has happened even more abruptly than the film industry's.

There are, of course, exceptions. A recent episode of South Park tackled gay rights issues with predictable bravado. When an obnoxious gang of bikers begins plaguing the town, they are heckled with the word, "fag." It ultimately ignites a debate over the word's meaning, as the kids maintain that it is merely a pejorative for inconsiderate, obnoxious people, not gays. Ultimately, the town chooses to officially redefine the term, in order to line it up with the kids' understanding of it. A particularly interesting moment has the bikers list the etymological history of the word, exposing its constantly shifting meaning.

Yet, Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to be employing some willful ignorance here. Yes, younger people have rendered the word nigh-meaningless through constant use but the writers seem to believe that the gay rights debate is over. Gay marriage is still an extremely contentious debate and, while one could argue that younger generations use the word differently, that idea hardly applies to today's adults. After all, when the Westboro Baptist Church waves around signs proclaiming, "God Hates Fags," I doubt anyone thinks they are merely condemning inconsiderate jerks. Similarly, Parker and Stone seem to be forgetting that words like, "gay" "homo" and "queer" have also become all-purpose pejoratives. There is an obvious trend there – it is hard to ignore that, but Parker and Stone do. As usual, I admire their willingness to tackle controversial issues without being overly concerned with delicacy, but their opinions are really stretching with this one.

South Park is not the norm for television. In fact, Parker and Stone's ideas more closely resemble the thinking behind Infinity Ward's video than anything else I have discussed thus far; many of the commenters mentioned above, after all, hold up this episode in the ad's defense. While it is obvious that Hollywood's sympathy for gay rights can be forced and superficial, it still appears to be far ahead that of the video game industry.

The timing of the video's release was interesting, as it came a few days after Rockstar Games' release of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony. Now, I have not been lucky enough to play this game yet, but the core GTA IV release already featured a couple of gay characters and it was likely indicative of the treatment such characters will receive in this release. Rockstar's franchise has always dealt in caricatures but, at the same time, featured unusually well-developed characters. It is true that the gay characters in GTA IV were decidedly stereotypical. Yet, one of them was an old friend of the main character's and he eventually gained a decent amount of depth. A later mission even has you protecting him from a gay basher that has been harassing him. Is it treating the issue with the same level of maturity that Hollywood attempts to? Not quite. But, hey, at least Rockstar tried.

The same cannot be said for the rest of the game industry. Gay characters are incredibly rare in video games (hell, female characters are still hard to come by); it is an understatement to say that homosexuals are underrepresented in the gaming world. So, when the first time in months that gays and games can be mentioned in the same breath is due to a punchline in an ad, things are already looking grim.

Many seem to believe that the joke may have been unintentional, since the word is never explicitly used. Yet, this is a non-issue, as Infinity Ward immediately conceded that it was part of their joke; according to their own Robert Bowling, "I think the core gag is great, the end is a bit too far from the intent of the joke & [I] can appreciate the concerns." This only leaves the question of Infinity Ward's intent in using the word. As argued above, this is largely irrelevant. There is no mistaking the root of this term's offensiveness. The word is used to insult a person's masculinity (this intent is apparent in the video, considering that those players are also called "pussies") and just about every synonym for the word "gay" is often used in the same, exact way.

Are Infinity Ward bigots? I seriously doubt it. Does that really change the fact that the word, however passively it may do so, denigrates homosexuals? No.

Gays are already pariahs in the gaming community – not merely because they are underrepresented in games, but because the online community throws around sexual slurs freely. Anyone who has ever played a competitive, online game knows what I am talking about. Obviously, there is little that we can expect Infinity Ward, or any other developers, to do about that. Yet, it is hardly a justification for Infinity Ward being complicit in it. To use an expression, Infinity Ward are mafia wives. They do nothing to perpetrate these misdeeds, but they are consciously and willfully enabling them.

I fully intend to play Modern Warfare 2; this post is not a call to action, or even an expression of outrage. Instead, my goal here is merely to convey my disappointment. In a popular culture that, at best, seems to acknowledge members of the LGBT community solely for their political value, any group that contributes to their alienation is, unequivocally, part of the problem. The video game community has exploded with diversity over the past few years and it is a damn shame that most developers remain so woefully out of touch that they still fail to recognize it (in all of its forms – not just homosexuality). Proof of this lies in the fact that all of the criticism leveled at this video came from within the community, not from outside groups.

Many gamers, Mr. Keeley and myself included, are proud to preach games' growth as a valuable pillar of our modern culture. Until game publishers and developers are able to recognize the value of our society's diversity and the responsibility for tolerance that comes with it, however, they can never hope for the same respect that other media receive.

Another Angry Expat: Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent

A few weeks back, I looked at Fritz Lang's film, Man Hunt, an anti-Nazi film Lang made after World War II started but before Pearl Harbor. Like Lang, Hitchcock was a European director who had come to the States; like Lang, he hadn't left his political convictions behind. Foreign Correspondent (1940) was Hitchcock's second American film; Rebecca came out just four months before. Hitchcock, it would seem, adjusted to Hollywood quickly.

Man Hunt is an anti-Nazi film, while Foreign Correspondent is a pro-British one. Lang's film, for all its praise of England, is at heart a denunciation of fascism. Hitchcock's is a celebration of England and a call to America. The penultimate scene pokes fun at American neutrality, while the final scene is a call to defend America. The bombs are falling on London and the protagonist, John Jones (Joel McCrea), knows the States, for all their isolation, are not safe.

Foreign Correspondent seems a sort of transition film for Hitchcock; though his stars are American, his scene is Europe. About a third of the film takes place in Holland; another half of the film is set in London. Hitchcock obviously couldn't shoot on location; one wonders what he thought as he recreated the streets of his beleaguered hometown on some California soundstage. Interestingly enough, Hitchcock finished shooting the film before the Blitz proper began – the final bombing raid address is a prediction of what London would be like... just five days after Hitchcock shot the scene.

Though a German directed the movie, Man Hunt's Germans seemed to lack all redeeming traits. They were vicious, cruel, treacherous, and sadistic. Foreign Correspondent, interestingly enough, attempts to humanize its villains. They use a peace organization as a front for espionage. They murder, they lie, and they torture. Yet the script also brings repeated attention to the head villain's patriotism – and to his conflicted feelings about his methods. In the end he even manages to redeem himself at the cost of his life.

I suppose I could talk about the movie's suspense set pieces, but it seems somehow redundant. Foreign Correspondent is a Hitchcock film, so of course the movie gets suspense right. And need I say that the film is extremely well-shot? There are no scenes quite so iconic as the crop duster sequence in North by Northwest or the shower in Psycho, but windmill, hotel, and plane crash sequences are all very fine. The last is especially impressive given 1940's technology – it's far less fake than similar scenes from the era. Even a rear-projection car chase somehow manages to look creditable. There's also a surprisingly bloody assassination; the censors must have been blinking, because there's quite a lot of blood about the victim's head.

I don't have too much to say about Foreign Correspondent's plot; it's twisty, it's good, and it's best experienced by watching the movie. The cast is also extremely good, and, as usual for Hitchcock's early work, very funny. There are far more innuendos than some might expect, though nothing quite so scandalously funny as North by Northwest's Freudian final shot. As in The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock inserts a few stage Englishmen with funny accents and goofy names. One is a Cockney villain who meets a bad end, but the other, Scott ffolliott (sic!) manages to hide a stiff upper lip under his goofiness and "old boys." He's a fine counterpart to Caldicott and Charters, the cricket-obsessed comic relief of The Lady Vanishes – they too were far tougher than they looked. Ironically enough, George Sanders, who plays the most wicked of the Nazis in Man Hunt, here stars as a quintessentially English hero.

Though Foreign Correspondent is something of a propaganda film, it doesn't suffer from politics. The US wasn't in the war when the film came out, so there's less flag-waving than in some other Hitchcock films. Yes, America is great in Foreign Correspondent – "The Star-Spangled Banner" even plays over the credits – but most of the film is far more subtle than later Hitchcock productions like the tediously American Saboteur. Hitchcock trusts that his audience can figure out who the good guys are. Given the quality of the script, the direction, and the acting, it's not surprising to learn that Foreign Correspondent received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It lost, but I doubt Hitchcock was too disappointed. The winning film, after all, was his own Rebecca.

Foreign Correspondent isn't my favorite Hitchcock film – that's North by Northwest – but it remains one of his best and has aged extremely well. Or, rather, it has hardly aged at all.

And now, review done, a technological digression.

I watched Foreign Correspondent through Netflix's new PS3 streaming feature. I was quite impressed with the Netflix program; the image quality, if not perfect, was never distractingly bad, and the film never hiccuped or stalled. The movie cut out before the end of the credits, however, which was a bit odd. My main problem with the Netflix PS3 disc is the interface. You can view your "instant queue," watch movies from it, and even take movies off of it, but you can't search for the films to add to it. Besides your instant queue, Netflix offers a list of "Movies You'll Love" and a whole set of genre categories. The "Movies You'll Love" section is nice, but the genre categories are a mess. They're not organized alphabetically, or, as far as I can tell, by expected interest. You will find gems (Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes!), but there are literally hundreds of bad movies that get just as much ad space. Do we really need to stream Chained Heat 2? Despite my quibbles, however, the Netflix PS3 disc is pretty wonderful. I look forward to spending a lot of time with it.

"Paranormal Activity," Paranormal Success

Take that, Hollywood.

You've been content to (almost) exclusively crank out pale, regurgitated horror fare for years and it has finally crept up and bit you. Some guy from Rancho Peñasquitos got two actors and $15,000 together and managed to make the best horror movie in years, possibly decades. Furthermore, he took a filmmaking gimmick that you have repeatedly failed to make functional – the "found footage" conceit – and made it look easy. Now, I suppose some credit is due to you here; you were smart enough to buy up the distribution rights and give the film wide enough exposure to make it the most profitable independent film ever. Then again, that was all at the behest of one of your reigning oligarchs, Steven Spielberg, who believed his copy of the movie was haunted. Perhaps you still have quite a bit to worry about.

Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" is meat and potatoes filmmaking. It is very easy to forget that less is generally more, and that this maxim holds particularly true for the horror genre. Yet, every aspect of this film benefits from precisely this sort of simplicity. Sure, many of the constraints that this film had were not necessarily Peli's choice, but many people would see his circumstances as an excuse to never even try. Thankfully, he did try and he was wildly successful.

"Paranormal Activity" presents the videotaped account of a San Diego couple's brush with the, ahem, paranormal over the course of a few weeks. The film begins when Micah (Micah Sloat), a day trader and technophile, switches on his new video camera. His girlfriend, Katie (Katie Featherston) claims to have been experiencing the presence of supernatural beings for the better part of her life. Thing is, most of the encounters occur when Micah is sleeping. He sees the camera as a way to have a bit of fun with it all and, hell, maybe even shed light on the situation. So, he proceeds to film just about every moment of their lives, even going so far as to leave a light on in their bedroom, so he can put the camera onto a tripod and capture them sleeping. Katie is cautiously complicit in the experiment. She is not a big fan of the camera (or Micah's lighthearted attempts at filming their more intimate moments) but she welcomes the opportunity for some vindication.

Needless to say, that vindication comes – in due time. Peli's script proceeds at a meticulous pace, always laying its next card on the table with devilish protraction. The film's overnight scenes are where the vast majority of the action takes place and their intensity is ratcheted up one, and only one, notch each time they roll around. What begins as a faint rumbling sound on the first night slowly evolves over the course of the film into the mayhem of the final night. So precise is this progression that each time the next night comes around, and the film returns to that static, blue-tinged, wide shot of the couple lying in bed, the shiver that runs down your spine multiplies in its intensity.

Perhaps an even larger surprise is that the intervening scenes do not drag. In fact, they keep the pace perfectly. Micah and Katie's relationship is obviously put through the ringer during the course of the film, but they have a genuine affection for each other, which makes the drama between them involving and sympathetic. Micah can be a bit smug, and it causes more than one hurtful moment for Katie, but he never fails to do the right thing when the chips are down. Similarly, she never fails to recognize his fundamental decency. This is one of the less obvious areas where the film benefits from its independent status; the characters never stop exhibiting a basic three-dimensionality, no matter how expedient the alternative may have become. With the result being a movie where people you actually care about are in danger, it pays off.

Peli's apparent genius, however, does not end with the script. Films like "Cloverfield" have proven that the on-the-scene-camcorder-footage approach to shooting a horror film can bear downright disastrous results. Yet, the moment they see Micah unfolding his tripod, skeptics will breathe a sigh of relief. Peli's cinematography is certainly convincing as amateur camcorder footage, with much practical lighting (as in, free of professional equipment) and the requisite shakiness. Thing is, whoever is holding the camera at any given point knows better than to swing the damn thing about or hold it at odd angles. Horrendous camerawork may be realistic in some circumstances, but that does not make a movie any more watchable.

Characters will even put the camera down at times, creating some amazing results. This includes scenes where we are left to marinate in the tension of an empty room or where our skewed perspective creates claustrophobic compositions. At one point, Micah finds Katie sitting on the floor, shaking. He places the camera on the floor and embraces her. We can only see the floor and, at the very top of the frame, Katie's quivering legs. Touching and unsettling at the same time, it is one of many moments of simple brilliance.

Any good horror director borrows from Hitchcock and Peli is no exception. Much of the claustrophobic tension in "Paranormal Activity" can be attributed to the camera being confined to Micah and Katie's two-story house, much like James Stewart's apartment in "Rear Window." The fact that Micah works from home and that the couple descends into a state of drowsy exasperation over the course of the film essentially prevents them from leaving the house. It makes the sole, significant outdoor scene all the more surreal.

So limited is the scenery in this film that roughly a quarter of it is one setup – the overnight shot of Micah and Katie in bed. I have never seen a movie that milked so much drama out of a single angle. For most who have seen "Paranormal Activity," one look at the murky interior of the bedroom will be enough to recall much of the film's terrors. Peli devises a number of memorable scenarios that take place in these scenes. Some are a bit unoriginal but many are quite fresh, and all of them are genuinely effective within the context of the film. His use of the bedroom door is nothing we have not seen before, but the events involving the door happen at such long intervals and with such delicate escalation that he manages to reinvigorate this tired device. By the film's halfway point, the audience begins to dread nightfall as much as Micah and Katie do.

My analysis of the bedroom door in the movie should make this clear: "Paranormal Activity" has no pretensions. It is content to utilize the simplest means to build tension and elicit scares. Consequently, the film is a revelation – a reminder of what truly good horror filmmaking looks like. The film largely deserves all of the buzz it has received. Which is, of course, a double-edged sword; Paramount has already snatched up the rights to "Paranormal Activity 2." Now that is horrifying.

On a broader note...

I have run into a few people who insist that this movie is rather terrible. Now, this is par for the course with sleeper horror hits (see: "The Blair Witch Project"), but I think part of it can be blamed on the fact that people have forgotten how to watch movies. One person I spoke to, I believe, watched a bootleg of the film on his laptop. Hear that? That is the sound of palm-to-forehead contact.

Film requires immersion in order to be effective and this is especially true for horror film; of course the movie will seem largely ineffective if you are watching it on your cell phone as you drive to work in broad daylight with the radio on! That is not the movie's fault. If you at all intend to enjoy a film – and I assume most people put on a movie with this intention – you have to do everything within reason to remove yourself from the outside world for those few minutes. That means shutting off the lights, watching it on a screen that's bigger than your forearm and, for the love of all that is Good, turning off your shitting cell phone. Until people do that, I will have a great deal of trouble sympathizing with any gripes they may have with a film.

Also, stealing movies is wrong, kids. Especially when it is a movie with a $15,000 budget. Come on!

Catholic Camp in Toronto... I mean Boston

On some days and with some movies, blogging is an act of masochism. Today is one of those days and Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is one of those movies. Why, oh why, did they ever let Troy Duffy make another movie?

In an earlier piece on Martin McDonagh, I talked about In Bruges as a sort of revisionist Tarantino film – it had humor and ultraviolence and odd conversations, but it had depths utterly lacking in QT's mostly superficial work. Troy Duffy's first film occasionally pretended to mean something, though his dialogue, his cinematography, and his plot were all far weaker than Tarantino "classics" like Pulp Fiction. In the ten years since Duffy made The Boondock Saints – and alienated half of Hollywood – he hasn't improved. If anything, he's moved backwards. The action sequences remain weak, the dialogue is still thoroughly unfunny, and Duffy has removed all the first film's (barely perceptible) nods to moral ambiguity.

There's not all that much to distinguish the second Boondock film from the first, aside from a substantially more ridiculous plot, which is sporadically interrupted by sepia flashbacks to Billy Connolly's character's youth. These flashbacks – ostensibly to the sixties – look like they're taking place in the twenties or thirties. We may be supposed to feel something – the flashbacks tell of the making of an assassin – but they're awkwardly staged, lit, and shot. At least they make more sense than the entirely random dream sequence pep talk Duffy introduces solely so he can bring back a dead character from the first film. But the film's worst moment comes in its final twist and revelation. It involves Catholic assassins (maybe like this?), a celebrity cameo, and a sequel hook. The implied follow-up looks to be even worse than this film.

There are a lot of things to hate in Boondock Saints II, but I think its most galling trait is its fundamental dishonesty. The film's two main "characters" are supposed to be quintessential Boston Irish, but we can only tell because a) they have Latin- and Catholic-themed tattoos, b) they drink a lot, and c) they spend some time as shepherds in Ireland. Troy Duffy tries hard to give the film a Boston identity, but it simply won't happen; he shot in Toronto, and it shows. His cinematic "Boston" consists of stock footage of downtown and a generic skyscraper that stands in for the Prudential Tower. And, to be fair, there's about two seconds of a news report that shows an actual MBTA train. But at least Duffy knows his Boston slang, right? When the film makes a character speak of "Beantown," it's so shoehorned, unnatural, and poorly-delivered that it becomes unintentionally funny. Sorry Troy, but all the spokes have fallen off from your Hub.

As atrocious as Duffy's portrayal of Boston is, his take on Catholicism is far worse. One gets the sense that in Duffyland, murder is some sort of eighth sacrament. All the priests collude in the protagonists' rampages. According to the film's ending, the titular Saints are somehow following the Catholic party line by ventilating mobsters. Damn, I never knew the catechism was so bloodthirsty. Duffy fills his movie with shots (often slow-motion close-ups) of clerics, collars, crucifixes, and confessionals, but it doesn't mean anything. Then again, what does have meaning in this utterly empty film?

Boondock Saints II is, in theory, an action movie. Unfortunately, the action is pretty awful. There're a lot of slow motion shots, but none of them are graceful or interesting enough to justify the slowdown. Most of the the movie's bullets are aimed at the camera; the average shootout is a few shots of the Saints yelling and shooting in silent slow-mo interspersed with reaction shots of mobsters and criminals falling backward. Only rarely do shooters and shot share a frame. There's nothing inventive or intense about the movie's shootouts. They would be far better if Duffy had dropped his slow-motion gimmick – at least then the pain would be over more quickly.

There's plenty more to complain about in Boondock Saints II. Troy Duffy has quite a few misguided beliefs. He seems to think we care about his protagonists' backgrounds. We don't. He believes we have never watched The Closer on TNT, so we won't notice how much Julie Benz (as an FBI agent) rips off Kyra Sedgwick's role in that show. He thinks gross-out humor to make 90's Adam Sandler blush is funny. And worst of all, he somehow imagines that people will want to see a sequel to this film. Saints preserve us.

In one of my first reviews here, I called Taken a "good bad movie." This is a bad bad movie. Perhaps a discerning viewer could enjoy it inebriated or ironically; it could be a midnight double-feature with The Room or the first Boondock Saints. But instead let us hope that the world forgets this film. Somehow, though, I doubt it will. The audience I watched the movie with seemed to really and honestly enjoy it. What ever will become of us?

High Honors Among Thieves

If "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" marked the opening shots of a revolution, "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" will prove to mark the moment when the war became winnable. The original game had an emphasis on narrative that changed the standards for video games as a storytelling medium. The sequel does not necessarily change the standards again, it just ensures that future games will have no choice but to meet them. Everything, absolutely everything, that worked in the first game (and everything that did not) has been polished to perfection in "Among Thieves," instantly elevating the series into the pantheon of seminal gaming franchises.

There was a moment while I was playing the gripping single-player campaign in "Uncharted 2" when I stopped and thought, "This game is going to have other video game developers throwing themselves off of buildings." Before I get too exalting, however, let me concede that there remains room for improvement (the game's final third cannot maintain the perfect pace of the previous sections – it all degrades into mere greatness, in lieu of excellence). So, at the very least, let us hope that no one at Naughty Dog will be defenestrating themselves over the prospect of the inevitable "Uncharted 3."

Now, Mr. Keeley has already discussed the game's myriad improvements in his two posts, so I will look closely at a specific segment of the game that I believe best illustrates its strengths: Chapter One.

We find Nathan Drake sitting in a train car, stunned. He quickly realizes that he is bleeding heavily, then he slowly realizes that the train car is dangling off of the side of a snowy cliff. Debris comes tumbling down onto him, knocking him out of the car and leaving only the car's back handrail from which to hang. With this, gameplay begins. Scaling the car is every bit as nerve-wracking as it should be. The cliffside is crumbing, the train is pulling apart, winds are blowing and Drake is dying. All of these factors inform the gameplay. Progress is slow, as falling boulders set Drake back, unreliable footholds nearly throw him to his death, and his injuries keep him in nearly palpable pain.

This one train car proves to be a marvel of level design, as the changing state and position of the car force the player to traverse every side of the car's exterior, as well as its vertical interior. First time players will find a number of small, yet thrilling surprises in the gameplay, simply during the course of the minute or two spent climbing the car. No average person could look at a train car and see so much potential for challenging, dynamic platforming; this is the work of true artists. Furthermore, it serves as a wonderful refresher on Drake's abilities. Almost every aspect of the climbing mechanic is utilized here, but with a stilted speed that both heightens the tension and allows players to ease back into the controls.

Reaching the top of the train car brings a second car, this one horizontal (for the moment). This triggers the first of many harrowing, scripted sequences in the game. The second car begins to slip off of the cliff as Drake is walking through it and he must to run for his life. This is not, however, a cutscene. Like so many moments like this throughout the game, the player remains in full control, forcing him or her to frantically work to reach safety; as Drake finally scampers onto solid ground, he is not the only one breathing a sigh of relief. For far too long, video games have featured gameplay that fails to reflect the circumstances within which they are set. Throughout "Uncharted 2," however, contextual handicaps to the controls, dynamic level design, dramatic camera positioning and, of course, excellent voice acting ensure that the emotion of a situation is always brought home to the viewer.

What follows the collapse of the two train cars exemplifies this, too, as the game's narrative enters the mix. Drake must stumble through a dangerous wreckage of about a dozen other cars. He receives some very serious blows here, as other parts of the wreckage explode or collapse, and many of them trigger flashbacks. In these flashbacks, players watch and play through the events that lead up to the train wreck. The trickle of information has a bewildering effect that only brings the player even closer to Drake's stunned state. The final flashback lasts a few hours, as the story circles back around to the wreck.

If one were to look at the elements that compose this sequence, he or she would find very little in the way of new things. Predetermined camera angles, quick-time events, cutscenes, scripted musical cues – all of these things have been used (and, often, overused) for years, but never before to this effect. Games of the past dreamed of an experience that combined all of these elements into something truly seamless and immersive. "Uncharted 2" is brimming with sequences that are wildly successful at it. Time and again, the game leaps two or three steps ahead of the player, sparing him or her those all-to-familiar thoughts of, "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could..." In other words, "Uncharted 2" is the game that players have been unconsciously wishing for over the past few years, but never received.

Again, there is little in the way of apparent innovation in "Uncharted 2" – and that is what will undoubtedly make it so scary for other developers to see. What Naughty Dog has achieved with this game cannot be easily replicated because, on some level, it cannot be attributed to anything other than unadulterated talent. It is difficult to believe that this game was crafted in two years. So many developers devote more time to games that do not feature anything approaching the minute level of polish that this game does (not to mention its incorrigible personality). The past few years have been great for video games, without a doubt, but Naughty Dog has ensured that no one in the industry will be allowed to rest on their laurels any time soon.