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This is the gameplay I saw back in 2009.  It's still awesome.

November 2016

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

The year was 2009.  I had recently purchased a PS3 after being disillusioned by my childhood video game company, Nintendo.  The Wii was disappointing to me - it just didn't have many games.  I was so excited for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  The technology looked amazing!  It was going to be like Jedi Academy, only way cooler!  It sucked.  It sucked bad.  Especially on the Wii.  I lost all trust in video game advertising.  I was watching E3 (the big annual trade show where new games are announced) and thinking "I just don't think I can get excited by a trailer anymore.  They're all just CGI anyway and don't even show real gameplay." And then at E3 they showed a few minutes of gameplay from Uncharted 2, played live on stage.

 

Wow.  I'd never heard of Uncharted before and this gameplay was amazing.  It started out with your character atop a tall building in a city at war.  Drake ziplines down to another rooftop and a helicopter starts firing at him and his partner.  They run and jump from building to building while the helicopter's gatling gun shreds apart the environment (that was technologically amazing at the time).  The gun-play looked awesome and the graphics were amazing.  At one point Drake goes into a building and is fighting through enemies while the helicopter is blowing holes in the walls and firing inside.  The helicopter backs away and then starts shooting below you at the building.  Drake says something like "What's he doing?" And then the whole building starts to fall forward!  Not in a cutscene, but as part of the gameplay.  Drake stumbles around but manages to jump out of a hole in the wall and into another building as the building he's in crashes into it.  I'd never seen anything like that, and playing through that section is as awesome now as it was when I first saw it.  There are many set pieces like this throughout the Uncharted games, but this one is probably my favorite since it did a lot to reignite my faith in video games.

 

Uncharted 2 is arguably one of the best games ever made.  It's just so polished and engaging.  It set the gold standard for many aspects of video games.  The voice acting was miles ahead of anything else at the time.  The banter between the characters actually made me laugh, which is a tall order for a video game.  The graphics were great and are among the best on the PS3, even including games made years after it.  The pacing of the game is just perfect - you'll have just the right amount of intense action before there is a more subdued section, and that last just the right amount of time as well.  

 

There are more subtle aspects of the game design that have done a lot to move gaming forward. For example, rather than having a big arrow showing you where to go, the designers instead tried to guide you with visual clues - in general, if a pipe or something is bright colored then you can climb it.  The doorway where you are supposed to go might have a light nearby that catches your eye.  It's small but I think things like this make a big difference in terms of immersion, and it's nice that the game doesn't hold your hand while also providing hints so that you don't get stuck.

 

I could go on and on about this game, but suffice it to say that it's my favorite Uncharted game and I'd be genuinely surprised if you didn't like it.  The game can speak for itself.

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