Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Uncharted 2 quick impressions

I picked up Uncharted 2 yesterday.  Played for about 2 - 3 hours.  Some quick impressions:
 
- Graphically, the game is utterly ridiculous.  I may have only seen a fraction of the full game at this point, but I am already giving it the "Best Looking Console Game of All Time" award.  The snow looks insane.  Drake's animation is uncanny.  Especially in the opening tutorial section.  I love games that have "wow" moments.  And this game has plenty of those.
 
- One thing I felt the original Uncharted did better than any other game, was make it feel like a fun, summer, adventure movie.  The cinematics and voice acting were fantastic.  And the dialog was playful and sharp.  Well, the sequel continues that and improves on it on all accounts.  I'm going to make another bold statement, Uncharted has the best voice acting of any videogame I've ever played.  The characters speak and interact very naturally.  The dialog is witty and genuinely funny.  The cinematics are fantastically "acted", with excellent motion-capture from the actual voice actors.  All elements come together to create a fantastic cinematic and immersing experience.  Great job Naughty Dog.
 
- Gameplay is typical Uncharted, with additional stealth elements thrown in.  At least, that's what I've experienced so far.  The levels and environments are huge, but there is a predefined path through them.  The platforming elements look cool, but you feel a bit disconnected from them.  Drake will be doing all kinds of crazy jumps, climbs, shimmys, etc., but all you'll be doing is pressing X as needed and holding a direction on the analog stick.  It all feels a little automatic, but so did the first game and traversing the environments is still fun.  Combat can get intense.  I haven't come across many puzzle elements yet.  Will post further gameplay impressions once I delve deeper into the campaign.
 
Overall though, the just screams quality and attention to detail.  This is definitely the game Sony can use to showcase what the PS3 can do.  Because technically, it is phenominal.
 

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