Wanted to make a thread for this game since it deserves its own. This game is amazing, easily my favorite action game of the past few years if not all time. The graphics are amazing, the story is great, the dialogue is some of the best you'll ever hear, and the action is just unrelenting at times. I just beat the game on normal after two days of play and after I post this will probably go back and start over on hard.
If Tomb Raider and Gears of War has a child it would be Uncharted 2. The gun play is fantastic. The guns themselves feel right and enemies take the right amount of hits before they fall. Cover is a must in some areas, as is good aim. Some enemies have full body armor that requires you to get head shots unless you want to waste half your ammo on one foe. Others have riot shields so shooting them from the front is a no win situation all together. Thankfully for almost the entire game you aren't in these fights for your life alone. Drake, the hero of Uncharted 2, has friends and they know how to fire a gun too. More then once you'll find yourself saved by your friends, be it by them covering you with a sniper rifle or getting in the thick of things by your side. There is also melee combat which isn't as consistently as satisfying as the gun play but has its own stellar moments. Melee combat is context sensitive and the game does a great job of doing the right attack at the right time. My favorite is when someone is on a ledge Drake will forgo melee all together and just push them off. There are also God of War type mini games for when people have you pinned or other variable, unfavorable positions you have gotten yourself into. You do start to see the same melee animations one to many times by the end of the of the game but the satisfaction of a good kick to the balls or push to their death never gets old.
When no killing or trying not to get killed there are plenty of ledge to climb and traverses to jump. While there are moments you ask yourself who hired the architect who designed these structures that can only be reached by circus monkeys in general the landscape seems very natural and realistic. This is especially true when you are in war torn cities were you can climb street signs and swing across banners. Hardly ever do you look at something and think that would never be there in real life, instead you start looking around for anything and everything you can pull yourself up on in hopes of getting to new areas or higher ground. As mentioned before you are hardly ever alone in this game and one friend in particular isn't nearly as agile as you so you sometimes have to find ways to help you partner keep up with you, be it by making temporary bridges, blowing things up, or just opening a locked door from the other side. If you ever get stuck not knowing what to do or where to go next there is a built in hint system where after a certain amount of time you can press up on the D pad for a hint. I only got stuck twice in the game and I am sure I would of found the solution to the problem on my own if I gave it enough time but it was nice not to have to bang my head against the wall looking for the right place to jump or climb.
The graphics are the best I have ever seen in a game. There isn't one particular moment that stands out because it all stands out. Everything just looks right. The colorful areas are vibrant and alive, the darker places look foreboding and unwelcoming. There are huge structures in this game that can't even been seen in their entirety on your TV screen they are so big. When on the train you feel the speed of the train as you wiz by bridges and rivers. Here are a few screen shots to give you an idea how great this game looks.
And I can honestly say those pictures don't do the game justice. Uncharted 2 just don't look like a real world, it feels like a real world. The game is full of living, breathing environments. Just image in that last picture you get stuck climbing those signs in the middle of the street and have to survivor a firefight from all sides using only a pistol (because you need one hand to hold onto the signs) and nothing but the signs to protect you from bullets and one of your friends at a higher point to pick people off and warn you which way new fire is coming from. That's uncharted 2, and those moments happen during the whole entire game. One of the most impressive features about these great graphics is someone naught dog pulled them off without any load time in the whole entire game. Other starting the game when you first sit down there isn't one load screen at any point as you play the game. The lack of stopping to load really helps keep the pace of the game fast and makes the accomplishment of the graphics all the more impressive.
Just like the gun play, climbing, and graphics Uncharted 2 execution of story and character is top notch. The story itself isn't really that new. Its the basic Indian Jones template of you must find an old artifact/city that people thought didn't really exist before a mad man does or else he might rule the world. The way the story plays out and the characters invovled aren't though. The dialogue in this game is great, probably the best I have ever heard in a game. There are moments that are genuinely really, really funny. I laughed out loud at this game more then once, and I never laugh out loud to games. The dialogue works both because of great writing and because of amazing voice acting. For example there was one time Drake got out of water and said "FISH OUT OF WATER!", which by itself isn't a funny line but the way it was delivered was. Realized I said "once", I heard Drake say that once in the whole game and never again. That is part of the reason Uncharted 2 remains so fresh throughout its entirety. There are a ton of one off scripted moments, animations, and dialogue. When you hear a funny line in the game chances are you won't hear it again. There is a part where you are walking through a cave and bats fly around a corner. I never saw bats in the game before that moment and never say bats in the game after that moment. Nothing ever gets driving into the ground by this game and that's really refreshing and unexpected in a console action game.
There is also online multi-player for this game. The single player to me is the highlight of this game and only deserves a place in your game library but the multi-player is no slouch. There are all the typical FPS online modes, death match, team death match, capture the flag, etc, but done in a 3rd person perspective. Surprisingly that really makes the game fresh and not a retread of past games. I actually enjoy the online part of this game, and I have never liked a FPS MP game for a console before. I don't know if its the fact the game is in 3rd person or the fact all the climbing and grappling is also in involved in the online multi-player but what ever it is Uncharted 2 online works. Climbing the side of a wall and pulling another human player out a window to his death is just plain cool. My favorite part of multi-player isn't the competitive modes though, its the co-op. While you can't play through the single player game in co-op mode there are separate missions made just for co-op that requires you plus two others to beat. Uncharted 2 Co-Op is fun for all the reasons other game's Co-Op modes are fun but there is the added element of having to split up to solve puzzles and needing each other to get past certain obstacles, be it climbing on someone's back to reach a ledge or needing teamwork to lift something to heavy for one person alone to lift. All the modes of multiplayer are fun though, be it co-op, team based, or everyone on their own, and online multi-player should add a lot of life to Uncharted 2 once you are done beating the single player.
In case you can't tell Uncharted 2 is a must own for the PS3. It is the best game to come out for the PS3 and might be the best game that ever comes out for the PS3. Its that good. It does things I've never seen in an action game and the parts I have seen before it does better. The amount of polish this game has is amazing. Bottom line, I haven't had this much fun playing an action game in years. If you enjoy this genre at all do yourself a favor and find out a way to play this game.
9.5/10
-Gary-
