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Rating: "Uncharted2" is a straightforward game. Barely any time passes after you hit new game, and there you are, embodying Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter, in the Himalayas or something similar, fresh from a spectacular train wreck, gracefully swinging in the void. Clambering onto this or that metal hold, hoping to take home the priceless treasure of the moment and, why not, also save your skin. So to hell with long preambles about the importance of this title in gaming history or its groundbreaking innovations in refined gameplay. Forget all that. And forget also any plot with even the slightest metanarrative pretense. The plot of "uncharted2" is all about justification. As in porn, even in uncharted2, what's important is simply the action, and everything, absolutely everything, seems to be an excuse rather than a valid reason to throw you into the eye of the storm without a moment's respite.
But the analogies with adult entertainment don't end here. Uncharted2 makes the pleasure of watching its Trojan horse. The graphics are sublime, perhaps the best seen on Ps3, with a realistic but not too much style, where vibrant colors dominate. The environments enjoy a decent variety, from snowy temples to Tibetan villages, from Amazonian forests to lost cities, never losing the compass of artistic excellence. The guys at Naughty Dog are very skilled in making such grandeur playable, introducing with wisdom (perhaps drawing from their "platforming" pedigree) platform sections with the purpose of breaking the tedious nature of pure and hard shooter style of "uncharted2," which could, in the long run, tire you. But even here, it's a different conjugation of the platform verb than the classic one, aimed at spectacularization. And so we have to run frantically, jumping from roof to roof while a helicopter spits fire and flames behind us. Or a shootout while hanging from a billboard. Again, a climb along the edges of a train full of terrorists. In short, the keyword is variety without forgetting its origins. Because if it's true that "uncharted2," sacrificing the depth of the gaming medium to the needs of entertainment, is a child of its time, at least it deigns to do so with style.
Without tiring the player, without making them feel the weight of yet another shootout whose stylistic features heavily borrow from Gears of War's cover system. Succeeding in the arduous task of making the player passionate about a plot rich in useless side characters and clichés through a savvy stroke of genius that sees us starting halfway through the adventure, retracing a backward journey in history. Why Nathan Drake is exhausted in Tibet is the entire engine of the story. Not the final outcome of the adventure, not knowing if everything will end with a happy ending. But with "uncharted2," Naughty Dog even deigns to do more. They chew the modern action-adventure declination made of spectacle, superficiality, and shootouts and regurgitate it only after digesting it with their twenty-year software house wisdom. And so the entire Nepal section, in particular, while adhering to the sad aesthetic and ludic standards of today, vaguely recalls level design derived from a Zelda origin, with continuous progression within a single game area. Or how access to a secret temple forgotten by God, although not giving the player many headaches, engaged only in pressing X to jump or push levers, brings to mind the architecture and iconography of the first Tomb Raider for Psx.
Therefore, although it doesn't hide its nature of an Indiana Jones directed by Michael Bay, Uncharted2 manages, with a bit of cunning, to at least "liven things up" and even give the most seasoned player a short jolt, as well as entertain. And this is today its greatest merit.
Unless someone considers it the only valid reason to own a Ps3, of course.
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