Reviews// Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Now we cut to the action. Drake and Flynn scale walls, creep across rooftops and take out opponents as they mount a daring robbery. It's here that the morality of this storyline has to be called into question because the "Job" is to steal a historical artefact from a museum - and during the process, Drake and Flynn attack, shoot and in some cases kill several of the guards. But these are not criminals, or even antagonists, at least not at first. They are just normal guys, doing their job, with wives and little cute daughters, (who will probably grow up to be smoking hot babes) waiting at home for them to go and read them a bedtime story (the potentially smoking hot daughters… not the wives). Instead, they will receive a letter from the museum director (the wives this time, not the future babe daughters), offering his condolences, and with a cheque for their last pay period and any accrued holiday pay.

The game progresses quickly, as Drake is dragged by circumstance into a number of situations that require him to explore stunning environments and fight a range of antagonists. There is a selection of weapons around the environment for him to use in combat, and these can be collected by tapping the triangle button while in proximity to them. Collect the same kind of weapon and it increases your ammo, collect a new kind and it swaps the weapon. You can carry one pistol and one long barrelled weapon at any one time. Weapons glint white, so they are easy to see in the environment. As you'd expect (and as we grew used to in the first game) when the action is about to heat up, you can usually tell by the increased availability of weapons as you enter the battle arena. While this proves vital for completion of the set-piece, it's still a shame, since it gives you a warning that destroys the potential for many surprise attacks.

Enemy intelligence is greatly improved in Uncharted 2. Instead of hunkering down behind cover and occasionally popping up in a manner that enables you to pick them off, they now advance, throw grenades and circle around to attack you from the flanks, or even from behind. The resulting battles are much more entertaining.

For close combat, you can melee attack - this is a matter of mashing the square button and occasionally using triangle to break a deadlock or enemy grasp - it's effective, but hardly sophisticated. Climbing is similarly easy, the X button does pretty much everything: it activates climbing mode, pulls you from hanging by your fingers up to a higher level, and jumps you from one hand-hold to ledge to another when it is out of arm's reach. Motion generally, and climbing specifically, are wonderfully fluid with none of the glitches and requirements for pinpoint positioning that plague so many games. There are no annoying death plummets when you fail to jump exactly at the end of a ledge. As a result, exploring feels wonderfully natural, and you can concentrate on playing the game, rather than fighting with the controls.

As the story progresses Drake is crossed, and double crossed, and triple crossed as allegiances change, or appear to change for purely expedient reasons (or do they?). The whole thing begins to show what a gem it is. Unlike many games where the pacing is wrong and the storytelling gets in the way of the action, in Uncharted 2, the story is so compelling, and the voice acting so good, that you never want to skip a cut-scene. And the cut-scenes are so short that you never feel the need to. And they actually add to the experience, they reveal things about the character's motivations that actually hep you in game. This, of course, is what most games aspire to - but shockingly few manage. While the games graphics are excellent, and occasionally breathtaking, the character modelling and facial animation are not up to the standards we saw in Heavenly Sword. But then, they very rarely are. They are good enough to carry this story, and certainly better than average.