Right from the start Uncharted 2 was far more impressive in living up to its gameplay premise than whatever Naughty Dog was trying to do with the first Uncharted.
The story this time around was a far better introduction to the pacing, tone, characters, and hook to get the plot going for the rest of the game to follow. The characters, while honestly not being too drastically different from how they were previously, felt much better written in terms of their dialogue and involvement with the story. Nathan Drake is still missing something for me to really get why he’s something of an icon for vidya game protagonists but for what he is, in this game at least, he’s pretty fun all around. The other characters fill their simple archetypes very well and bounce off each other during the countless action set pieces energetically. It really feels much more epic and grand in terms of sheer scope and locations you adventure through which was sorely lacking in Uncharted 1. I would even go as far as to say the first half of Uncharted 2 could be a textbook example of how to make a vidya game sequel that truly builds upon its predecessor and rises above set expectations. But then the second half of Uncharted 2 exists, and that’s where this newfound action-adventure greatness dwindles a bit. With a midpoint that renders the great opening to feel almost pointless in retrospect, Uncharted 1 levels of annoyingly repetitive bullet sponge enemy barrages, companion(?) AI that’s just really stupid, and a final boss that’s only better than the first by a slight margin.
As a whole, Uncharted 2 is still a good game that shows Naughty Dog sticking the landing, if unevenly and barely keeping it together as it goes on, in creating genuinely engaging big budgeted action-adventure games that many others like it rip from, and for seemingly good reason too.
The story this time around was a far better introduction to the pacing, tone, characters, and hook to get the plot going for the rest of the game to follow. The characters, while honestly not being too drastically different from how they were previously, felt much better written in terms of their dialogue and involvement with the story. Nathan Drake is still missing something for me to really get why he’s something of an icon for vidya game protagonists but for what he is, in this game at least, he’s pretty fun all around. The other characters fill their simple archetypes very well and bounce off each other during the countless action set pieces energetically. It really feels much more epic and grand in terms of sheer scope and locations you adventure through which was sorely lacking in Uncharted 1. I would even go as far as to say the first half of Uncharted 2 could be a textbook example of how to make a vidya game sequel that truly builds upon its predecessor and rises above set expectations. But then the second half of Uncharted 2 exists, and that’s where this newfound action-adventure greatness dwindles a bit. With a midpoint that renders the great opening to feel almost pointless in retrospect, Uncharted 1 levels of annoyingly repetitive bullet sponge enemy barrages, companion(?) AI that’s just really stupid, and a final boss that’s only better than the first by a slight margin.
As a whole, Uncharted 2 is still a good game that shows Naughty Dog sticking the landing, if unevenly and barely keeping it together as it goes on, in creating genuinely engaging big budgeted action-adventure games that many others like it rip from, and for seemingly good reason too.