Uncharted 2

“For me, the role of the critic is to teach me how I can make the next one better.”
- Francis Ford Coppola

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a spectacular video-game. It’s an interactive big-budget Hollywood movie, suffused with the soul of a pulp adventure novel. Drama, romance, and action fill every virtual inch of Uncharted’s ten-plus hours, and the environment is rendered in stupidly gorgeous detail. The settings are well-researched, and the level design is evenly laid out, implying path without directing it. The music is satisfying—a well-paced mix of familiar film score hits and World beats. The animation is unlike any game I’ve played before, with hundreds of unique actions melded together into a rigorous flow. And though the game features a paint-by-numbers plot with few surprises, the characters which populate the world of Uncharted are well-written and exceptionally well-acted. The dialogue crackles with mirth and life. And the multiplayer offers endless variation on the Uncharted move set, by pitting the player against others just like him. This game is sugar.



Every review you read about Uncharted 2 will tell you the same things about it. It is the best of its kind. Top notch. But I’d like to try something else, here.

Let’s say that it’s a given that this game is a ten. It’s perfect for what it is: a detailed, somewhat brief adventure, with locations and characters that sing with a sharp and market-tested voice. Uncharted is so slick that it’s nearly impenetrable. It’s like the team captain: skilled and invulnerable. So, we’re going to nitpick. We’re going to sit the team captain down and ask him a few questions. Now, at no point do we want this to come off as petty, or ungrateful, or imply any disappointment with the game. It’s just that, when the formula we have has gotten this polished, it’s time to look at the formula and say, “Well, what next?

See, every game can be a little bit better, and with Uncharted 2, it’s the smallest of items that call for critique.

Nathan Drake stands amidst the gorgeous ruins of Nepal, his feet pitched over the stones of a war-torn city street. As gunfire echoes off the shell-shocked remains before him, he takes shelter behind a blown-out plaster wall. As a player, I pause. It won’t be the last time.



By the time I complete hour ten of Among Thieves, I will have spent one-and-a-half hours “standing still.” The statistics at the end of my finished game give me a run-down of every interesting action I’ve taken, or not taken, whether it be the number of head-shots I delivered (one-hundred-fifty-seven), or the number of hours I spent in cover (two and a half).

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