Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Without understatement, an ideal continuation, where they seemed to listen to the criticism of every element of the game and were not too lazy to improve each of them. With the exception, perhaps, of shooting, but still they made good new weapons and increased the power of grenades making them fully useful.

If I had the inspiration, I would somehow make an unfunny joke about the movie, but I would still come to the conclusion that if before two-thirds of the time they would have been shooting in different arenas, and the remaining third was rock climbing with infrequent dialogues and scenes, then now almost half of the game is filled with these dialogues and scenes. And God forgive me, they are awesome. The dialogues have become much livelier and throughout the game they almost never stop, leaving Nate with at least one character to chat with, which was the best decision in this part.

“You fagot, you sucked the action” yes. The shooting mechanics were still not very good, and more pleasant/powerful weapons smoothed out the impression a little, but this time the game doesn’t stupidly stuff you into arenas with waves of opponents, but tries to stage each skirmish. Even if there are no reasons or ideas to do it “beautifully”, they let you into a small puzzle location, where they either allow you to play in stealth, forcing you to calculate the time and go to a beautiful detour to the next enemy, or they turn on the action, where you with great pleasure change the location in depending on the position of the opponents in search of the most advantageous position. Arenas, as such, are no longer a flat area with walls and shelters. This is a multi-level space with a thoughtful lvl design to achieve maximum pleasure from military operations.

I would also like to say about the amazing graphics. At the same time, I discovered its feature in the form of beautifully drawn textures that hide the number of polygons, as well as the chic design of everyone and everything. But the character designs and faces... it's a phenomenal job. It was as if they had applied cel-shading makeup to make the face more expressive, which is why I literally orgasmed when I saw any videos. It's just fantastic work, as is all the color work in the game. I am sincerely happy that the Dogs are able to work with the richness of the color scheme, giving the locations life and comfort, and do not hesitate to change the color scheme of the entire game, giving each of the territories individuality.

Unfortunately, the game lacked two things for me. The first is a departure from game conventions that are not played out in any way, as well as one of the final scenes with a grenade. Yes, you can criticize me for this, but this will make any project better. Well, the second thing is the chemistry of the characters. And while you are looking for a stone to throw at me, I will say that the work on the characters, the relationships between them and the dialogues were done simply wonderfully. But there are not enough scenes. You know, it’s as if they give you a starting line that they have to gradually bend to victory, and then they leave it and a number of scenes later they abruptly bring it to the end. There is no smoothness or detail. Yes, this is more than enough for the game, but for me to develop this adventure into something more, to touch my emotions, I needed more semi-everyday scenes where the characters communicate not about their goal, but simply with each other. These scenes in the game are already the best, but in fact there are not so many of them. I wish there was a little more, but the game did a lot without it.

5 out of 5

In fact, I thought of giving the game a four considering all the complaints described above, which I will not refuse even in front of an army of fans. However, I cannot deny how important the game is for the gaming industry and that in 7-8 years no one has been able to overcome the bar it set even in a number of individual elements! The game is objectively great and I will gladly give it this one point that I wanted to squeeze. Uncharted 2 is the best adventure TPS I know.

P.s. The localization was, for the most part, solidly “standard” (generally top for its time), but the original voice actors gave so much heat that they boldly switched to the original and tried to perceive everything by ear. And I don't regret it. Shit, the subs sometimes fail and are either mixed crookedly or translated with a gag. Even with my knowledge of English, it was much more pleasant to just listen.