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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [Review]

gaijinkaiju

Lord Inquisitor
Sanctuary legend
Sanctuary contributor
Messages
612
The sequel to Drakes Fortune, it was surprisingly good but more or less everything I said about the first game applies to this one.

This time round they had more "stealth" sections but describing them as "stealth" sections would be a bit of a stretch. You'll be able to sneak attack maybe one or two enemies, three if you're lucky, but you'll be detected every time without fail resulting in the inevitable gunfight. They tried but there is alot of room for improvement.
Seeing as this was initially developed for the PS3 and Sony made a bit of a deal of the six-axis (did you know the six-axis and dualshock 3 were actually two different controllers. I didn't.) you can get the feeling that some of the platforming sections had some degree of motion control to them, likely tilting the controller left or right to act as counter balance. This isn't there in the PS4 version, but you can get the feeling it was there in the original version.

The Nepal section, specifically the caves, were by far my favorite location visually, it's also where the game just kinda clicked for me. This was the part of the game where I was genuinely enjoying it, even if it was basically just more of what I had already been doing for the previous four or five hours but just in an icy cavern. It's also where they introduced the supernatural enemies.
It's yetis.
Sort-of. It's dead people being dressed as yetis? It's not particularly clear how these dead people dressed as yetis work honestly. There's also a race or creatures, that the game just does not explain at all, that guard Shambhala. They're tough (re: spongy) and they hit like a truck.

Shambhala is also where the game just started to drag for me. It just felt so dull and slow, and the combination of arenas and the aforementioned monsters just made it so much more tedious than it should have been. When they introduced it, I thought "wow, this looks stunning" but by the time the cutscene ends and you've got control again, you're back in overgrown ruins being shot at, and now all I could think about was "I hope we get a nice scenic view soon so I can grab a photo".
But that view never came.
Instead what I got was a boss fight, and boy was this fight dull. Run around shooting glowing things that explode when the boss stands near them. Again and again and again. After the third time you've weakened him he starts throwing grenades just to be an absolute nuisance. But the jokes on him, because I figured out that you can just run round one tree and shoot the glowy stuff when it regenerates and he'll not only barely manage to hit you but also never start tossing grenades.

Much like the first one, you've got two bad guys. Harry Flynn who is just a dick from the offset. I'm sure the guy who's going to cut another person out of their treasure is going to turn out to be a perfectly swell guy. I'm sure we'll be best friends.
Zoran Lazarevic is an angry russian man that wants the stone that Nathan and co. are looking for. He feels like a very stereotypical bad guy, especially when he gave his "they were willing to do what others would not" monologue. He also called out drakes willingness to kill pretty much everyone else that got in his way but won't kill him. (quick side-note; at the beginning of the game you're doing a stealth section where you can't fight but you can shoot the guards with a, presumably non-lethal, tranquilizer gun. At one point you'll grab someone and just casually pull him off the roof of a roughly four story building. I'm pretty certain you're not waking up from that.)

Elena and Sullivan are back, unsurprisingly. Sullivan is barely around, meanwhile Elena gets developed as more of a love interest, as opposed to just being "last years model". That quote comes from Chloe, this years model. She was alright, I liked her. She did have a habit of double-crossing, then triple-crossing, then quadruple-crossing us, so that wasn't good.

There was one thing that I forgot to mention in the first review and that was also prevalent here.
How, has no-one, found these locations
Its the modern era. We have advanced satellites that can spy on our every move, but no-one has managed to see these ancient cities. Its not like the machinery that's hidden in caves, this city is out in the open and yet no-one has managed to find it?
And it's not just that. I'm supposed to believe that some ancient civilization had the capability to produce these huge clockwork puzzles, with towers that raise up and down, and platforms that move in and out of the walls, with undoubtedly complex arrangements of gears and construction and yet, again, no-one has managed to find these either? No-one has come across these giant gears? These secret tunnels? These moving platforms? No-one?

Anyway, nitpick aside, Among Thieves was much more enjoyable than the first game even if it dragged out just a little bit towards the end.
7/10
 

Houseman

Zealot
Sanctuary legend
Messages
1,068
At one point you'll grab someone and just casually pull him off the roof of a roughly four story building. I'm pretty certain you're not waking up from that.
"There's a guy above you, there's a guy above you!"

"There's a guy below you, there's a guy below you!"
 

Battousai

Brother Sharp
Sanctuary legend
Sanctuary contributor
Messages
560
Occupation
Cookmaster supreme
This one is still overall the best game in the franchise for me.
 

Gauche

Arch Disciple
Messages
663
(did you know the six-axis and dualshock 3 were actually two different controllers. I didn't.)
Yeah, the six-axis came default with the original phat ps3 models
Since it had no rumble the battery on those lasted weeks

I remember this game being described to me by a irl gamer that it was like playing an action movie detailing a helicopter set piece that is blowing up a building you are in. This was the first game I came by where "like a movie" was used to describe it by people
This one also introduced online multiplayer for the series

Will you be touching on the vita titles as well?
 
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