Uncharted 2: Among Thieves No-Spoilers Review
If there is one thing Naughty Dog excels at, it's making great games. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a testament to that. The game is expertly placed, with hilarious dialog and intense action.
Right off the bat, you have no idea what's going on. The game pauses itself every once as awhile to give you flashbacks of what happened for you to get where you are. These flashbacks lead up to the point in the story you are at.
In the very first mission, the game is already more fun then Drake's Fortune; I'm not sure if its the dialog between Drake and the NPCs, or if the levels are just designed better. It just feels like a better game.
The cover mechanics seem like a step down from the previous title, and I often found myself rolling instead of sliding to cover. The gunplay was spot-on in Drake's Fortune, so there wasn't much to improve on. That being said, the grenade and cover mechanics are a wee bit better.
From a story standpoint, the game seems to capture you right from the beginning. You don't get bored until Chapter 20, and that's only because the levels get repulsive, which is something I disliked greatly in Drake's Fortune.
By the 20th Chapter, you have no idea where the story is going to take you. It feel like the developers really dropped the ball on these last Chapters (26 in all).
While U2:AT implements a twist to the enemies, similar to U:DF, this change is nowhere near as style-changing as it was in Draks's Fortune. The twist just appears to be enemies with 1-shot-kill weapons and bullet-sponges.
If you liked the gameplay from U:DF, you're going to love U2:AT. Not only for the gameplay, however. The story and dialog is hilarious. I often found yield actually laughing out loud at some of the things Drake says. It's easily 10x more enjoyable that DF.
Another thin I'd like to touch on is the difficulty. Unlike DF where the enemies take full mags to kill, and there's endless waves of them, for the most part, AT doesn't do that. It doesn't get repetitive at all until Chapter 20 and forward. I finished on hard difficulty, and it felt 7x easier than Hard from U:DF.
Overall, the story is good, but becomes stale in the last few chapters. Unfortunately, from Chapters 20-26, the devs took a note from DF and made the levels "wave-after-wave of enemies, jump around a few cliffs, more enemies". And even if you push through until the end, the ending isn't rewarding enough to justify the crummy gameplay. Unless you count the hilarious dialog before the credits. While U2:AT is a step up from U:DF, I give it a solid 8.3/10.
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I have always loved the Uncharted series. Overall storytelling is excellent across all 3 iterations. And for the time they were made, the gunplay was not too bad. Could have been better definitely. Just wish they never added soo many multiplayer trophies in the end.