VIDEO GAME REVIEW

Uncharted territory

October 17, 2009

Darren Zenko

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

There was a dark, confused time (most of the '90s) in the history of video games when the greatest praise you could offer a title – praise generally offered by the apparatus of marketing – was that is was "like playing a movie."

At best, this priority usually resulted (and still results) in awkwardly stitched-together Frankensteins where watching chunks of a crummy movie is the "reward" for moving through stretches of crummy gameplay; at worst...well, just google Night Trap.

I'm still of the opinion that "make it like playing a movie!" is a misguided game-design goal, but even the most misguided of ideas – say, shooting a multi-million-dollar Vietnam War epic starring a notorious flake on the Philippine coast during typhoon season – can result in a masterpiece. That said, I present to you Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the Apocalypse Now of cinematic video games.

First and foremost, Uncharted 2's gameplay is good and solid and valid and fun – rather than serving as an overly elaborate "next chapter" button for its internal action-adventure movie. The Tomb Raider-meets-Gears of War hybrid of the series' first instalment – climbing things, leaping across heart-stopping gaps and solving environmental puzzles alternating with shooting it out against hordes of henchpersons – is back this week but more tightly integrated, feeling like a coherent thing-in-itself rather than a borrowed two-for-one.

It's a joy to play, a joy heightened by a constant progression of ultra-blockbuster "holy crap!" intensity as developer Naughty Dog throws roguish hero Nathan Drake into circumstances that make Indiana Jones' various predicaments seem about as dangerous as jaywalking.

Of course, excellent gameplay and cool situations aside, you can't be "like a movie" without looking totally money – and Uncharted 2 looks as if it uses gold nuggets instead of pixels, running on an engine powered by hundred-dollar bills. Note to developers: Cool water effects are last year's bragging point; Naughty Dog's gone even cooler and moved on to awesome snow.

But it's not just technical prettiness and gloss; these visuals are deployed in the service of some seriously breathtaking art direction, environments and level designs that'll add hours to your playtime – because you'll be just standing there looking around. True story: About six chapters into the game, I actually went out and bought a better TV so I could enjoy it even more.

Nice graphics and fun gameplay, though, are pretty common. What Uncharted 2 really gets right – and again, I have to restate that it's very weird for me to be praising a game in this way – is the "movie" part of the movie-game equation. Most game scripts follow a pattern – some surly, badass dialogue; a hot chick or two (one with a sexy accent); lots of explosions; a Mexican standoff; the obligatory evil Russian – and then some actors go into their separate booths at separate times and read their lines. That's where "dialogue" usually comes from, and usually it plays out stilted and wrong – passionate lovers, devoted comrades and nefarious nemeses sound as if they've never been in the same room together, because they haven't.

With Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog did a very Hollywood thing: it let the actors work together, improvising dialogue and developing their characters in something like collaboration. Uncharted 2 might never win a Best Screenplay award in the movie biz – those other elements mentioned above are all there, right down to the Russian – but encouraging actors to be actors rather than using them as expensive sound-file generators makes all the difference in making it come alive rather than just plonking out of the speakers and lying there.

For all its polish, beauty, epic scale and beyond-high-adventure blockbuster setpieces, it's these performances that really sell Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as not only a movie you enjoy playing, but a game you enjoy watching.

Toronto Star

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