Whether or not the plot makes sense, or whether the “acting” is “good” seems beside the point. I’m not going to bother with plot details because, for the most part, they seem extraneous to me. Naughty Dog sought to up their game with the sequel, and boy did they ever! The original game succeeded, in part, due to its lighthearted, silly premise still, it was a fundamentally incomplete game, with a shoehorned cover system and a weird lack of pacing for an “action film”. Uncharted gave film the evil eye, covetous of their mainstream success, and sought to replicate the filmic qualities of standard action-adventure movies into a video game. In effect, it seemed envious of its forebearers, eager to use the interactivity of video games to do them one over. Like all games circa 2009, the video game market desired what we’d call “cultural legitimacy”, and possibly the label of “art” (if not just “craft”).
I wager that Uncharted 2, from my perspective, really wants to be a movie. Both sides obviously demonstrate their arguments well enough that, in the long run, we wonder whether Uncharted simply set the template for better games, or actually is a great game unto itself. One party seem dedicated to the sort of cinematic action experience that Uncharted provides – Indiana Jones in video game form, more or less – while the other hates the linearity, mechanics, and lack of true interactivity. I know people who love, and people who hate, Naughty Dog’s grand trilogy (now quadrilogy?), both with a weird passion unrivaled by many video games. I have been deep in thought on the last few days, specifically in regards to the Uncharted series. Uncharted 2 seems like a game fundamentally locked in envy of other art forms. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last shall be first, and the first last.” 11 When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ 13 But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 10 When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more but each of them also received a denarius. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ 7 They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’Ĩ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ 9 When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius.
5 Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing.
3 And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place 4 and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. 2 When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Note: I did not play the multiplayer at all, and thus this is solely a review of the single player campaign.