lwm3398 said:
Damn. You know, my friend told me it was a great game, all cinematic and adventurous and sandbox-y... I was just gonna wait for a little confirmation.
Well, it seems I've saved sixty dollars.
I don't think he said it was a "bad" game. He simply pointed out that it doesn't do anything that's actually "new". That said, most games don't actually give us anything new to cheer about, and while that is a sad state of affairs, a statement that the game is "good" but "safe" is virtually content free as a sentence. Gears of War is a game that many people enjoy for it's mechanics, and tomb raider managed to raise (and later lose) a huge following through thanks in no small part to the mechanics it used. Uncharted 2 combines the two elements with a story stolen from movies that most people like, and the result, while hardly new, is at least function and entertaining.
Few games have given us a truly unique story but some games can tell a generic story in a compelling fashion. While some might find the character uninteresting, one must at least recongize that they have exceptional voice acting and, in a rare moment for a game, quality physical acting as well. As such, if one really must level a complaint about the characters, it must be a complaint about the use of archetypal characters as the characters themselves are well fleshed out and don't seem to act in a way that seems inconsistent.
As such, while one can find something to complain about in any game (this is what ZP does afterall), the question ultimately is do the things you like outweigh the things you don't? For most people, I suspect that Uncharted 2 will fall on the happy side of the two possibilities. For those that actually desperately seek story, dynamic characters and the rest of the things that people often point out as being wrong in a game that is generally loved by the masses, I have to say perhaps you need to invest your time in another medium. There will be a day eventually when people who tell good stories will successfuly interact with people who make fun games, but thus far such a marriage has generally been unsuccessful.
