DOUBLE REVIEW: inFamous/ Uncharted 2
Double Review by LisVender: Infamous and Uncharted 2
They didn’t save the Playstation 3, but they may have saved 3D platformers. These two PS3 exclusives are the descendants of Tomb Raider, Super Mario 64, Contra, and Jak & Daxter. They’ve gathered some of the best elements of today’s games and compressed them into a couple of action-packed packages. They may not have the sunny skies and colorful creatures that you’d see in a 8- or 16-bit platformer, but I can put up with that.
I can also accept that these two games are aimed chiefly at adolescents. Aside from their violence, there’s little to these games that could be called “mature.” They don’t have the dank, secret-filled storyline of Silent Hill 2. They don’t have the devilish wit and detailed world of Grand Theft Auto IV. They don’t have the ballsy, mind-bending design of Killer7. What they have is fast-paced action, slick, responsive controls, gorgeous graphics, and high adventure. They are the descendants of the side-scroller.
Nathan Drake and Cole MacGrath a just a couple of regular dudes who wind up in whole heaps of trouble. Regular, that is, except for the incredible gymnastic skills. These guys are dexterous parkour masters, capable of climbing a thirty-foot street sign, jumping off from it, twisting in midair, and grabbing the edge of a nearby building with one hand. Then, while hanging with that one hand, they can shoot bad guys with the other. Drake can even reload a pistol with one hand! You can’t believe what the backs of the boxes tell you. These dudes are superheroes.
Cole is especially super, as the explosion that rocks his world and turns it into a gangsta’s paradise has left him with the power to control electricity. Before long, he becomes a tool of the government, performing search and destroy missions and generally wiping out evil wherever it roams. Occasionally he’ll jump into a sewer to find a power station that will grant him new abilities. Some of these powers function similarly to weapons in more traditional shooters, but they all have unique twists and applications which make them fun to use. You can also enhance these powers by spending experience points in the pause menu.
Drake doesn’t have electrical super powers, but he’s a hell of gunfighter. His globe-trotting search for the life-giving resin of Shangri-la will see him mow down armies of men with pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. Every once in a while, he’ll have to stop and figure out a simple puzzle, or otherwise cross a series of precarious platforms.
These scenes can be a bit frustrating because the shooting action is so good. The lion’s share of Uncharted 2 and Infamous is spent blowing away bad guys. The games play pretty much alike, with their unique systems for climbing, regenerating health, and taking cover. The only major difference between the two is that Cole cannot blind-fire, which can be frustrating when there are several enemies ahead of you. Drake can blind-fire with the best of them, though, and he can do it quite accurately.
As these two wingfooted heroes are such skilled climbers, the firefights feel more loose and free than in other third-person shooters like Gears of War, which keep your characters anchored to the ground. If you don’t want to simply hide behind cover, you can climb all over the environment and rain hell down on your enemies from whatever angle you wish. There are a couple of scenes in Uncharted 2 that force you to do this.
One of the best sequences in Uncharted 2 involves stowing away on a train. Drake must make his way across several cars in order to save a captured friend, and each car offers a unique shooting or platforming challenge. You’ll have hide from helicopter fire, sneak up on enemy patrols, dodge oncoming signs and lights that can shove you off of the cars, and engage in fisticuffs with an angry mercenary captain. Sometimes you are only provided with one way to take out enemies, but in other situations, you are free to take out your enemies how you like, either in a sneaky manner or with guns blazing. I usually ignore the stealthy route when games offer me such a choice, but the stealth kills in Uncharted 2 are easy to pull off, and they’re quite satisfying. Softening up an enemy patrol with careful sneak attacks will also save you some headaches once the shooting starts.
Infamous doesn’t provide stealth attacks, but Cole’s battle options are nevertheless varied, as he gets to use all of his powers at all times. He doesn’t have to wait for the game to throw him a Dragon Sniper before he can snipe anyone. Cole can throw explosive shock grenades, shove enemies into the air with a shockwave, and use a long-range precision attack for headshots. Mixing these moves together creatively can be tons of fun. They use energy from Cole’s battery cores, but you can refill them by holding L2 while standing near electrical objects, meaning cars, streetlights, transformers, and rooftop vents. It’s reminiscent of the water pump in Super Mario Sunshine.
The major difference between the two games is that Uncharted 2 is linear while Infamous is open-world. Drake may be a veteran explorer, but his games don’t really let him do a lot of exploring. It’s a constant push, push, push toward the next action scene. It’s hard to complain, though, when the set pieces are so detailed and exciting. Infamous may have a big environment to play in, but many of its side missions are clones of each other, and there isn’t much variety in the settings. It’s a weird trade-off. When you’re stuck in a shootout with the baddies, though, you won’t much think about these things.
Though I can only recommend these games to anyone who relishes action and adventure, neither one is quite perfect. Infamous has a pretty weak story, and it’s poorly presented. Major plot events are shown using sliding, ink-splattered images with no dialogue but the constant narration from Cole. In the the age following Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4, this isn’t good enough. The characters are pretty bland and unlikeable as well. The actor who plays Cole seems to have attended the Christian Bale/David Hayter School of Acting, and he sounds like a ten-pack-a-day man. His voice is low, and not especially grating to the ear, but he’s clearly forcing his delivery, and that’s annoying in its own way.
Uncharted 2’s story is also nonsense, with its magic resins and monkey monsters, but it’s still a lot more enjoyable than that of Infamous. Each character is voiced with surprising believability, right down to the smallest grunts, and they’re even legitimately funny at times. Drake is a little too glib for a guy who slaughters men by the dozens, though, and I find Chloe’s constant resistance to Drake’s plans to be irritating. Drake pulls off some superhuman feats in this game, some of them right before Chloe’s eyes, and yet she still questions him at every step. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that Naughty Dog’s writers felt the story needed the extra dramatic conflict.
There are also some fundamental flaws with both games. Infamous’s transgression is the greater one, though. The game is set in a gray and dingy city. A city inhabited by insane people. The citizens meander around in the open, and cars roll casually down the roads. Uh, did these people forget about the bloodthirsty gangs prowling the streets? Are their errands so critical that they’re willing to brave a storm of bullets? When one of these pedestrian morons gets shot by a gang member, he falls to the ground writhing, but no one around takes notice. The bystanders just continue walking. They don’t even run. You can use Cole’s Pulse Heal move to somehow shock the slug out of the wounded man, after which he’ll get up, maybe say thanks, and then continue his morning constitutional. It’s baffling.
Now, if Sucker Punch can’t craft an even slightly convincing real-world city, they should have gone with a different setting. Just put Cole in a place with lots of things to climb and enemies to shoot, and get rid of everything else. I can imagine Infamous’s action working very well in a mountain range, or a forest, or even a Metroid-like alien planet. Cole’s already a superhero; why not make him a space traveler? Call him Captain Cole, Capacitor of the Cosmos!
Uncharted 2 has the exotic stages, but their linear, story-entwined nature creates a different problem. The game’s got too many scenes that give you control over Drake when it’s not necessary. They put the brakes on the game and wreck its pace. There’s one segment set in a peaceful mountain village where you don’t do anything but follow a dude from one building to another. Drake can’t run in this area, so you get to gently creep through town, just looking at things. What is the point of this? Why can’t we skip this? It was mildly interesting the first time I played it, but now that I’m on my second go-round, this chapter frays my patience. There are similar scenes at other points in the game, where Drake is just looking for things and conversing with his buddies, and we’re piloting him around, hunting for the trigger that will let us progress. There is no reason for this. Not every game can get away with what Half-Life 2 pulled off. If a level has no risk of death, let us skip it, or turn it into a cutscene.
BUT! None of these problems are serious enough to ruin the big, blasting action of these two games. They are thrilling, they are satisfying, and they are a blast to play, even for a few minutes. I want more games that play like this. I want to run, jump, climb, shoot, and beat up bad guys. That’s what the greatest video games often come down to, and few games do it better than these.
Controller1.com rating: 3/3
Our original Uncharted 2 review
