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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is FIVE years old

Bullshit.

Man, five years.

Still in my opinion Naughty Dog's top PS3 game. Definitely one of my top PS3 games as well. Mostly in terms of visuals and encounter design. It's one of a handful of games from that generation I can constantly go back and replay. Let me say this: I don't think any third person shooter from that console generation stands up to Resident Evil 4, but Uncharted 2 comes pretty damn close. This is coming from someone who thinks Uncharted 1 was painfully average.

I don't actually think Uncharted 3 was that much worse. It just wasn't a quantum leap over Uncharted 2. Its graphics and encounter design were about as good. Not perceptibly better, but not really worse either.
 
A GOTG contender in every sense of the word with some of the most incredible setpieces ever in a game, fantastic story and solid gameplay.

Not to mention, four of the finest leads you will ever find on a game develoment team.

+ Amy Hennig (Creative director)
+ Bruce Straley (Game director)
+ Richard Lemarchand (Lead game designer)
+ Neil Druckmann (Lead game designer)

Also, interesting tidbit: in July, I interviewed Druckmann for Official PlayStation Magazine UK on The Last of Us (the game had been voted the best PlayStation game of all time in a list of 100 to celebrate the magazine reaching 100 issues in its current guise).

In the interview, Druckmann mentioned a tidbit in regards to Uncharted 2 and the hotel collapsing that surprised me a bit alongside something from The Last of Us: Left Behind. Here's the quote:

...But then the photobooth, that must have gone through a dozen iterations and, I tell people this, that was as hard to create as the collapsing building in Uncharted 2 as far as resources, animation, time spent on it. And it takes all these nuances, the dialogue has to be perfect, how quickly you the press buttons between the options has to work, the timing of the humour has to work.

The Last of Us is a very special game for me - last year's GOTY, GOTG and now my favourite game ever ahead of Metal Gear Solid 3 - but damn it, Uncharted 2, for me, is one of the finest action games of all time, pound-for-pound, and easily in my top ten games ever. Just outstanding.
 
This was one of the few times when a sequel exceeded every expectation I had for it. I loved Drake's Fortune but Among Thieves was where ND proved that they're one of the top studios in the industry. I can't wait for 4.

I felt the same way. I picked up Uncharted 1 purely based on Naughty Dog's heritage of making great games and walked away thoroughly enjoying myself. I was blown away with Uncharted 2!
 
When this came out, my TV broke down and I was waiting for a new TV to be shipped to me so I was playing this out in the living room. My grandmother and niece were around while I was playing at one time and they just sat on the couch and watched the game, entranced by it. They couldn't get over how much it looked like a movie and how entertaining it was to watch. They were into the gameplay, the story, the production. All of it. It's one of the few games that I've played that seems to be able to hook people who aren't even really into games like that and it was really cool to see.

One of my favorite games ever, too. I loved it.
 
Uncharted 2 remains one of my favorite games of all time.

I was actually just reminiscing with my SO about this. Five years ago, when this came out, we had a chance to get it early via a mom and pop store. Spent the whole weekend passing the controller back and forth and beating the game. Easily one of my favorite gaming experiences <3
 
Weird little story. I played Uncharted back in '09 and thought it was pretty rad. Then somehow, I skipped U2 and played U3 in '12. But it really bored me and took me over a year to actually finish it.

I just finished Uncharted 2 today.

And it's so, so good. Really blew me away. As backwards as it was, I'm so glad I played U2 last of the trilogy, because it's the best one. Really, such a solid game. I think it showed me that a game doesn't necessarily need to be "open" in map design to be a great game. U2 is pretty dang linear, but it's still fantastically designed. After a little reflection today, I can honestly say it's one of my favorites games of the last gen.
 
A huge change to the health values.

When you design and playtest maps, weapon damage, etc. this is something that has to be carefully considered. But then this patch made you die super fast and made the maps lose and flow they had, I will never understand what the fuck they were thinking.

Don't forget it had a domino effect on the spawns/respawns where from 1.05 to like 1.07 (and hell, 1.09 even for Plunder) you could literally predict where the player(s) were going to spawn next and kill them before they could even react.

Blew my mind how badly they fucked it up, but it happened! I still can't believe it, either.

I really hope if they do a re-release of UC2 (with UC1 + UC3) they bring the MP back to what it once was. It would make the collection itself worth it on just that alone. To go back to that amazing MP... my god... in 60 FPS!? PLSSSS ND.
 
Come on Jett, you and I both both the Horse back sequence was better than the truck convoy.

It was a facsimile of something that had already been done two years earlier.

Also, the horse back level has one of those big-ass brute enemies, which makes it fail instantly! JK it was good fun and one of UC3's best moments.

Also, really shameful not to throw Hennig some credit. She actually was the director of Uncharted 2.

She was the "creative director." Bruce Staley was the game director. Who knows what these titles entail, but Hennig was "game director" in Uncharted 1, so it leads to believe she wasn't as involved in the game design of UC2. I didn't name anyone specifically in the OP though.
 
So one thing that the Tomb Raider reboot got right that I felt was way off through all three Uncharted games was how enemies responded to gunshots by actually dying, and there weren't as many guys who required a full magazine or more to die, or guys who took half a clip just to make viable for a headshot.

Uncharted did literally everything else better, though.

I wouldn't be against an open world take on Uncharted, I guess.
 
Come on Jett, you and I both both the Horse back sequence was better than the truck convoy.

Ha Ha. LastNac had to get a UC3 reference in somewhere. Horse back sequence was good. Truck Convoy was better but horse sequence was one of the few fun sequences from UC3.
 
It was a facsimile of something that had already been done two years earlier.

Also, the horse back level has one of those big-ass brute enemies, which makes it fail instantly!



She was the "creative director", whatever that meant. Bruce Staley was the game director.
You criticize linearity and limited interaction yet praise a sequence that literally funneled you forward. Thinking about actual freedom in movement and player choice, the difference between the truck and the Horse sequence is night in day. Man, those double standards.

She is still a director. One of two. You overlook that fact and instead give credit to one of two lead designers. I'm sure Druckmann's input was significant but no way did he have any more sway than the actual director. And once again, he wasn't even the only Lead Designer .
 
You criticize linearity and limited interaction yet praise a sequence that literally funneled you forward. Thinking about actual freedom in movement and player choice, the difference between the truck and the Horse sequence is night in day. Man, those double standards.

She is still a director. One of two. You overlook that fact and instead give credit to one of two lead designers. I'm sure Druckmann's input was significant but no way did he have any more sway than the actual director. And once again, he wasn't even the only Lead Designer .

I credited nobody in the OP but ND as a whole.
 
You criticize linearity and limited interaction yet praise a sequence that literally funneled you forward. Thinking about actual freedom in movement and player choice, the difference between the truck and the Horse sequence is night in day. Man, those double standards.

She is still a director. One of two. You overlook that fact and instead give credit to one of two lead designers. I'm sure Druckmann's input was significant but no way did he have any more sway than the actual director. And once again, he wasn't even the only Lead Designer .
I think Uncharted 2 is a great exercise in linearity and limited interactivity done right.
 
Ha Ha. LastNac had to get a UC3 reference in somewhere. Horse back sequence was good. Truck Convoy was better but horse sequence was one of the few fun sequences from UC3.
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Amazing game, and possibly still unmatched despite being copied ruthlessly.
I had one issue with the game, and that is the fact that its puzzles were very simple and not up to par in quality with the rest of the game. In terms of puzzles, I liked the train chain shooting moment, tomb gear shooting moment, and that's about it. This is something they corrected ten times over in UC3 which IMO has the best puzzles of this kind of games, but for whatever reason no one seemed to care or acknowledge that.
 
I credited nobody in the OP but ND as a whole.
Come on man, I didn't join yesterday. That OP is dripping with passive aggressive references and digs against "core team" and "those." The only thing that fell short is you actually using the names Neil and Bruce specifically.


And as someone else posted, something like 85% of the studio worked on everything regardless.

It would be nice to see something praised without throwing digs at something else.


And yes, that multiplayer was godly.
 
I played through it in 2011. Good times.

And just this week I found a copy for $5, so I'm playing again! A damn good game to revisit, although it's funny to play it again and not be blown away by the graphics anymore.

I honestly struggle to why people think it's so immaculate and Uncharted 3 such a step down, though. It's not an obvious step down at all. They're both solid, linear action games. Maybe that was the perfect game for 2009 in a way that it just wouldn't be a few years later.
 
Come on man, I didn't join yesterday. That OP is dripping with passive aggressive references and digs against "core team" and "those." The only thing that fell short is you actually using the names Neil and Bruce specifically.


And as someone else posted, something like 85% of the studio worked on everything regardless.

It would be nice to see something praised without throwing digs at something else.
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Great game. I can only hope Uncharted 4 captures what made 2 so great so that we can all just pretend UC3 was some collective bad dream that never actually happened.

Except LastNac who refuses to see the truth and continues to worship a false god.
 

You can get killed by all those desks flying around too.
However, most devs, rather than analyzing ND's design methods, just superficially copied what they thought it was that Uncharted 2 had done. ...

Uncharted 2 isn't about barely interactive set pieces, despite that's what some developers took from it.

So damn true. As good at giving the player high degrees of control during the action as Uncharted 2 was, it had plenty of room for improvement. Almost all the developers that tried to emulate the game focused too much on the restrictive, scripted and cutscene aspects of the set-pieces and treated their basic gameplay (combat) like filler.

Still waiting for another game of its type to move learn from the game and move beyond it.
 
I wish for Justin Richmond to be cursed for the rest of his days with an itchy butthole for ruining the MP with 1.05.

A plague upon your butthole, Richmond. A PLAGUE!
 
You rang bb?
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I can't believe there was an America's Top Model x UC3 cross-promotion. And that that was the result, lol.

I wish for Justin Richmond to be cursed for the rest of his days with an itchy butthole for ruining the MP with 1.05.

A plague upon your butthole, Richmond. A PLAGUE!

Bro.

Can't believe no one posted the song yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVujFZ_jW-4

lol I had forgottten about that
 
I love that so many people still remember the horrors of 1.05 and the glory days of 1.04

Uncharted 2 was the game that justified my decision to buy a PS3. Loved the characters, music, atmosphere, gameplay, collectibles, multiplayer, everything.
 
Uncharted 2 still amazes me. The game has aged really well and a strong art design doesn't hurt either. If I'm not mistaken Amy left ND to go work with EA on a Star Wars game correct? A shame that they had to break up their dream team.
 
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