Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an Action Adventure RPG game, and a sequel to the first Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. If you have played the first game before then like most gamers we have an expectation from Naughty Dogs, creators of the game, and Naughty Dogs did not just meet our expectations, but beat most of our expectations in the sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Uncharted 2 is a story of our beloved treasure hunter going around the world fining old forgotten treasures that most human believe were just myths. Uncharted 2 is filled with quite sneaking around areas, shoot out against large numbers of people, and hang off cliff sides, and solving puzzles, like an Adventure movie. At the end of the day Uncharted 2 the hero is trying his best to live another day without being killed by bullets, animals, mythic creatures, falling off cliffs and finally not getting run over by a truck this time.

The moment you turn on your PS3 and throw in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and press the start button and the screen loads you’ll be thrown into an epic movie scene. The scene look like a broken train with our hero on board alone and knock out of conscious and looking like he has gone through hell with bruises around his head and bleeding a lot from his ribs as if he was stabbed. While our hero is coming back to conscious he realizes what happening a barrels drops near his head with other debris and his seats breaks and falls back, while our hero instinctively tries to jump and catch the next seat above him, but loss grip and falls onto a railing nearly falls off to his death; but luckily he get a hand onto the railing which is at the back of a train that has gone off a cliff, and you can see the other half of the train on fire not too far away.  And this is where the epic movie scene ends and you as the player start playing the game and trying to save our hero Nathan Drake from the verge of his death, again.

There are many characters in the game that can be called hero, but one of them pushes ahead over the other and none other than the notorious, Nathan Drake. Nathan Drake the treasure hunter, handsome, smooth talker, lady chaser, and finally luckiest son of a bitch who just lives after the craziest events possible in the game, is our hero. Most people would agree with me when I say, Nathan Drake is the ideal fun, loving, treasure hunter you want to be, or be around when looking for treasure and adventure. While other hero characters such as Elena Fisher, Victory Sullivan, and lastly and the unforgettable Chloe Frazer. Elena Fisher the reporter that will do anything to get her story and is fighting for justice for the world, and lastly the love interest of Nathan Drake. Victory Sullivan the money lover, best friend of Nathan Drake helps him out of tight spots or Nathan help Victory out of tight spots either way they are great friends. And lastly the new character to this game is Chloe Frazer, a sexy lady who is a fellow treasure hunter and a thief and was an ex of Nathan Drake. But Chloe Frazer in the game is a double agent who is helping Nathan Drake, but is force to support the antagonist Zoran Lazarevic, a Serbian War criminal who is after the Cintamani Stone.

The game is based around one item in the game that everyone is after, the legendary Cintamani Stone of Shambhala or most common known as Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a mythic city hidden in the mountain of Himalayas. Everyone is after the Cintamani Stone because legends say that it can provide invincibility and possibly even give the possessor immortality. So what bad guy in this world wouldn’t want to live forever and be evil forever? The rest of the story and character development will be up to you to find out when you play the game, until then this is all you are getting from me, but there are plenty of obstacles and various enemies that get in the way of our heroes.

There are plenty of enemies in Uncharted 2 for Nathan Drake and his team to go kill. From the beginning and until the end of the game there are plenty of types of mercenaries that you will be forced to face. From regular mercenaries who are armed with Ak-47, to heavy mercenaries with heavy body armor and face mask armed with a shotgun, to the half mech human with a mini gun and loads of ammo on his back. Then there are the snipers in the game, which are easy to spot and kill on the easier difficulties. On hard and crushing difficulties you are just asking the sniper to pick you off in seconds, so unless you think you got a shot don’t put your head up. Then there are the mythical enemies in this game that are tough and fast, such as the Yetis. Yes I said Yetis, or more commonly known as the abominable snowman are in this game compared to the previous game of having zombies chasing you down. But when there are hundreds of mercenaries firing at you, or Yetis chasing you down you know that there is a big man telling them what to do. I am talking about boss fights if you didn’t pick up on the hint, but in this game there are not that many boss fights, but when there a boss fight you are usually a dual between you and your men, mythic creature, or machinery. For instance, I say fighting against helicopters count as boss fights, even other people don’t agree about them being boss fights I do because you are fighting one on one against them on a train and in the city. In the end you need a nice combat system to help make the fighting seem fair.

In Uncharted 2, the combat system makes the game very enjoyable. From the moments when you pick up your first gun you can tell it sounds like a real gun. The guns are very easy to use and have smooth shooting mechanic. Plus the grenades in the game are very easy to throw and are accurate; when it comes to load of enemy bunching up behind cover.  But don’t forget that if you are hiding behind cover the enemy units can all flush you out by throwing grenades at you. The cover system of the game is nice, but it has been used in another game like Gears of War series, but then again you can slide from one cover to another, but watch out it can get you into loads of trouble when you slide to your enemy cover. Even if you do slide onto the enemy cover you can always go hand to hand combat against him and knock him out. Sometimes you will not be in a heated gun fight, but in a quite area where there are guards, but you don’t want the alarm to go off, so why not just go behind them and break their necks instead of blowing their brains outs, plus it makes less sound and mess.  While you are not fighting though there are two things you will be doing, climbing and jumping or solving puzzles.

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, there are puzzle and they are enjoyable. Some puzzle will be quick and easy, but some will take time and need some time to think it through. The first puzzle you face in the game will take time getting there through the story, but technically it is the fastest puzzle to do, and simplest one. But the first two puzzles have to do with giant status piece and because there are giant status pieces you must climb around, swing around, fall, and look into your journal to figure out how to solve the puzzle. But once you finish with them they will only get harder and will take much longer to do. For instance, the Elemental Puzzle in chapter 23 of the game, you will look into Drakes journal at least ten to twenty times before you will solve it, because something is not obvious at all, but the game does give you a free be puzzle in the next chapter for the frustration you have in the Elemental Puzzle. When you are not solving puzzles you will be jumping around trying to get to one place to another and if you are not jumping place to place you will be climbing lots of cliffs, wall, mountains, and the falling train.

Overall the game does a great job blending the game in with a movie like feature, from the moment you started the game if felt more like you are watching a movie than actually playing the game. Even though you do plays more than watch the cinematic. But the video quality of the game is great, and the characters seem so realist that some people cannot tell the difference between real and computer generate anymore. The sounds in the game makes the game experience feel great, with rich sounds in the game you are always feel up to continue the game even if it you played through the whole night and it 5:30 in the morning you still feel pumped up and aching to know what happens next. In the end this game does deceiver a score of 9.5 out of 10. The only things I found that I didn’t like about the game was sometimes you didn’t know what to climb on and sometimes it take more than one try to make Nathan climb onto something. Other than that I suggest everyone has a chance to jump into Nathan Drake shoe and play an action adventure story of a treasure hunter. If you have not played the first game yet, I suggest you do before playing this one, you will be able to pick up some of the characters history together from the last one. 

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God of War

Gods of War, an Action Adventure RPG (Role Playing Games), is one of the best Action Adventure games out there. Gods of War is a tale of vengeance against the Greek Gods of War, Ares, and the background is set in ancient Greek mythological times. Gods of War is an epic adventure filled with blood, an amazing combat system, and challenging puzzles. Gods of War has the perfect blend of enough puzzles along with the right amount of fighting compared to any other Action Adventure RPGs.

The main plot of Gods of War revolves around Kratos carrying out orders from the Gods of Olympus, to stop one of their brethren, Ares, from destroying the city of Athens. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, explains to Kratos the only way a mortal man can kill a Gods is to acquire the mythical Pandora’s Box, a weapon powerful enough to kill a Gods. From this point on you take on Kratos’ quest to find Pandora’s Box, while learning more about his troublesome past. He was a Spartan general with power, until he met Ares who screws him over.

Gods of War is based around the antihero Kratos, a powerfully built man, pale-skinned, with tattoos, a Spartan warrior. From the beginning of the game you see Kratos shouting at the Gods of Olympus saying the Gods have betrayed and destroyed his world; at the same time you see Kratos on the verge of jump off. He does jump, but right before Kratos hits the water, the narrator cuts off Kratos’ death and explains of how Kratos’ life was not as dire as the moment.  Three weeks prior- to Kratos jump off the mountain- Kratos was on a ship in the Aegean Sea (in the Mediterranean Sea between the gap of Greece and Turkey), where Kratos is fighting his way through loads of undead warriors  that attacked the ship. While trying to kill all the undead warriors attacking the ship you see how vicious Kratos is, the way he bash the undead warrior head in, or rips their bodies apart in two, or simply grabs their head and throwing them onto the ground and smash it onto the walls or the ground. By the time Kratos finishes killing all the undead and reaches the end of the ship a boss fight occurs with a hydra –a Greek mythological creature with multiple heads and moves like a snake- and Kratos completely, utterly, and brutally kills the creature. Though by the end of the game you will understand Kratos is a man who just wants to forget his past and all his sins, from this point on all you know is that he will kill anything in his way to achieve his goals.

            Kratos is an amazing character, despite the fact he is cruel and evil, he has one great aspect of him, he is a total badass in combat. In combat, Kratos is a capable warrior of fighting against anyone to anything because of his primary weapon “the blades of chaos”. The blades of chaos are a pair of dagger-liked weapons which are burned into Kratos’ skins by a chain. The blades of chaos are a weapon that attacks and moves like a whip, but with a very large dagger at the tip. This is a great weapon you get to used throughout the game and is upgradable to become stronger and be able to use more combos, but Kratos does have more than one weapon in his arsenal, which are given to him by the Gods of Olympus at each encounter. For example, a magical weapon called Army of Hades, given by Hades the Gods of the Underworld, lets you unleash the souls of the underworld against your enemies. There are many other weapons in the game, but you must see them for your selves, but there are many different types of combination of magical weapons along Kratos blades of chaos to form outstanding attacks and variety of attacks.
       

        And Kratos will need all types of variety of attacks to help him reach his goals. Before Kratos can reach his ultimate goals he has to face off against many different types of enemy monsters in his path. All of the enemies in Gods of War are based on Greek mythology, thus you will find creatures like: medusa, gorgons, minotaurs, cyclopes, variety undead warriors, and winged harpies, among other different monsters. From the beginning you will face some easy going undead warriors which you can cut into piece, but the game has the tendency to throw hundreds of them at you; compared to the larger monsters you usually face them one on one, at first, but take a lot of damage to kill. While you can kill all your enemies normally by continuously attacking them, but there is faster and more beneficial way to finish off the larger monsters, which is by engaging in one of Gods of War’s context-sensitive attacks. Once you have worn down a large enemy a button icon will appear on above their head, by pressing that button you will be engaging in a minigame. Each minigame differ, for instance when finishing off a minotaur you will button smash, (keep pressing a certain button over and over again) or watch the screen to see what button to press quickly in a rhythm while watching Kratos pull of  acrobatic maneuvers killing his foe. All of the context-sensitive attacks are amazing to do and watch as Kratos’ finishes off his opponents. 

            While not in combat you will most likely be solving one of the numerous puzzles in the game. Because Gods of War is set in ancient Greek times, the puzzles are modeled after ancient Greek traps, pitfalls, and Greek mythological mazes. Even though most of the puzzles in Gods of War are pulling leavers and racing against time, to moving statues or moving large blocks on stone switches on the ground, and countless turning or pulling cranks; but the traps do not define the game, the size of the maze do. For instance, Pandora’s Temple, the largest maze in the game, you will find yourself in a massive large circular room maze. Within the circular room you will find a switch which you can push or pull to reach new rooms which were hidden before. With each new room discovers a new mazes appears and enemies to face in those rooms. Once you have solved all of the small puzzles in the room, you slow start to solve the larger ones in the temple. Pandora Temple maze takes a lot of time to finish, however, even though it took so long to finish this one massive large puzzle with many small ones within Pandora, you will feel accomplish and have felt your time was well spend. 

            The great aspect of this game is the fact this game looks amazing. From the moment you turn on the game and watch the opening cinematic (being like a movie interlude) makes you feel as if you were watching a movie. While playing the game as Kratos you can tell the difference between the cinematic and game play, but at the time this game looked amazing. At certain points in the game you think you are actually within the game. This really comes out when you are fighting your enemies, when you attack you can see where their blood being scatter on the wall, ground, and on top your of your enemies, but usually the blood on your enemies is your own blood. But coming to the point of the gore in this game, this game has people being killed, dying, blood being scatter all over the world from the moment you beginning. So this game completely deserves the rating of M for Mature from ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). But the visual of the game would not be complete without the astonishing music and sounds in this game.
           

The moment you start the game you can hear intense, electrifying music which set up the mood of the game. The sounds in Gods of War are perfect fit from every aspect. The orchestra whom worked on Gods of War made this game sound to be like any great Hollywood movie. The music is placed perfectly within the story of the game that you never think that the sounds are out of place. While fighting you can hear every slash, blood splatter, and moaning of the dead, or dying feel as it should be. The greatest achievement of this game sounds are the sounds of all the characters within the game. For instance, Kratos voice is perfect; his voice of a strong man with many years of fighting experience under his belt. Along with all the other characters whose voice could not have been any better. But the great voice in the whole game is no other than the narrator’s voice who makes the game seem epic as it is. Kratos story is told by an elderly aged woman voice, and her tone is perfect for the role, from the moment she speaks at the beginning of the game till the last moments of the game. Overall the sounds in Gods of War are amazing.

To sum it all up Gods of War is amazing video game from start to finish. With a remarkable combat system even though sometimes it does feels like button mashing is the best strategy, but overall fighting system rock and it would only get better in the next game. Visually the game will make your jaw drop from the moment the game starts to the end of the game. And throughout the game you would say Aw, Wow, or Whoa, when the cinematic start. Lastly the sounds, the orchestra make Gods of War sounds so awesome and without the sounds the game would be incomplete. Along with the perfect voice actors they got for Kratos and all the other people were perfect match in my opinion, in truth only the Gods could have let the sounds of Gods of War be so perfect. The puzzles and a bit challenging at points, but sometimes it just get repetitive. At the end of the day no video gamer that likes to play Action Adventure RPG with misses this. Overall I give this game 9.5 out of 10.

All Photos were taken from Google Search images