Uncharted: Golden Abyss Sucks Most of All

Given my history with the Uncharted series, I wasn't expecting great things from Bend Studios' Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the PlayStation Vita. I'd grown weary of the series after playing all three of the main installments back-to-back-to-back, but thought Golden Rainbow Golden Abyss might be a decent game to play on a mobile platform where my expectations might be a little more restrained, especially since it didn't cost me anything as a PlayStation Plus subscriber. It turns out even my modest "I'll enjoy it for what it is" attitude wasn't enough to prepare me for how utterly boring and disappointing Golden Abyss would turn out to be.

Uncharted 3 Kinda Sucks

I didn't think it was possible, but Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is almost as bad as the first game, Drake's Fortune, albeit for different reasons. After the second game demonstrated some competence in its design, I figured Naughty Dog had ironed out the wrinkles in their formula and would only improve the experience with a third opportunity to polish and refine said formula. If nothing else, they could have repackaged the exact same gameplay with a new story and new locations, and I probably would've been content not to see significant improvement as long as it was merely "as good as" the previous game. I certainly didn't expect it to get worse. 

Uncharted 3 is a decent game in the sense that it looks nice and its gameplay isn't completely broken, but almost everything feels worse than it did in the previous game. The story is full of plot holes and undeveloped characters, the platforming sections are completely cursory, and the combat feels like a tedious chore once again. Worse than that, the game wants so badly to be cinematic and visually exciting that it comes at the expense of gameplay -- it feels like the game only reluctantly lets you play it, and whenever you do, it only serves to interrupt the game's script and ruin the effectiveness of its dramatic scenes. Uncharted 3 is a pretty good "interactive visual experience" but kind of sucks as a video game. 

Uncharted 2 Is So Much Better Than UC1

The first Uncharted is one of the worst games of the previous console generation that I've ever played. I absolutely hated it. If I had to decide whether or not to play the sequel based solely on my experiences with the first game, I never would have given it a chance -- but since I'm a glutton for punishment and everyone insisted that the second game was better than the first, I figured I'd give it a shot and see if the general public would be wrong about the same series twice in a row.

As it turns out, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a competently-designed game. Basically everything that was wrong about the first game (which was basically everything) has been fixed and improved in the sequel; the story has more momentum behind it, the puzzles actually require some thought to solve, the platforming requires careful timing and precision, the combat feels much more fluid, there's much more variety, and the different gameplay elements are balanced much more appropriately. This is what I expected (and did not get) from Drake's Fortune.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Sucks

When it comes to PS3 exclusives, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune may be the most overrated, most over-hyped game in existence. This game was so immensely popular and successful back in 2007 that it instantly became a flagship series for Sony and a prime selling point for the PS3. This was the game that you absolutely had to buy if you owned a PS3, and it was reason enough to consider getting a PS3 over an Xbox 360 just to be able to play this game. I have no idea what people saw in it, because it's absolute rubbish. 

The thing that annoyed me the most is that I was expecting a fun, lighthearted action-adventure / puzzle-platformer game in the style of the Indiana Jones movies and the early Tomb Raider games -- that's exactly how the game was marketed, and those are the exact comparisons everyone made when describing the game in reviews and forum posts. What I got, however, was a straight-up action shooter that only borrows the general theme from Indy and Lara's adventures. That would be fine, of course, if the game were actually any good as a shooter, but it simply isn't.