Playing Games: Uncharted

This year I bought a PS3 and started getting back into playing video games. I had a PS2 for a number of years but I only ever played a handful of games on it. The last one I really enjoyed was Shadow of the Colossus.

My PS3 came with The Last of Us, which I played a bit of but it wasn't drawing me in so a friend recommended Mass Effect. I played the first game in that series and really liked it (will post about it another day) and then I played Journey (which I loved) and finally moved on to Uncharted.

I wanted something adventurous like Indiana Jones and that's exactly what Uncharted was. I'm still easily impressed by video game graphics from 2007 and this game looked amazing. I would've preferred more of a story, but then pulpy fiction like this never really had much a story to begin with.

Even though I enjoyed it, for me there was way too much fighting/shooting than exploration and puzzle solving. I would've loved to really explore all the lush landscapes and tombs and solve mysterious puzzles to get to the next area, but there wasn't much of that and any puzzles in the game were very simple. It also took me awhile to get used to the fighting controls. I've never been a gamer into lots of shooting, but Mass Effect prepared me somewhat. The problem I find is that the fighting is always the essentially the same and it quickly gets boring to me. There's only so many times and ways you can shoot a villain.


Despite all the characters being one-dimensional and the story thin, it was really fun, adventurous gaming. Scaling walls and cliffs, trekking through the jungle, racing on jet-skis through ruins, high-speed getaways... I can't argue with the action packed moments. I tended to play the game late at night and often I'd have crazy adventure dreams.


I'll likely play something different next but it was fun enough that I'll dive into the sequel at some point for sure.