Just a quick blog to vent my frustration and disappointment with one of the most universally acclaimed exclusives of the last few years: Uncharted 2. I was initially hoping to play UC 1 before the second game, but I was unable to find a copy of the game, and decided to go ahead and start the second. After hearing nothing but praise for the game, I went in expecting to be impressed. I guess this was my mistake, because, so far, I've found the game not only to be unremarkable, but to be rather lacking in several areas.

I've played about 45 minutes so far, which has got me to the end of the second chapter. Why, that's not long enough to form a proper opinion! I'll get to why I haven't played any more shortly. The first chapter was decent enough, although I instantly grew to dislike the platforming controls, which remind me of Assassins Creed but with worse animations and less options. The set up for the plot seems fine, if not a little generic; I found the writing to be a little hammy, especially in comparison to the excellently written Red Dead Redemption which I have been playing recently.

My real concerns started cropping up during the second chapter. The cover system is clunky as all hell, and the stealthing is just atrocious. I think I'm in one of the last rooms of the chapter, where there are maybe 5 or 6 enemies. When you enter the room, the bloke you are with says something about you taking care of all the guys, and you say something about heading to the fountain. So I take out one guy, and go to the fountain. There are two guys near me, and a few others farther away at this point. I have no idea where I am supposed to go in the room, the game doesn't tell me, and I can't find any visual cues to help. I decide to take out the two guys near me and proceed. One of them is leaning against the fountain, so I get into the fountain and walk up behind him. Even though his back is about 2 feet away from Nathans chest, pressing the take down button results in Drake swatting the air right behind the guards head, and a mission failure.

A second attempt at sneaking up beside the guard yields similar results. Ok, I'll just sneak past the bastard. I see a staircase that looks like it might be the way to go, but a guard at the top is looking straight at it. His back is to a ledge with a flower pot below it. Ok, I'll get on the flower pot and do a ledge takedown, clearly that is what I'm supposed to do. I climb onto the flower pot, press the take down button, and proceed to punch the wall right below the guard. This results in mission failure. Irritated, I try a completely different route the next time. I bypass several of the guards - apparently I can walk right in front of the guy leaning against the fountain and he doesn't see me - and go to what I think is the exit to the room. No apparently it's not. I try and backtrack, but apparently a guard saw me and I failed the mission. I quit the game at this point.

Given that I have been playing games a very long time, including many stealth games, and could not get passed a introductory stealth sequence in the second chapter of the game in 5 or so attempts, I am lead to the conclusion that this game has bad controls and bad level design given that I still don't know where I am supposed to go. This is on the easy difficulty level. One might assume that my failure is due to inexperience with the PS3 controller. Well, I did own a PS2, and played all of the Splincercell games on that platform (from 1 to double agent). I also had very few issues with the controls in RDR. Colour me very, very unimpressed. While the scripted events appear to be very entertaining and grandiose, they don't excuse the underlying problems the game appears to have.

I hope to god it gets better ( assuming I can get passed this ****ing room).