Uncharted 2 Review – Remastered Edition

Years ago, I wrote a review of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for my college newspaper. I thought it was a fairly solid game. I may have been caught up in the moment, but I had a tremendous amount of fun playing through the campaign.

That was back in 2009. We’re now in 2015, a whole 6 years later. Does Uncharted 2 still remain fantastic? Thanks to the release of the Nathan Drake Collection, we can now take a look at this past gem once again. I mean, I guess I could have booted it up on my PS3, but spending more money and looking at it on new hardware is the only plausible way to really play a “classic” game.

As the game starts, I’m reminded of the excellent pacing that NaughtyDog employed with the script. That nostalgia leads to an immediate disappoint. Why did NaughtyDog and this remasters developer, BluePoint Games, not make the pace better? I’ve changed in the last 6 years, so shouldn’t Uncharted 2 have as well?

Regardless, instead of being able to blitz through the opening act, I merely settle on running through it. I guess I’ll have to pretend to be seeing all of this for the first time. Then a cutscene triggers and I get sucked out of the game.

Why, after all this time, are we still getting taken to pre-rendered cinematics? Can’t these scenes have been adapted into gameplay segments? Wouldn’t it just be grand to take Drake and smack Flynn in the face and move on? Tell him, “Shut up, I got the picture!” and finish the mission without him?

Shut the hell up, Flynn!

Making choices isn’t what you do in Uncharted 2, despite this remaster existing as a means to fix the game. I don’t want to play the game I know and love; I want the game I know and love to be better! How is that hard to understand?

So then the game moves into the first stealth section and I cringe. I never even liked that back in the day, why am I going to enjoy it now? Can’t they just give me a fully automatic and let me plow through this? The hell with careful plotting and dramatic tension. The remaster should let me live out all my twisted fantasies.

After being firmly let down that I’ve remembered everything as it was, I wait to see if anything had been enhanced for the epic train mission in the middle of the game. Sadly, there are actually some effects removed from the game. How am I supposed to enjoy this without motion blur?

It doesn’t matter that chapter 13 is intense, fun and filled with glorious lunacy; the removal of a small graphical filter makes the level feel less inspired. I thought remasters were supposed to improve in every way, not make concessions for hardware the game wasn’t originally built on.

It’s just not the same…despite being the same…

I guess I can take solace in the fact that the PS4 edition runs at a really smooth 60 frames per second. That shouldn’t matter, but going back to the PS3 versions makes everything seem like slow motion. Now the remaster really is tarnishing my vision of the past.

Overall, I can’t believe how disappointed I am with the Nathan Drake Collection. Instead of evolving with the times and giving us what feels like a new game, we’re just granted the ability to play our favorite adventures on a new platform.

Humans learn and grow with the times; is it to much to ask that my video games do the same? I know they are a sequence of 1’s and 0’s that, once compiled, cannot change, but come on! This is on PS4, for god’s sake!

In that regard, wasn’t the CPU of the PS3 based on the Cell processor, which used an EMOTION engine? Emotion is a skill that humans possess, not computers. The PS3 was ahead of the times, so it’s games should have grown older.

Instead, getting the Nathan Drake Collection is more like buying admittance to a museum and laughing at the failures of the past. How dare cavemen not realize that electricity would have helped them flourish.


With a heavy heart, I have to give Uncharted 2 a 2/10. 6 years ago, I could easily see myself giving this a 9. Games have changed, though, and only for the better. It doesn’t matter that this was made for an audience in 2009 or that nothing has changed with it, just my perception of what I want.