I know this seems kind of silly, because we all know the Uncharted series is very much a sort of unofficial Indiana Jones, so to say a game that took inspiration from a movie and then surpassed that movie seems daunting, but as anyone who has been lucky enough to play the opening of this game can tell you, it REALLY is breathtaking, and does an amazing job of imbuing the viewer with a real sense of panic as the scenario unfolds.
For those who have not seen it, the opening of Uncharted 2 features our hero, Nathan Drake, waking up on a train. The kicker here is that the train is hanging off of a cliff, and as if in some cartoon sense of physics, the more we (and Drake) figure this out, the more gravity seems to apply. So while he is very much sitting up when the scene begins, by the end, as the train has fallen further and further, he is actually thrown out of the train and, as you can see above, finds himself in one dilly of a pickle.
It is everything a blockbuster should be, but when was the last time you saw something this impressive on screen, and really, truly believed it? Scenes like this in movies end up looking way too CG now, and any sense of danger drains out for that reason. But when your character is CG too, it just pulls you in that much more. And anyone who wants to argue this with me can just hold this scene up against ANY scene in the most recent Indiana Jones film to see how right I am.
Published: Sep 5, 2013 08:04 pm