Review: Uncharted: Golden Abyss

If you can't get enough of Nathan Drake's incredible fingertip strength, Olympic-level long jump skills, and immaculately-styled hair - when does he have time to do that, anyway? - you're not alone. Uncharted is one of the most beloved franchises available on the PS3. Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 have sold around 3.8 million copies each, making the series the second best selling PS3 exclusive after Gran Turismo. It has a lot of loyal fans, and it may frighten them - rightfully so - to hear that Drake can now be controlled using the Vita's touchscreen as well as the tactile buttons and thumbsticks.

In Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Drake is hired by a shady, obnoxious man called Dante to go on a treasure hunt. As per usual, the hunt doesn't exactly go smoothly and Drake winds up in the middle of the jungle with a new love interest by the name of Chase. There's no indication as to where this fits into the timeline of the other three games, but roving reporter Elena is completely missing this time. Bend Studios has done a solid job of staying true to the series' roots, delivering a cinematic, character-focused experience from top to bottom, probably due to Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig working on the project. You do all the things you do in other Uncharted games - monkey your way across canyons, solve mysteries, and engage in cover-based combat.You wouldn't know, from playing through the game, that it was made by a different developer.

The Vita's new gameplay mechanisms - the aforementioned touchscreen, rear touchpad, and gyroscope - are unavoidable. If you want to play the whole game through without getting fingerprints all over your Vita, you're out of luck. All of those features are compulsory at several different points in the game. Personally, I thought the use of those features was inventive - for example, you're required to take pictures of landmarks as you go along, and to adjust the zoom on the camera you have to drag your finger up and down on the rear touchpad. At other points, you have to make charcoal rubbings of engraved objects, which you do by rubbing your finger over the touchscreen. I recognise that some people aren't going to want to use those features at all, but their implementation was interesting. Golden Abyss makes use of absolutely everything the Vita has to offer.

The game must also be pushing the Vita's graphics and processing power to its limits, as well. While it's not really comparable to the later PS3 games, the visuals are remarkable for a handheld device, and probably on par with the graphics of the original in the series, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the animation, or lack thereof, in the characters' hair. Faces move and express emotions, but the hair framing them is dead still.



While there was a huge focus on the environments in Uncharted 3, this time you'll spend significantly less time gawking at your screen in wonder. When developing Uncharted 3, Naughty Dog came up with cool setpieces first, then built the game around them, and it showed. In Golden Abyss, the scenery pops out at you less, except at certain points in the game where the camera stops and pans around as if to scream, "Hey, look at me! See? I'm pretty!" Golden Abyss is not so much a natural beauty - at least not compared to the most recent Uncharted games - but rather a teenager pausing to pose at just the right angle when a photo op arises.

The gun controls in Golden Abyss are a bit problematic without auto-aim on; it's switched off by default. At first I thought it was that I wasn't used to the Vita's dual thumbsticks, but then I played a little of first-person shooter Unit 13 on the device, and instantly had a lot more control. I wound up leaving auto-aim on, because otherwise shooting was ultra-sensitive and extremely difficult to do, especially if I wanted headshots. Sniping was nearly impossible.

With auto-aim turned on, Golden Abyss is quite a bit easier than previous Uncharted games. I played on Normal difficulty, which historically has been quite tough, and found that aside from a few very minor bumps and bruises, it was all relatively painless. If you've played previous games in the series you may want to up the difficulty level from their usual, or you may want to revel in the fact that there aren't any particularly terrible difficulty spikes like there were in Uncharted 3. The puzzles are also pretty straightforward, with only one giving me a wee bit of trouble as I had to find four different interaction points in a maze of winding passages.

Unlike the PS3 versions of the game, Golden Abyss consists entirely of a campaign mode - there's no multiplayer component at all, co-op or competitive. Given that it has the premium Vita price point of around $80 and the campaign is only around eight hours long, some people may find that frustrating. The game's trophies, however, are harder than ever to get, which seems designed to increase replayability. In order to solve a 'mystery', you have to gather 11-12 components, each from a different level of the game. Most of them are hidden in corners or behind bamboo walls, so they're not easy to spot. To solve them all, you'll probably have to play through the entire game several times.

It may seem like there are a lot of complaints here, but the fact is that fans of the series love Uncharted because of its movie-like qualities and well-acted, likeable characters. The key elements of the game are still there, and all of the changes and problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. This is Uncharted as it always has been, but with new ways to interact that are obviously influenced by mobile gaming. If you love gallavanting around the world as Drake, whether or not you like using those features will determine whether you like the game.

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