Uncharted: Golden Abyss review

You can read this review in full in our print edition.

Our March issue, which is on sale February 15, features reviews of all the most important releases, together with in-depth Post Script articles, including Final Fantasy XIII-2, WipeOut 2048 and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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More than most heroes in gaming, twinkly eyed matinee idol Nathan Drake was made for the big screen. His adventures beg for the IMAX treatment just to wring every possible drop of drama from each collapsing staircase, exploding vehicle and vertiginous leap. So can the Uncharted franchise survive the untheatrical confines of a handheld, or is Drake’s appeal rooted in dramatic scripting backed up by formidable technical power and expertise?

The truth is, when held up against its PS3 peers, Uncharted: Golden Abyss can’t help seeming a bit straight-to-DVD. The epic, rolling set-pieces of Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception won’t be found here; there are no death-defying train rides or capsizing cargo ships, and certainly no moments spent free-falling from the back of a plane. Things do fall apart in Golden Abyss, but they do so one piece at a time – the scale is smaller and the environments are more static.

That doesn’t make them any less visually arresting, and there are plenty of locations that will have you scrutinising your Vita’s display with all the awed wonder of Drake examining a priceless archaeological find. Golden Abyss’s Central American jaunt takes in the usual array of temples at sunset and ruins at dawn, with plenty of long-forgotten underground caverns connecting the two. Sony Bend shies away from attempting the urban environments of Naughty Dog’s most recent games, however, and offers nothing you haven’t seen before in their place. But it’s a marvel to hold all this beauty in your hands nonetheless.

The cast isn’t quite as convincing as its bigger-screen counterpart – faces seem less animated, movements slightly more stiff – although the detail on Drake’s dirt-flecked cheeks has made it across intact. The story these characters tell is less gripping, too, lacking a strong sense of direction from the off. The problem is compounded by a weak villain who lacks either the bone-evil threat of Lazarevic in Among Thieves or the mystery of Marlowe in Drake’s Deception. And while the historical puzzle that Drake and new girl Marisa Chase attempt to unravel is genuinely intriguing, it’s also convoluted enough that you’ll find yourself subjected to a little too much exposition along the way. Nolan North remains dependably charming as the voice of Drake, however, and there are enough twists and turns to see you through to the game’s conclusion.

But even if Golden Abyss suffers in comparison to the astonishingly high production standards of the PS3 titles, it holds up on its own as an action game. It’s a pity to discover that Naughty Dog’s two sequels’ worth of refinements to the core combat mechanics haven’t made it across – forget riot shields, gas canisters and tossing back grenades here – but Golden Abyss does make use of Vita’s motion and touch controls to define a combat style of its own. The combination of analogue and gyroscopic aiming feels near-perfect, offering a subtle touch of finely granulated control that should persuade even the most long-standing motion-control sceptic of its uses.

Vita’s analogue sticks are reliable, sure, but for a quick headshot it’s often easier to slightly tilt the unit than risk nudging the reticule a centimetre too far. With default controls, lining up a sniper scope on your target relies entirely on the gyroscope (with touchscreen or touchpad swipes adjusting zoom), and quickly becomes second nature. Grenades, meanwhile, can be dragged and dropped exactly where they’re needed, while directional prompts add an unpredictable QTE element to hand-to-hand combat.

Slightly less successful are Golden Abyss’s navigation controls. Tracing the route you want Drake to take when scaling ruins works reliably, but has the effect of making the experience seem semi-automated. That said, more of those directional prompts mean that moments when handholds crumble to dust rise beyond just a scripted thrill – the player has to join Drake in making a sudden grab for purchase.

If the touchscreen implementation stopped there, Golden Abyss would perfectly showcase what Vita’s new control methods can bring to traditional games. Unfortunately, it also repeats a handful of chore-like touchscreen puzzles. Making charcoal rubbings certainly adds a hint of practical archaeology to Uncharted’s gung-ho treasure hunting, but it’s just wiping your finger across the screen. And cleaning the dirt off discovered artefacts would simply be more of the same were it not for the fact you have to awkwardly rotate the object with the rear touchpad at the same time. But at least these tasks can be performed with the minimum of engagement – a repeated jigsaw puzzle (Drake seems to stumble upon a great many torn-up documents in this adventure) manages to be that painful combination of both unexciting and mildly taxing. More traditional puzzles work better, but there’s still nothing like Drake’s Deception’s room of shadows.

Take away the set-pieces, take away the scale, take away the regular writers and most of the supporting cast, and what’s left? Well, there’s Drake, who still has more charm in his trigger finger than the majority of games’ thick-necked leads in their entire bruising frames. There’s also the beauty of Uncharted’s exotic locales, which act as a great showcase for Vita’s astonishing display. And even if Golden Abyss starred a power-armoured space marine fighting his way across the cardboard-box planet, it would still be a robust thirdperson shooter, the likes of which we’ve simply never seen on a handheld. The core Uncharted experience is still here, in other words. It’s stripped a little bare, but it’s just about enough. [7]