Uncharted : Golden Abyss (PS Vita)
The game follows Nathan Drake on one of his treasure hunting adventures. Anybody who owns a PS3 at least knows of the Uncharted series. You play as a treasure hunter gunning his way through beautiful environments, traversing areas that are hundreds of years old, usually with a friend or two and all while learning a few things along the way. The games usually take some famed story of treasure from history and you get a front row seat to putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. For this one, they went handheld on the Vita, so let's check it out.
You begin your story in the middle of the story, following Jason Dante through a ruins area outside of a temple. After you fight your way through it, as you're climbing, You're almost hit with an RPG missile and you fall, triggering a flashback to two weeks prior. Nate and Dante are friends, and are headed to a dig site headed by a Marisa Chase, Dante's partner. At the dig site, Chase reveals to Drake an amulet she hid from Dante because she doesn't trust him. While discussing the amulet, they are interrupted by Dante's real partner, Roberto Guerro, a warlord who then kidnaps and imprisons Drake and Chase, but they escape when the complex they're held in burns down.
Through Chase, you learn that the "old geezer" is her grandfather, Victor Perez, and that he stumbled on the amulet and hired Nathan Drake to do some more investigating into the amulet and it's origins. Drake discovers that the amulet is connected to the Sete Cidades, an ancient Christian Sect headed by Friar Marcos de Niza dedicated to locating the seven cities of gold. Together, Nathan and Chase follow in her grandfather's footsteps, eventually finding his body in one of the tombs. Determined to finish her grandfather's work, Chase and Nathan partner up to see the trail through to the end.
First, the buttons, which are set up with your standard controls (anyone who's played an Uncharted game before should know them, as they are the same from the console games.) Your joysticks control Nathan Drake himself, the left one moving his body and the right one looking around and aiming when you have a gun out. The D-Pad left and right buttons switch between whichever guns you have, you can carry one handgun, and one rifle/two-handed gun. Later in the game, you are able to pick up miniguns without dumping either of your other weapons, to use for a short time until you decide to throw it away. The left trigger zooms in to aim your gun more precisely, and the right trigger fires.
△ will switch what shoulder you look over while aiming, □ controls your melee attacks, X jumps and initiates climbing when you get to platform sections, and O does a dive-roll and also pulls you into cover when some is available.
Now, here's where it begins to get fancy. The rear touch pad doesn't do a whole lot. When you're climbing ropes you can swipe your finger either up or down it, to climb up or down the rope. This same motion is used later on when you are rowing canoe, using your sniper rifle to zoom the scope, and to zoom your camera too.
The front touch screen has a lot of usage in the game, and I mean a lot. At points in the games, you are able to do charcoal rubbings of different things in the world. The screen then brings up a sheet of paper and you will do the rubbing yourself. When you are close enough to an enemy, a small fist icon appears over them, and touching this will let you do your melee attacks. You are able to pick up guns and ammo, reload your gun, throw your grenades by simply touching the grenade icon and dragging it to where you want it to go. Lastly, and by far my favorite feature of the touch screen, is the "painting the edge" feature. When you are in platforming sections of the game, you can traverse it the old school way by using the joystick and the X or O buttons. Or, you can "paint" your way through however you want to go. You just touch where you are, and drag your finger along the route you wish to go, and Nathan follows it exactly as you painted it.
Finally, the gyroscope motion sensor has really only two major appearances in the game, and one more very small one. The small one is, while you're swinging from ropes or bars, you can tilt the Vita back and forth or side to side to get Nathan to swing. As for the major ones, every so often you have to run across a narrow beam or a fallen tree, and you'll have to stop mid-way and counter whichever way Nathan is falling to keep his balance. But, by far, the much better use of the gyroscope feature is precise aiming. As long as you are holding the left trigger and aiming with your gun, you can turn and twist the screen however you want and your gun will move with you. So if you are aiming juuuuust to the side of someone's head and only want to move your reticle the slightest bit over, just turn the Vita that way and bam head shot.
You spend the majority of the game in jungle-like settings, starting with Dante in the first few chapters until you meet Chase who sticks with you just about the rest of the way. Eventually in the middle of the game, they bring in Nate's good friend Sully who you get to play alongside of a while too. The AI of your teammate isn't too bad, the only downside that Chase refuses to carry a gun, so when you're with her you're taking care of everything yourself.
With this game, they managed to find a perfect blend of gunning and platforming. They are broken up very well, and at points you have to combine the two as well, climbing up sides of statues and mountains trying to find somewhere to hide in cover so you can shoot at someone on a ledge below/above/across from you. There's different points too where there will be a mounted gun in the area where you have to climb over and around things to flank the person shooting at you, moving only when they aren't shooting.
As I mentioned before, you get to indulge your inner Nathan Drake and treasure hunt your entire way through the game with a bunch of different sidequests that are completely optional, but are fun and after you do a couple you'll find it hard to stop doing them. These range from:
- Pieces of treasure and jade you can find through the levels. All of these are marked by a little glint that goes off when it happens to be visible from wherever you are. They're mostly not difficult to get to, usually they just involve you going slightly out of your way for a few moments, but they get very tempting.
- Recreating photos. There are dozens of these you can do through the game. They trigger when you walk into an area and, if a photo is available to be taken, the camera icon will pop up on the screen and a black and white version of the photo appears in the top left, which you can tap to zoom in and fully see what it is you're trying to recreate. Most of these are pretty easy but can get pretty tricky when you have to find the right angle to use and the precise amount of zoom. After each attempt of taking the photo, a percentage will pop up showing you how accurate you were compared to the black and white version.
- Document puzzles. You come across different newspaper clippings or photos that have been torn to a bunch of pieces. Using the touch screen, you have to rotate them and put them back together to figure out whatever it is.
- Hidden messages. At a point in the first half of the game, Nate is trying to uncover a hidden message on an old piece of parchment by holding it up to a light. So to decipher it, you have to hold the PS Vita's rear camera up to a light yourself to slowly uncover the hidden message.
Guerro has a decent amount of men for you to contend with throughout the game. Most are just what I'll call "normal" level enemies, then you have some muscled up guys who carry a shotgun and take a little bit more to bring them down. And then you have heavies, they wear armor and they carry miniguns and they take some dedication to kill. But you are given a decent variety of weapon choice for helping you deal death out, from handguns, shotguns and sniper rifles, to grenades and missile launchers.
Overall, this is a really great game, especially for a handheld. I went into playing this a little nervous just of the fact that when console games go handheld, they tend to lose a few things along the way, whether its visuals or gameplay elements, or even having to overhaul the controls. Golden Abyss managed to hold on to all of these things and earn it's place in the series. The first thing most Uncharted fans will tell you is that the games look and feel like movies, with the nonstop action, and the amazingly beautiful environments you get to go through. And there were plenty of times I would stop for a few moments to just look around.
Another big thing with the Uncharted series is the unique camera angles they use, whether it's just a wide open perspective on an area, or if the camera is jumping while you're platforming giving you intense angles while you jump around, flirting with death.
The story captivates you along the way, and the treasure hunting side quests give you an excuse to drag out playing it for just a little bit longer.
So let's break this game down a little bit more.
The platforming sections aren't that bad either, especially if you are "painting" your way through them. The game tends to help you by not letting you make death jumps when you're clinging to the wall, so if you accidentally hit the O button you won't watch Drake go bungee jumping without a cable. And the camera angles help you out here too, when you're approaching what looks like the end of where you can climb, the camera swings around showing you there's a gap to jump across or chamber that you can actually climb up.
Towards the end of the game there are two boss fights, one with Dante and one with Guerro that, on the surface, aren't very challenging. These entire fights are done with the touch screen. A yellow arrow will fly across the screen and you have to copy the motion it makes by swiping with your finger. They come fast, and they leave just as fast making them easy to miss, but luckily you are given three strikes to mess up and not have to start all over.
The sidequests generally aren't a challenge at all. As I said earlier, most of these just involve going slightly out of your way to reach a ledge or area that you don't have to go to. The "worst" of these are probably the photos, and that's just because they're the only ones that take actual involvement in you, requiring you to find the right spot to stand in, the right angle, and figure out how far to zoom in or out to get 100% on the photo.
In the end, the game isn't a challenge unless you make it a challenge. It's fun, it's fast paced, and it will make you not want to put it down.
The Story
Nathan Drake, a rumored descendant of famed explorer Sir Francis Drake, receives a proposition from his buddy Dante. There's a dig site in Central America that some "old geezer" has been running, but apparently doesn't know what he's standing on as it's rumored the dig site contains vast amounts of treasure.You begin your story in the middle of the story, following Jason Dante through a ruins area outside of a temple. After you fight your way through it, as you're climbing, You're almost hit with an RPG missile and you fall, triggering a flashback to two weeks prior. Nate and Dante are friends, and are headed to a dig site headed by a Marisa Chase, Dante's partner. At the dig site, Chase reveals to Drake an amulet she hid from Dante because she doesn't trust him. While discussing the amulet, they are interrupted by Dante's real partner, Roberto Guerro, a warlord who then kidnaps and imprisons Drake and Chase, but they escape when the complex they're held in burns down.
Through Chase, you learn that the "old geezer" is her grandfather, Victor Perez, and that he stumbled on the amulet and hired Nathan Drake to do some more investigating into the amulet and it's origins. Drake discovers that the amulet is connected to the Sete Cidades, an ancient Christian Sect headed by Friar Marcos de Niza dedicated to locating the seven cities of gold. Together, Nathan and Chase follow in her grandfather's footsteps, eventually finding his body in one of the tombs. Determined to finish her grandfather's work, Chase and Nathan partner up to see the trail through to the end.
The Controls
Utilizing the touch screen, rear touch pad, and gyroscope of the Vita, in addition to the regular buttons, Uncharted : Golden Abyss has a vast amount of controls for the game.First, the buttons, which are set up with your standard controls (anyone who's played an Uncharted game before should know them, as they are the same from the console games.) Your joysticks control Nathan Drake himself, the left one moving his body and the right one looking around and aiming when you have a gun out. The D-Pad left and right buttons switch between whichever guns you have, you can carry one handgun, and one rifle/two-handed gun. Later in the game, you are able to pick up miniguns without dumping either of your other weapons, to use for a short time until you decide to throw it away. The left trigger zooms in to aim your gun more precisely, and the right trigger fires.
△ will switch what shoulder you look over while aiming, □ controls your melee attacks, X jumps and initiates climbing when you get to platform sections, and O does a dive-roll and also pulls you into cover when some is available.
Now, here's where it begins to get fancy. The rear touch pad doesn't do a whole lot. When you're climbing ropes you can swipe your finger either up or down it, to climb up or down the rope. This same motion is used later on when you are rowing canoe, using your sniper rifle to zoom the scope, and to zoom your camera too.
The front touch screen has a lot of usage in the game, and I mean a lot. At points in the games, you are able to do charcoal rubbings of different things in the world. The screen then brings up a sheet of paper and you will do the rubbing yourself. When you are close enough to an enemy, a small fist icon appears over them, and touching this will let you do your melee attacks. You are able to pick up guns and ammo, reload your gun, throw your grenades by simply touching the grenade icon and dragging it to where you want it to go. Lastly, and by far my favorite feature of the touch screen, is the "painting the edge" feature. When you are in platforming sections of the game, you can traverse it the old school way by using the joystick and the X or O buttons. Or, you can "paint" your way through however you want to go. You just touch where you are, and drag your finger along the route you wish to go, and Nathan follows it exactly as you painted it.
Finally, the gyroscope motion sensor has really only two major appearances in the game, and one more very small one. The small one is, while you're swinging from ropes or bars, you can tilt the Vita back and forth or side to side to get Nathan to swing. As for the major ones, every so often you have to run across a narrow beam or a fallen tree, and you'll have to stop mid-way and counter whichever way Nathan is falling to keep his balance. But, by far, the much better use of the gyroscope feature is precise aiming. As long as you are holding the left trigger and aiming with your gun, you can turn and twist the screen however you want and your gun will move with you. So if you are aiming juuuuust to the side of someone's head and only want to move your reticle the slightest bit over, just turn the Vita that way and bam head shot.
The Gameplay
Anyone who's played the games before, knows that the Uncharted games are combination run-and-gun, and platforming. And not only do you get the main story, you get to play the treasure hunter too, as there are tons of hidden objects and things in the game that, if you want, you can duck out and find them along the way.You spend the majority of the game in jungle-like settings, starting with Dante in the first few chapters until you meet Chase who sticks with you just about the rest of the way. Eventually in the middle of the game, they bring in Nate's good friend Sully who you get to play alongside of a while too. The AI of your teammate isn't too bad, the only downside that Chase refuses to carry a gun, so when you're with her you're taking care of everything yourself.
With this game, they managed to find a perfect blend of gunning and platforming. They are broken up very well, and at points you have to combine the two as well, climbing up sides of statues and mountains trying to find somewhere to hide in cover so you can shoot at someone on a ledge below/above/across from you. There's different points too where there will be a mounted gun in the area where you have to climb over and around things to flank the person shooting at you, moving only when they aren't shooting.
As I mentioned before, you get to indulge your inner Nathan Drake and treasure hunt your entire way through the game with a bunch of different sidequests that are completely optional, but are fun and after you do a couple you'll find it hard to stop doing them. These range from:
- Pieces of treasure and jade you can find through the levels. All of these are marked by a little glint that goes off when it happens to be visible from wherever you are. They're mostly not difficult to get to, usually they just involve you going slightly out of your way for a few moments, but they get very tempting.
- Recreating photos. There are dozens of these you can do through the game. They trigger when you walk into an area and, if a photo is available to be taken, the camera icon will pop up on the screen and a black and white version of the photo appears in the top left, which you can tap to zoom in and fully see what it is you're trying to recreate. Most of these are pretty easy but can get pretty tricky when you have to find the right angle to use and the precise amount of zoom. After each attempt of taking the photo, a percentage will pop up showing you how accurate you were compared to the black and white version.
- Document puzzles. You come across different newspaper clippings or photos that have been torn to a bunch of pieces. Using the touch screen, you have to rotate them and put them back together to figure out whatever it is.
- Hidden messages. At a point in the first half of the game, Nate is trying to uncover a hidden message on an old piece of parchment by holding it up to a light. So to decipher it, you have to hold the PS Vita's rear camera up to a light yourself to slowly uncover the hidden message.
Guerro has a decent amount of men for you to contend with throughout the game. Most are just what I'll call "normal" level enemies, then you have some muscled up guys who carry a shotgun and take a little bit more to bring them down. And then you have heavies, they wear armor and they carry miniguns and they take some dedication to kill. But you are given a decent variety of weapon choice for helping you deal death out, from handguns, shotguns and sniper rifles, to grenades and missile launchers.
Overall, this is a really great game, especially for a handheld. I went into playing this a little nervous just of the fact that when console games go handheld, they tend to lose a few things along the way, whether its visuals or gameplay elements, or even having to overhaul the controls. Golden Abyss managed to hold on to all of these things and earn it's place in the series. The first thing most Uncharted fans will tell you is that the games look and feel like movies, with the nonstop action, and the amazingly beautiful environments you get to go through. And there were plenty of times I would stop for a few moments to just look around.
Another big thing with the Uncharted series is the unique camera angles they use, whether it's just a wide open perspective on an area, or if the camera is jumping while you're platforming giving you intense angles while you jump around, flirting with death.
The story captivates you along the way, and the treasure hunting side quests give you an excuse to drag out playing it for just a little bit longer.
So let's break this game down a little bit more.
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
Golden Abyss doesn't bring a whole lot of challenge to you unless you make it do so by upping the difficulty. If you're a quick shot, the Dragon Sniper (for anyone who's played the other games) will take anyone down with a single shot no matter where you hit them, except for the heavies with the miniguns. The AI for the enemies helps you more than it helps them. When they run into an area they will take cover behind a rock/wall/crate, and for the most part they will stay behind that one thing, ducking out every so often to pop a few shots in your direction. So you can just keep your gun aimed at the crate and be ready before they even come out of cover.The platforming sections aren't that bad either, especially if you are "painting" your way through them. The game tends to help you by not letting you make death jumps when you're clinging to the wall, so if you accidentally hit the O button you won't watch Drake go bungee jumping without a cable. And the camera angles help you out here too, when you're approaching what looks like the end of where you can climb, the camera swings around showing you there's a gap to jump across or chamber that you can actually climb up.
Towards the end of the game there are two boss fights, one with Dante and one with Guerro that, on the surface, aren't very challenging. These entire fights are done with the touch screen. A yellow arrow will fly across the screen and you have to copy the motion it makes by swiping with your finger. They come fast, and they leave just as fast making them easy to miss, but luckily you are given three strikes to mess up and not have to start all over.
The sidequests generally aren't a challenge at all. As I said earlier, most of these just involve going slightly out of your way to reach a ledge or area that you don't have to go to. The "worst" of these are probably the photos, and that's just because they're the only ones that take actual involvement in you, requiring you to find the right spot to stand in, the right angle, and figure out how far to zoom in or out to get 100% on the photo.
In the end, the game isn't a challenge unless you make it a challenge. It's fun, it's fast paced, and it will make you not want to put it down.
PROS
- The fact that they were able to keep Golden Abyss on par with the rest of the series is the biggest pro of all. They had a lot to jampack into a handheld game and they did an amazing job of it. From the graphics to the soundtrack, gameplay elements, even the control scheme didn't get touched. I remember a while back plaing the God of War game on PSP and they tried to do the same thing of keeping it the same as the console games. They had to sacrifice a lot of the game length just to be able to give it the same feel and while it worked, it didn't work for long enough. But Golden Abyss sacrifices nothing to remain on par with its console family of games.
- Not only did they throw a whole new variant into the controls with the touch screen and rear touch pads, they made it optional as well. There are a couple of things that are mandatory for using the touch controls like rowing the boats and zooming the camera and rifle scope, but everything else you can choose which way you want to do it.
- Nathan Drake's sass is back and perfectly placed, giving you plenty of excuses to laugh along the way while Nate tries to not get himself killed.
- Chase not carrying a gun until the last chapter gets very annoying, forcing you to shoulder clearing out all the bad guys in a huge portion of Golden Abyss. You don't get overwhelmed by them very much, but it get's tiring firing the only gun on your side.
- Some of the platforming areas are very meticulous how you approach them. When you approach some areas, especially the logs and beams you have to balance across, if you don't hit them exactly right, Nate goes walking right off the edge.
CONS
- No matter who you have with you, whether it's Sully/Chase/Dante, when you're running through areas, they're usually a bit ahead of you, and when they get to a new area where there's enemies present, they instantly take cover. While it's nice having a heads up, it takes away from the surprise of getting to a clearing, doing some exploring, and out of nowhere bullets start flying at you. It was present in the console games, and it was missed here.- Chase not carrying a gun until the last chapter gets very annoying, forcing you to shoulder clearing out all the bad guys in a huge portion of Golden Abyss. You don't get overwhelmed by them very much, but it get's tiring firing the only gun on your side.
- Some of the platforming areas are very meticulous how you approach them. When you approach some areas, especially the logs and beams you have to balance across, if you don't hit them exactly right, Nate goes walking right off the edge.
