Speaking purely of things I enjoy, Uncharted 2 is a great game. I’ve never been much for the first person shooters, but Uncharted 2 took all the obscure little unpleasantries out of the shoot-em-up equation and put what remained in a perspective that really clicked for me. I liked being able to take cover and blindly fire in a panic, and I liked the simplicity of the arsenal, as opposed to Call of Duty’s litany of guns barely distinguishable to the lay man. In these simple terms of entertainment, Uncharted 2 is a big success.

So I went back to play the first Uncharted, and I can’t stand it.

I know this because I spent a weekend going after Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune’s platinum trophy (I’m becoming a bit of a trophy whore), and it was the most excruciatingly painful thing I’ve willfully done in gaming in a while. Lately, the only thing that really grinds my gears when I’m playing games is multiplayer games where I feel like I’m constantly being pummeled by god-like players, but playing the original Uncharted really reminds me of the worst thing that can plague an experience: bad game design.

What’s amazing is that Uncharted 2 exudes the polish of well thought-out game design. Environments are built to provide a tactical challenge while never putting me in a position where I feel like I’m at a fundamental disadvantage because of the way I’m being funneled through a level. Not only this, but the mechanics in Uncharted 2 are deliciously refined. The experience of moving through the environment and shooting is streamlined to the point where I feel less vulnerable and more like I’m capable of accomplishing the realistically insane murderous rampages Uncharted 2 puts me through, which is a lot of fun.

There’s something to be said for a loss of vulnerability, though. I don’t necessarily want my games to build me a little empowerment playground. Problem is that the object in Drake’s Fortune was clearly to make me feel awesome, and it’s frustrating as hell to even try to feel like I’m doing anything but euthanizing a race of autistic pirates.

How comforting it is to me, the gamer who needs the coddling of developers, to temper the act of murder with ridiculous “wounded” and dodging animations that make the battlefield look like a Thriller music video. Bullets are more like a minor inconvenience than a death sentence, and more often than not, an enemy’s subsequent reaction is to stumble as if a bee just stung his elbow and regrip his gun to ostensibly blindfire at me.

Something I noticed from the Uncharted 2 reviews was how much praise was lathered onto its predecessor, which dramatically undersells the mechanical improvements that took place between the two. It’s almost like no one noticed, and when you play the two in quick succession, the difference’s are glaring. I mean, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune just isn’t that good. In fact, it’s pretty mediocre.

In retrospect, Uncharted 2 almost invalidates Drake’s Fortune  Everything we were getting was marred in some way by the perceived novelty of combining linear traversal, shooting, and gamey puzzle solving (push four buttons in this order..), and hardly anyone is calling it out.

Now I can’t stand Drake’s Fortune. I can’t stand the way enemies slowly flank you with stupid grins on their faces, and I can’t stand how they don’t aim their guns but manage to kill you in two hits in crushing mode. I can’t stand how much blood spurts from their fleshy pirate bodies, and how long it takes for them to die. And I definitely can’t stand how retarded every enemy looks after they’ve just been shot in the shoulder. It’s like,hey, I shot you. You’re going to die.