Review / Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune’s humble beginnings on PS3 were quickly dwarfed by the set-piece driven, adrenaline-fueled thrill ride of its sequels. And while the plane crashes and train tumblings of Among Thieves and Drake’s Deception have earned the series a spot on many a favourite game list, there’s still something to be said for the beautiful simplicity of Naughty Dog’s original adventure.

It was a game that displayed a studio finding its feet quickly in a new, more competitive genre compared to its platforming roots, and it packed more of an identity than its Gears-influenced shootouts let on. For every moment you dug into cover there was also a fist fight under fire, a lucky head shot with a final bullet, or the ‘oh nuts’ feeling of a grenade landing at your feet. These moments were kept alive in its beloved sequels, but they were somewhat muted by the blockbuster pacing.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss, then, is very much a throwback to this style of play. It doesn’t back a falling building, a burning chateau or a sinking ship, but it’s got enough firepower and production value to stand on its own two feet.

Bend Studio takes the helm of Golden Abyss as Nathan Drake heads back to the jungle. Set before the events of Drake’s Fortune, this Vita debut serves as a perfect example of the kind of franchise spin-offs we might be seeing from the system going forward, offering harmless side stories with gameplay that does its best to replicate the console experience. Do we really want that out of a handheld? Golden Abyss certainly makes a strong case for it.

It’s typically hard to keep track of exactly what treasure/city Drake and co are chasing after in Golden Abyss. Wordy cutscenes that throw out historic names as if we should know them like brothers are a barrier from getting too involved with the archaeology, but the engaging characters distract you from realising you don’t really know what you’re doing. New to the series here are Jason Dante, Drake’s ‘employer’ or sorts, and Chase, an enthusiastic archaeologist who fills a nice Elena-shaped hole in the story. Chase in particular fits the bill perfectly, matching Drake’s knowledge as well as his charm, while staying out of trouble just enough to keep from becoming a liability.

That said, the story leaves a few odd question marks and wastes some potential for character exposition. This is an adventure taking place before Drake's travels in the following games teach him about what's important in life, and yet he seems to have learned all those lessons already. He's still the same loveable oaf, which is a shame given that it would be brilliant to see him transform from the jaded teenager we see in the beginnings of Deception into what he is today.

Their lengthy adventure sees plenty of opportunity for the Uncharted staples to strut their stuff. Gunplay, fist fights and platforming all translate over to the handheld with ease, though Vita-specific features are thrust upon the player with mixed results. Some uses of the touchscreen and tilt sensors work incredibly well – painting a route to climb along with your finger eliminates any awkward platforming situations that are present in the console versions (“No, don’t go that way! Don’t climb back up! I’m pointing the stick down!”), and tilting the system to fine-tune shots soon becomes second nature. The sniper sections in the game are especially fun when coupled with the ease of simply lining the Vita up with an enemy’s head and pulling the trigger.

But the swipe mechanic that the game leans heavily on is far too unreliable. Fist fights always ask you to awkwardly balance the Vita with one hand to quickly wave your finger across the screen and there’s nothing more frustrating than the system failing to recognise a swipe, leading to an untimely demise. Two sections in particular towards the end of the game are so dependent on it and yet so unforgiving in failure that they bring the experience down several notches and completely kill the pacing. Having to watch a 3 minute scene over and over only to have the system refuse to recognise correct input goes down as the biggest design flaw in the entire series to date.

It’s likely that, should Bend develop another Uncharted for Vita, they won’t be as eager to force-feed players half-baked mechanics like this, but it’s a major problem with Golden Abyss.

Throwing out the Vita features and falling back on traditional gameplay yields a solid Uncharted experience though. It might take some sensitivity tweaking by the dual sticks make for a shooting experience as comfortable as anything on a Dualshock. To call last year’s Drake’s Deception a third person shooter would have been selling it short, but it fits the bill perfectly with Golden Abyss. That’s not a bad thing, if anything it means there’s arguably more ‘game’ here than there was in Drake’s Deception, though that will depend largely on your definition of what playing is. Without a myriad of sequences that demand the player to act in a certain way, it holds a the illusion of freedom better than Naughty Dog’s latest.

That said, many of its sequences don’t feel as well designed as console game’s efforts. For a cover-based shooter, there are plenty of shootouts that leave Drake exposed in the open. The game’s insistence on showing off its redundant rope-climbing rear touchpad mechanic makes for plenty of frustrating, luck-based fire fights as Drake dangles helplessly from a wall while Bend asks a seemingly impossible task of killing everyone while under a constant stream of fire. If Drake’s Deception’s final fights proved too traumatising for you, take note that Golden Abyss doesn’t offer much relief.

One thing the series hasn’t compromised in its platform transfer, though, is visual presentation. There are the odd moments when you see through the smoke and mirrors of Golden Abyss – its vistas are simply flat images, some textures are pretty blurry and character models don’t have the same fluidity as their console counterparts, but it still tops Drake’s Fortune in the looks department more often than not.

Its jungles are more detailed and varied, its walls less jagged. You can argue of course that blown up onto a HD screen it wouldn’t fare quite as well, but for what it is here, it looks absolutely stunning, and not just for a Vita game. Given that this is just a launch title on a system that doesn’t match the PS3, then, it’s an incredible achievement.

Bend Studio proved itself on PSP with Syphon Filter and Resistance: Retribution, and the same rings true here. Uncharted: Golden Abyss ends up finding itself on par with the original game. Its story isn’t the globe-spanning adventure of the sequels, but it isn’t trying to be. But every neck snap, roll into cover and perfectly thrown grenade is Uncharted through and through. It brings a smile to the face to simply play it.

What we have is an excellent self-contained adventure that does well to highlight what makes both the franchise and Sony’s new system so great. Despite some major flaws in its design, it can hold its head up high and consider itself a worthy addition to the biggest name in PlayStation.