Divide By Zero - a blog by Kamran Ayub

I am about 90% done with Uncharted 2, in fact I should be done by tonight. I couldn't help but talk about this game even before I finish it because there are a few things I want to say.

The first is that every other game with a story needs to learn from this game because this is the first game in a long time (along with Arkham Asylum) that I can play for 4 hours straight and still want to keep playing. My roommate stayed up until 6am playing this game to get to the end.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was a really great game but the story was really what kept it going along with the excellent platforming. Uncharted 2 takes everything that was good about the first game, multiplies it by 5 and then adds crack cocaine to it. I seriously can't think of anything wrong with this game. It has an amazing story, incredibly fun and challenging gameplay (you will die), excellent graphics, fantastic voice acting, and surprisingly fun multiplayer. There were moments in the game where I couldn't believe that it was even possible to do.

Speaking about voice acting, Nolan North (Nathan Drake) and Emily Rose (Elena) do a fantastic job at making you love the characters. You want to keep playing because you want to know what happens next. It's like an addicting book in video game form. The story is paced perfectly, the villain is actually scary, and there is plenty of intrigue and romance that I think is much better than most movies today.

One thing about me is that I hate dying in games… yes, I am a baby but I like to enjoy the story continuously without being interrupted by things like death. The thing about the first Uncharted was that I could only play a few firefights and then quit because I'd die so often, even though I was on Normal. In Uncharted 2, I chose Very Easy so I could get through the game and hear the story. That said, I still heavily enjoyed Uncharted 1 even though I kept dying because it was a lot of fun.

Games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, where I die every second are no fun to me because there's no reward for living other than to go on and fight and die more often. In games like Batman, Uncharted, BioShock, and Half-Life 2, when you die you want to keep going because there's a new narrative waiting to be told or a discovery to be made. I think that a part of what makes the firefights fun in Uncharted 1/2 is that there's a goal at the end, a place to get to, or a secret to be found. In other words, give me a reason to fight these people and then I won't quit the game.

I will be writing soon about this year in games because quite frankly it was an excellent year for gaming… and still could be even more excellent considering the upcoming releases of Assassin's Creed 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Left 4 Dead 2.