If you had asked me a couple years ago if any game deserved a perfect review score of 10/10, I would have said no. Every single game that I'd played had some type of flaw that warranted the deduction of some amount of points. Therefore in my mind, a perfect score of 10 was always something to strive toward, but never something that was possible to achieve.

The last few years though the quality of games released has gone through the roof. Thanks to titles like GTA 4, Bioshock, and Metal Gear Solid 4 I've started to reevaluate my position on the subject of perfect review scores. This all came to a head recently when I was given the opportunity to write the official Gamer Limit review for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

After discussing it over with some of the staff members at the site, I decided to give the game a perfect 10/10. Feel free to read to my actual review if you like, as it will provide a lot more details about my reasoning then I'm about to go into here. Simply put, in my opinion Uncharted 2 is the best game released on the PS3 to date. Naughty Dog has created such a memorable masterpiece that it represents the pinnacle of game development for this current generation of consoles. How could I not give the game a 10?

Now something I found very interesting about Uncharted 2, which I point out in my review, is that it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done before. The cover and shoot gameplay mechanic isn't anything new, the tomb raiding puzzle/adventure gameplay style has been done to death, and the multiplayer combines elements from many other games already existing on the market. If this game takes lots of ideas from so many other titles out there, how is it that it could possible deserve a perfect score?

While it is true that Uncharted 2 doesn't do anything new, it does do a lot of different things, all of which have been polished to a level of quality that is extremely rare these days. The single player story is better then most of the action movies released so far this year, the multiplayer is addictive and extremely diverse, the colorful cast of characters are accompanied by some of the best voice acting heard in years, and the replayability is through the roof.

How often do you find a sequel that manages to keep everything good from the previous game, while solving all of the problems that nagged the original? Not only that, but add in a multiplayer mode that rivals, if not beats the pants off of other games who have been doing multiplayer for years like Gears of War 2. Everyone was worried that Naughty Dog might stumble and trip over themselves by attempting too much, but instead they managed to hit a home run and show why they are on e of the best developers in the business.



I think that if a game manages to do a multitude of different things extremely well, and doesn't half ass a single part of the entire package, it deserves a perfect score. Uncharted 2 does this, so in my mind it should get a perfect 10.

Not everyone agrees with this line of thinking, as is evident with the recent GameTrailers Uncharted 2 score fiasco. A great deal of commotion erupted when the site decided to give the game a 9.3. As you watch the entire review it appears that the score it going to be in the high 9's to possibly a 10, but then in the end the review score of 9.3 is shown and a lot of people were shocked.

In a later episode of Invisible Walls, the reasoning behind the lower score was explained. According to the reviewers, while the game was extremely good and did a lot of things right, it did not attempt to do anything new and hence does not deserve the acclaim of getting anything higher then a 9.5.

When I read this I was very disappointed in the site. If you take a look back at many of the games that actually try to innovate, you'll notice a pattern of shitty games. Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed are two recent examples of this. They both tried to innovate and create something new and unique, and they both had major issues that really brought the gameplay experience down.

A majority of the best games ever made are not ones that try to innovate. They are the ones that take already existing gameplay formulas and mechanics and try to perfect and polish them into something that's actually fun and entertaining to play. COD 4: Modern Warfare and Bioshock are two great examples. Neither of these games did anything new, but they both took a lot of elements tried in previous games and perfectly melded them together to create an excellent experience.

My point is, games like Uncharted 2 shouldn't be punished because they don't attempt to innovate or try something new. They should be celebrated for getting so many things right that other games could not. Perfect review scores like 10 should be rare, but they shouldn't be impossible to get. There is no such thing as a perfect game, and there never will be, but games can come extremely close to perfect. Uncharted 2 is one of these games, which is why I think it deserves a perfect 10/10.