I figured that my first blog on Destructoid might as well be based on the monthly topic, which is games that I have a love/hate relationship with. I couldn't pick just one game for this topic, so I decided to do two games: one that I have a love/hate relationship with that I mostly love, and one that I mostly hate. So it is with great pleasure that I pop this thing off with one game that, despite its flaws, I truly enjoy.



This game, even though it has many bugs and some of the gameplay isn't done nearly as well as in other games, is still one of my favorites on the PS2. The flavor and atmosphere of the game are what draws me to it, primarily since there is a serious lack of what I like to call "ghetto games" around. No, I don't mean that rectal discharge that comes out every time 50 Cent wants some interactive ego-boosting to be mass-marketed, I'm talking about the real shit, and Getting Up is that real shit. It's an honest ghetto game, not some wannabe-gangsta bullshit game that thinks all it needs to do to be gangsta is throw in Snoop Dogg as playable characters and have a hip-hop soundtrack.

The main reason my love/hate relationship with this game hasn't culminated in full-on love is because of what this game represents to gaming as a whole. This is probably the best ghetto game out there, and it's still pretty mediocre. It symbolizes that it's damn near impossible for gamers to have a fun, enjoyable and respected videogame out there where you play as a street thug in the projects, since now that Getting Up (which was already considered more a niche game than a game with mainstream appeal) didn't hit the proverbial bulls-eye in the gaming industry, developers and publishers aren't even trying anymore. Fiddy Cent shooting up Iraq? Fuck you, is that the best you got to give the ghetto gamers around the world? I want Getting Up to be better than it is, so more people will give ghetto games a chance in the same way Batman: Arkham Asylum proved that comic book-based games can be amazing. As it stands, the game is only more proof that it can't be done right.

I simply can't ascertain why so many people think this game is rubbish. Usually, anything with a Metacritic score of less than 70 is, for reasons unknown, considered simply bad by most gamers, but this game seems to draw some other brand of blinding hatred. An excellent representation of this critical discrimination is a strip from a very well-known gaming webcomic:



It may not be the best game in existence, but calling it "God's punishment for an evil world" just seems like an overstatement to me, to say the least. The gameplay, while not very polished, was still playable and fun most of the time. I can somewhat understand that the ghetto atmosphere alienates most gamers, since I have to face facts that many of the average gamers of the world are teenage white boys from the suburbs who see nothing but a bunch of minorities wearing their pants around their knees and speaking improper English every time they change the television to BET, which is the only contact they'll probably ever have with the hood. After all, if you don't mind playing as a Cosa Nostra or even a convicted serial murderer, why should it matter if you play as a street thug unless you have a specific dislike of that culture?

Now that I got that out of the way, it's time to discuss a game that I simply do not like that much, despite it doing supposedly everything right.



Uncharted 2 is supposed to be good. It's gotten more praise than most recent games, it's been played to death by throngs of people, it's brought us a new benchmark in console graphics, and it's up for many Game of the Year nominations from several publications.

So why the fuck do I hate this game so much?

Part of it is Nathan Drake himself. I am just not fond at all of that smarmy, cocky, wise-ass smug son of a bitch at all. He's your stereotypical sarcastic white guy in every action movie you see, someone who tries so desperately to make even the most threatening situations into a one-liner, so much so that I have been infuriated to the point of questioning whether or not he's meant to be a parody of this kind of idiotically suave poster boy mentality that I seriously thought died out in the late 80's/early 90's action movies. The protagonist in a game matters to me more than it probably should, since I have to feel some sort of attachment to the person I am controlling, even if it's something as simple as the guy looking cool to me. Nathan Drake is exactly the kind of person I do not want to play as in almost every single way. The only thing missing is a swastika tattoo on his bicep.

Probably the biggest thing about this game that I have a beef with is the fact that it's supposed to be like an interactive action movie. Let me remind all readers that action movies are usually horribly, HORRIBLY written, whether it's with gaping plot holes, scientific inaccuracies or plain logical fallacies, and in the case of Uncharted 2, it pulls more logical fallacies than I thought physically possible from any form of media ever made.

Drake can take a thousand bullets to the gut while wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, he can scale a humongous icy cavern with his bare hands while being able to keep an iron grip on the ice with his fingers, he can face down an attack helicopter, and what must be the biggest logical fallacy of them all: the godfuckingdamn train level, where you have to fight your way to the front of the train to rescue Chloe. First of all, why doesn't the whole train get derailed when the attack helicopter shoots it with missiles 50 fucking times? Second of all, if the bad guys care so little for the safety of the train that they would call an Apache to bomb it, why won't they simply detach the back of the train so Drake can't follow them, and is a sitting duck for the chopper? Third of all, why in the holy mother of fuck does Chloe tell Drake to get lost when he finally reaches the front of the train? She didn't say why she wanted to stay with Lezarevic, she just told Drake to go fuck himself. Lastly, why the hell was there a propane tank conveniently sitting in a train car at the end of the level, and how was it able to detach and derail the train car Drake was in, when the aforementioned attack helicopter did absolutely fuck all?! Add onto all that the stereotypical trend of all action movies, where everyone with an American accent is unquestionably heroic and selfless while anyone with any kind of foreign accent or darker skin tone is either flat-out evil, morally ambiguous or just plain useless and weak, and you have the makings of a terrible, terrible interactive movie

So all in all, I can begrudgingly say Uncharted 2 deserves the high scores it has somewhat appropriated, as Naughty Dog didn't do anything really wrong from a gameplay perspective. However, when judging it as an "interactive action movie," which so many people claim it to be, it's just plain fucking trash. I respect the game for what it is, but at the same time I loathe it for what it is. For me, that's pretty much the definition of a love/hate relationship.

I hope anyone who read this enjoyed it somewhat, as I enjoy writing these blogs/articles/rants/bitching fests. Feedback is always greatly appreciated, and positive feedback, even a little bit, will motivate me to write more.

DISCLAIMER: If anything I said in this article, whether it be my profane language or my bashing of a beloved PS3 game, offended anyone in any way... Oh well.