Oh Crap!

If the title of this post didn't give it away, I have been lucky enough to have a few early hours with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves this week, as my preorder with GAME paid off and Mr. Drake plopped gently onto my doormat on Wednesday, a whole 2 days before release. Well, not that gently, it looks like the fucking postman tried to get it through the keyhole first; there's a dint in my shiny Collector's Edition tin. Either way, I got it early and that makes me feel like a proper journalist, even though I still had to pay for the fucking thing.
Now, I could go on all day gushing about it, believe me I could, and I've only had a few hours with Nate and co. The only thing I can think of that's bad about it is that the snow looks like marshmallow and the explosions aren't as pretty as those in Drake's Fortune. The graphics are phenomenal, and so is the animation and voice acting, but then again they were in the original so it goes without saying.
What some people would perceive as a negative point, but it really isn't, is that not much has changed since our hero set off to steal El Dorado from Nazi zombies. Nate's gained a few new moves in classic Lara Croft fashion, including monkey bars and the free-climbing thing ripped straight from Tomb Raider Underworld, and the cinematics have been turned up to eleven with the charismatic protagonist being forced to clamber through a train wreck hanging off a cliff with his intestines hanging out, or leaping through a window of a hotel block that's collapsing (A bit of a change of pace from causing the destruction last week).
Drake's picked up a couple of new friends and foes too, the most obvious of which being Chloe Frazer, Drakes new bit of fluff and all round 'can we trust her?' kind of girl. She's tanned, has dark hair in a ponytail and speaks with a very upper class Australian accent that's not too far removed from southern English. If you squint, it's Lara. Elena has made an appearance though, and it's very much hinted that there's still a spark. Do the right thing, Nate.
And the other main game I've been playing this week, with me virtually stalking Nolan North, is Shadow Complex. In a nutshell, the game is about a guy named Jason, who looks like Drake, moves and dresses like Drake, Can punch harder than bullets like Drake, has the same voice actor and if you say his name in a mock retard voice it sounds like Nathan. His last name is probably Nrake. It isn't actually, it's Flemming.
Anyway, Na... Jason is out potholing with his girlfriend who he's known for about 4 hours and they come across a secret military base full of people who all stole the guy from Dead Space's pyjamas and want to invade America with lots of ATST walkers and stuff. Now Jason's surname must be Bourne actually, because he happens to be an unstoppable killing machine and goes about destroying everything and wiping out about a third of the population.
The game, ridiculous story aside, is an absolutely thrilling homage to Metroid games of old; a 2D side-scroller with 360 degree aiming thanks to the second analogue stick. As you progress through the game you find power ups in the form of new pieces of armour that give you the ability to run faster, jump higher, hit harder etc, and each new area you explore or each life you snuff out gives you EXP to level up, giving the game an RPG element too.
I can't think of much else to write about here, but the game is better than most retail games. The Unreal Engine 3 is showing it's age a bit now though, maybe it's time to think about a new one Epic. But yeah, who cares if the story was written by a homophobic jerk, the story is balls anyway. Get it for the gameplay.
In other news, I went and traded my copy of Street Fighter IV for the collector's edition this week. Raz7el from The Chronicles of Ridiculous convinced me to get it on the 360 so I could destroy him on it, so I did. We are both upsettingly bad at that game. And I downloaded the Demos of Brutal Legend and Star Wars: Republic Heroes, but Mr. Drake stopped me from playing them. He is more important. Now I think I'm gonna go play Prince of Persia, watch Hulk vs. Wolverine and hide in Nolan North's garden.