Uncharted: Golden Abyss Review

Uncharted: Golden Abyss is the flagship launch game for the Playstation Vita, and as the next entry in the popular Uncharted franchise it has a lot to live up to. Thankfully Golden Abyss serves as a good introduction to the Vita hardware, utilizing all of its feature sometimes to breathtaking results and other times to infuriatingly dull and repetitive effect. Bend Studios is the developer and they go to painstaking lengths to recreate the look and feel and even the general formula Naughty Dog ended up tuning to perfection across their three main-series entries. But there is a lot missing from Golden Abyss as well; the globe-trotting is absent, replaced with two separate yet oddly familiar jungle environments and while they may look stunning it is the same basic look for the games roughly 7 hour campaign. The game also lacks a lot of the little things Naughty Dog always excelled at that raised the Uncharted series from your standard action game, the writing in both story and dialogue is noticeably sub-par and the dynamic feel of the action is gone leaving a series of meandering set-pieces that never feel as grandiose as its console brethren.

It's hard to pinpoint where the problems stem from, it could be that the developer admirably as they tried couldn't put together a worthwhile Uncharted game. Maybe the problem is a rushed development to get the game released in time for the launch of the Vita hardware. It could even have been the limitations of the hardware itself though, I find this last possibility harder to believe since the console will undoubtedly be exploited to better ends in the future. Either way Golden Abyss is still a stellar launch title, and the only one in the batch I would recommend. The game maintains the Uncharted mix of third-person shooting and environment traversal and both are finely tuned and incredibly fun when everything is working. But everything doesn't always work, cover is shoddy at best, and the shooting mechanics are floaty, forgoing any sense of precision with just blind luck. Traversal has been streamlined thanks to the Vita touchscreen, as you can trace your path on the various handholds and Nathan Drake will follow sometimes more efficiently than you could have. I actually used the touchscreen to climb around a lot as it negated me having to constantly press X or O to ascend or descend, instead a quick and precise finger swipe had Drake gracefully moving along as I laid back and enjoyed the fluid animation.

But not all the added Vita specific features work. As a Sony owned IP as well as a marquee launch title Golden Abyss is saddled with every Vita feature they could cram in and for the most part their poorly implemented and annoyingly frequent. The back-touch is used to climb up ropes which is awkward and over complicated, the motion-controls are used to balance on "slippery" planks and a perceptive Drake utters "aww shit" every time this happens and I couldn't agree more. The Motion controls are also (optionally) used to finesse your aiming buts its unnecessary and largely ineffective. There are some onscreen touch screen prompts as well, sometimes it just to inform you of a nearby collectible or a wonderful vista you can take a picture of, once again using the motion controls. But the onscreen swipe-prompts also take the place of button-prompts forcing you to quickly recreate the motion with your finger to save Drake from plummeting to his death or punching a dude in the face. Again all of these features feel excessive and only serve to hurt the experience by adding layers to what was initially a simple mechanic.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss manages to be an impressive showcase for what the Vita can do and its a faithful recreation of the Uncharted series. Unfortunately it also disappoints on both fronts cramming in too many features that could have been more elegantly implemented and generally failing to recreate the enormous scope and fun adventurous feeling of the mainline Uncharted games. Golden Abyss is a good game but some unfortunate design choices meant to show off the Vita hardware only hurt the overall experience. Golden Abyss is most comparable to the first Uncharted, both bolt on clumsy hardware features for the sake of bullet-points on the back of the box, both feature a single environment stretched to its creative ends, and both show great promise of future sequels. As a launch game for the Vita you can do no better but don't expect it to rival the impeccable feats the later entry Uncharted games seemed to pull of with ease.

(3 out of 5)