Apathy in the Uncharted

The low strings of the quartet draw loudly, tribal drums beat and rattles and more strings strung. I look to see white doves flutter from ancient statue to ancient statue, each one overgrown with a barrage of leavey mess.

Don’t get too excited. It’s only the main menu of a video game on my television screen. None the less, my experience in this massive third-world country only has added to me as a person, more so than if I actually visited the location the designer based it on.

I start the demo out of whim, but as the level starts, I realize I’ve played this level of Uncharted before. Must be that the monotony of the level that morphed the memory of it in my mind. The confusion rattles though, as I can’t seem to think of what comes next in the game, yet when it does, it’s as if I remembered the whole time.

My handsomely sought out main character, Drake, is waiting in the elevator with his busty sidekick, Sandra. Guns are drawn at the hip, the danger ensues as they must open a door without power. Drake, leaving through the top of the elevator, must find the box to start the elevator back up in order to help his vulnerable female antagonist. Drake runs through abandoned, destroyed buildings that vaguely resemble actual human living space. Each room seems just the same as the last, only different puzzles to solve at the end of each one.

By puzzle, I mean finding the most obvious laid out exit, such as any open door (which fare to be few) or a long board that’s just asking to be jumped off of. Through each area, you’ll more than likely run into enemies whose shooting skills call into question their training in artillery. Men run at you with AK-47s and grenade launchers, yet you knock them out in one shot with your pistol, with its seemingly endless amount of ammo.

After seeming to understand the functions of the game, from moving around the environment, I question when the repetitiveness kicks in . In order to make the game more challenging, the “puzzles” seem to get harder, which just means that solutions are more dull and less obvious to figure out. Well, it gets frustrating when you don’t realize you have to stand next to a tiny machine to continue on rather than jump through the gaping hole in the wall, as if that didn’t work the last 20 times; or when I had been trying to zip line off of the building but had to stand at a 90 degree angle to get the button-prompt.

After having been pursued by more terror-dudes, I continue jumping roofs. We come to a board leading to each area, that even my cohort mutters the convenience of.

I finally meet the boss. Two more dudes in a helicopter. I grab a rocket launcher from an easy target I took out before. The entire time I focus on aiming the rockets, the helicopter seems to know exactly how to avoid them. As I’m running around, I keep falling off the roof. Seems as though my seemingly invincible character can’t seem to focus on two things at once; shooting and running. My enthrallment with the world of the Uncharted turns to an endeavor I just want to rid of, so I run behind a wall and pop a few rockets, finally bringing the helicopter down in flames. I wonder if I sit still, if the flaming chariot will turn over on its own, but the level of rubbish gameplay I can handle draws thin and I pop two more shots in order to finish the ordeal. The enemy goes down, and an advertisement comes up to buy the rest of the game for more action-packed adventure, yet my enthusiasm faded at a costly price of my time.