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OK, Golden Abyss is flawed. The controls can be a little shaky. The motion/touch-screen controls are gimmicky and at the outset, it feels like a side story.

With that out of the way, however, we can get into the rest. Now, I’m about 8 chapters in, so I think that’s about 1/3rd. It’s a reasonable time to make some sort of basic ‘conclusions’. Beyond those issues listed above, Golden Abyss is the best handheld title ever. It’s gorgeous. Its voice acting is top-notch. Beyond the voice-overs, the audio is spectacular. It’s fun. It’s Uncharted!!!

The story, which loses its ‘side-story’ feel as time goes on, is pretty cool and very quickly I identified with Nathan again. It helps that they didn’t outsource his voice, as it returns me back to the series I adore so much. The tale of Dante and Chase (pretty generic adventure names at this point) is not bad. I kinda like this Chase chick and Dante is as sleazy as he should be. I don’t trust him and I’m curious about her. Perfect…they’ve pulled me into this tale 100%. I’m overlooking the downsides, because at this point, I haven’t a clue why I’m collecting all this shit. There are treasures and there are pictures (lame) and then these archaeological things and for some reason you have to clean them. Why am I cleaning a pick-axe? Umm, ok, and then there are other puzzles like torn-up sheets of paper and then the rubbings…whatever. They’re gimmicky no doubt, but they’re not painful. The motion controls are horrible. Umm…there’s a reason they were removed after the first Uncharted game.

However, I’m having a blast with this game. Playing with headphones allows me to hear everything in its perfect, high-budget glory. This is not the ‘ting ting’ sound of yesteryear’s handhelds. It’s amazing. The gameplay, while definitely dumbed down from the PS3 outings (no analog click zoom, no swapping shoulders, grenade tossing sucks) is still Uncharted at heart and it’s fun. I’m finding the dialogue with Chase interesting and Drake just mentioned how he needed to show something to Sully. I may have dissed UC3 a bit a few months back, but I love the world and the series. I’ve already thought about subsequent playthroughs to pick up all the stupid crap I missed.

Ultimately, there’s still plenty left. I plan on enjoying it as I go through the game. I’m pretty psyched that it has turned out so well and may report back with final thoughts in a little bit. For now, some cool artwork from the game. I captured these with the Vita itself. I love this system!!! Enjoy!

This entry was posted on May 22, 2012 at 01:59 and is filed under Blog, Games, Reviews, Uncharted with tags PSVita. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.