Eurogamer's Game of the Year 2009

"There's a guy below you, there's a guy below you!"

Kristan Reed edited Eurogamer for over five years and remains one of our most passionate and outspoken contributors. This year he reviewed Resident Evil 5 and, among many other things, played Fallout 3 long enough to cover The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

"As a piece of cinematic entertainment, I loved it more than any game this year," Kristan begins. "The characterisation is superb, the pacing is spot-on, and the action unrelenting. As a spectacle, there's nothing quite like it. Naughty Dog can feel justly proud of its efforts.

"But purely in gameplay terms, was it really that outstanding? The shooting mechanics felt resolutely old-fashioned, and the over-reliance on excessive headshots to bring anything down felt cheap, repetitive and eventually irritating. I kept wondering why Naughty Dog didn't go for something more flexible and interesting, such as allowing players to target limbs to slow enemies down. In many ways, it still felt like a game bogged down in early-decade design.

"And as for the platform-puzzling elements, I couldn't escape the feeling that Uncharted 2 was content to play itself half the time. Being nudged along at every turn, and being able to make hilarious leaps of faith - and succeed nearly every time - wears thin after a while.

"If the game did anything brilliantly, it was giving players the illusion of success, with none of the frustration associated with so many videogames. But with so many concessions to player skill now present, the challenge was utterly neutered to its ultimate detriment."

"Despite my prattling niggles, I still enjoyed the game immensely, but it was by no means as outstanding as the potential suggested."

"Yep, that's my blood... that's a lot of my blood..."

Tom Bramwell is editor of Eurogamer. He wrote all sorts of rubbish in 2009, probably the most relevant rubbish being our Uncharted 2: Among Thieves review.

"So, last year LittleBigPlanet, this year Uncharted 2. What price next year Heavy Rain? We shall see, but you can already observe something fascinating about the mythical console war: following 2005's grand old E3 faceplant, Sony's grand old fightback is being fought by sharing, accessibility and drama - a far cry from the shock and awe of Xbox 360.

"Anyway, Uncharted 2 is a game I would recommend to any Eurogamer reader, and I do. As others have pointed out, it is slick and easy to play, beautiful to look at and charming and funny to spend time with. It is, as the TV ads keep reminding me that I said, an 'action-adventure masterpiece'. It may be a game about running around the world trying to beat a mad Russian to buried treasure, but few if any games have ever combined the qualities with which it has been imbued with this much confidence, style and mass appeal - and I doubt many will do so again, either.

"All the same, Simon and Kristan's criticisms elsewhere today are all valid. The mechanics are old-fashioned - flashing hidden treasure, for goodness' sake, and clumsy and shallow combat - and at times it's second only to Ubisoft's flawed but well-intentioned 2008 Prince of Persia in holding your hand through grand platform puzzles, which you just as frequently ride along with as solve.

"And while Uncharted 2 is a breakthrough, gaming still does lack its Ingmar Bergman, even though it does - thankfully - already have its Ken Levines, Clint Hockings and Chris Avellones. It is easy to raise Uncharted 2 up to mainstream scrutiny and watch it thrive, but if this is to be our champion in the battle for broader cultural recognition then it is slightly depressing to realise it projects a medium that hasn't moved on very much from the days when videogames literally were just childish pursuits.

"But perhaps, in our desire to appear all growed up, we're forgetting a few things. It may be dull to applaud Uncharted 2's technical qualities - the fact that characters are able to interact convincingly with each other, even embracing and finishing one another's sentences - but these are qualities so rare that you might be better off looking for your own Cintamani Stone than seeking out another game to offer them.

"It's also attractive to describe Uncharted 2 as a matinee adventure, as common as muck, and it would be excessive to claim this is our Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars, but it wouldn't be excessive to argue that key sections could live comfortably in the same sentence as either, nor that getting even vaguely close to those would be a triumph. Just ask George Lucas how difficult it is.

"Finally, those disturbed by its success and the message it may be sending out - however benign and basically wholesome - are perhaps forgetting the game's ultimate comfort; the one section of Uncharted 2 that I would happily show friends and relatives who probably last saw me playing games when it was Super Mario World, and need an update. It's still my favourite thing in the entire game, and my most memorable gaming moment of 2009 from arguably 2009's best game: the bit where everything stops, and you walk through a village where nobody speaks English, observing people going about their lives and smiling nervously to the locals.

"If Uncharted 2 is a sign of things to come, I'm really happy with the smallprint on the signposts as well as the whopping great headlines. In our lust for subtlety and substance, we must not forget that its success and inherent quality is founded in both."