Uncharted 2 Day#5: Climb, climb, climb. Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Day 5 takes me up into a whole new location and establishes a bunch more mythology. There is a huge climbing bit in the middle which is fun and frustrating in equal doses the way these long climbing scenes can be.  The climbing scene is followed by a long fight scene through a huge location. That scene is fun. It’s a long session with some annoyance, but the narrative is past the middle point now, and the gameplay is solid and less cinematic than at other points in the game, which for me is a good thing.  Spoilers within.

Welcome to chapter 15. I climb up the train again, and then cut to where I find knife again.  Jeeps of enemies arrive, and I get control again. I stealth my way around to stealthtake 4 guys before I’m seen. That’s quite badass. I take down a bunch in the next swarm with gunplay and then die when a whole team  of armored guys show up. I die a few times because it’s LOTS of armored guys, but I do eventually kill them with a strategy of hiding and throwing grenades. By the way, there’s heavy snowfall here and the snow is amazing. I  climb out of the wreckage and there’s CS of Drake walking and then falling in the snow.  Somebody walks up as he collapses. We fade to black.

We come up in and Drake with some nepalese person, healed up in his house. He CS  gives Drake a drink and says something, but  Drake doesn’t speak his language.  He takes Drake outside in the village, and I’m told it’s chapter 16, subtitle “Where am I?” I’m following the guy on a walk through the town. There are some minor scenes along the way, and I stop to kick a ball to some kids and they don’t kick it back. It’s interesting — there’s lots of attention to making the town feel real that seems to have no gameplay effect whatsoever.  In CS, Drake finds Elena in a temple. She tells him he’s been out a few days, and introduces him to Carl Schaffer. Carl has Drake sit and explains he was also looking for Shambala; the dagger is the key to that place.  Drake is through with it though. Carl says that great leaders throughout time have possessed a sliver of the stone and it’s dangerous.  Elena and Carl try to convince Drake the gem is real, and tell Drake that Tanzin (the guy I’ve been following) will lead Drake to the old expedition which will prove it to him. Drake reluctantly agrees.

We cut to Drake and Tanzin in the mountains approaching a post. Tanzin tries to mime something and then pulls dagger and runs ahead. I get control as chapter 17 begins. I enter snowy cave, jump a bit, and find a body. Tanzin takes a rope from the body and we have to swing across a chasm. It’s a long easy swing. We go down into a pit and then squeeze through some tight spaces; thankful the squeezing is automatic. Then there’s a CS of us finding an abandoned camp. Tanzin takes another rope as wolf looks on. We swing across another chasm and do a few more jumps to get a narrow snow bridge where we find another body with a drawing of the stone. The bridge we’re on collapses and we run back to safety. Now I have to find a way around. I get boosted up on a ledge. The next step isn’t clear on this narrow high ledge, and I make lots of jumps to my death as I figure this out. Eventually, I see the place to jump and I climb over and around.  Once I’m on the other side, Tanzin jumps and I catch him. We continue going and there’s a set piece where we swing, and as I land the ground gives out and he catches me, making us even.

On the other side of that chasm, we find some dead wolves after hearing a weird animal noise.  The camera zooms out and as we climb in the distance, we see a shadowy unknown creature in the foreground. Very nice shot there. We enter a big snowy plain and have to get to the other side. I die a couple of times trying to maneuver around holes that I can’t really see for snow blindness. I run a different way and a cave-in happens behind me, so I guess that was right. I continue and find a gun on a dead guy. I use it to shoot through some ice to continue moving. I end up back in the plain to see a weird yeti thing appear before Tanzin. It beats him up until I get close and then it comes after me. It basically fights by closing the gap between us and doing one of a couple of patterns of attacks. The fight is a lot of running andI accidentally run off a cliff once. There’s lots of God of War style QTEs and close shots when the creature jumps on you. The fight takes me forever (I assume because I’m doing it wrong) but then I get to a point where the yeti thing disarms me but Tanzin jumps it from behind, stabs it and scares it off. We then keep climbing (with one accidental falling death), find stairs in a cave that lead into doorway and chapter 18.

Inside is a giant room with fallen columns and such.  Tanzin and I hit buttons on opposite sides of this entryway to lower some barriers and proceed forward on opposite sides of the room. What follows is a long set of jumps and climbs around this temple to get to the goal.  We reach a point where on each side there is an extremely long chasm with a set of three bells in a row high above. I die once from bad jump and eventually reach and pull a lever to lower these bells we can climb across to make it past the large hole.  The bells have handholds and barriers and turn slowly to make the jumping a little tricky. I die once on a bug on the bells (my character suddenly spazzes out then falls). It’s annoying but I make it. This is followed by a section of climbing around on all of these giant clockwork gears in which die lots of times when my jumps don’t land me where I expect. From there, I swing on rope to land on a ledge that collapses and run on to more wheels. I get stuck inside a wheel once (it’s a bug), but then finally get to another set of levers. The levers unlock a bridge on each side (one for me and one from Tanzin) and pull bells back up. However, the bells on my side fall and break my bridge, so I have to do a short climbing bit to get to the other side. I eventually get to buttons that cause a new set of platforms to rise up. I have to jump from one platform to another before a timer runs out. I die again from a bad jump and finally get to the center where Tanzin waits, having completed his own platform jumping. We hit our respective buttons on this platform. There’s a dramatic scene of final platforms coming up leading to the grand central temple.

We run into the temple (again gorgeous architecture)  and there’s a CS of the door closing behind us. We see the dead members of Schaffer’s expedition. Drake finds more resin,  and sees that the dead guy that had it was shot in the head. Drake finds a book with a life tree on it, which makes Drake realize that were SS. Schaffer killed them to stop them from getting the stone. We have to get out now. I find a lever which causes a platform to start descending. More yeti appears and we have to fight them off until the platform comes. We jump on it, and in CS Tanzin follows and Drake shoots a lever to make it go up. A yeti jumps on the platform as we rise, causing it to tip. I have to shoot yeti to dislodge it as it repeatedly hits me. I shoot it off, and we get to the surface. In CS, we see the village burning in the differece. We cut to arriving at the village, and see Elena when we get back. The evil client came here to get the dagger and now it’s time to fight.

This starts chapter 19. We run through village shooting the invading goons. I guess that was the point of the long village walk before. It’s hard to tell difference between shirpa and enemies, but at least I don’t seem to be able to kill the locals. I take down a machine gun nest with a grenade to get through the battle. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go next. I wander into a bunch of enemies, and die once when someone drops a grenade into my fist fight. Defeating those guy, we get to a building and Drake looks through his binoculars at Tanzin’s request. They see a tank pull into the village and jump from balcony before tank blows it to smithereens.

This starts chapter 20 which is lots of running from tank and shooting thugs along the way. It’s way too easy to lose track of Tanzin here. We come into a square with the tank and a number of small buildings the tank slowly blows up. I die lots of times from not having the right cover, and I don’t seem to be able to do anything to the tank here. I realize there’s a way to run out of that scene, and I get up on to the roofs. I try to bridge to another roof but it’s destroyed by the tank. We run from the tank, and the next couple of scenes involve  lots of running and jumping through sudden small holes in avoid the tank. This also means lots of dying as I get into a maze of corridors with the tank around every corner. Just lots of dying. I eventually get to a  ledge on outskirts of town and crawl around the outside, until there’s  set piece where tank breaks in above me to hang off the cliff momentarily. I keep climbing to get back to ground. Now the tank is chasing me, and I die a couple of times. I finally see Tanzin again, and together we dive  into a house where we kill some soldiers. I get on a roof top with the tank below and enemies on other roofs. I die many times trying to manage the two front attack. I finally clean up enough to run from vantage point to vantage point getting rpgs to hit the tank. Finally  I blow the tank up, and after all the running, I’ve got to tell you it’s a good feeling. Following this is a CS of us running to Tanzin’s family, who are shaken but fine.  They point to Schaffer being driven away.

Elena (who pops up here) and I get in a truck to rescue Schaffer from the client, and there’s a CS of the two them driving after the client’s motorcade.  I’m clearly going to take them down by jumping on to one of their trucks, but I decide this is as good a place as any to call the session.