The Uncharted series is without a doubt one of the most iconic franchises this generation and a real big reason to buy a Playstation 3. Uncharted: Golden Abyss moves away from the PS3 and onto the Vita to try to become the reason to buy a Vita, just like its console counterparts can single handedly sell a Playstation 3. But does it succeed in porting what makes Uncharted so great across to something so small? In short, Yes.
Golden Abyss takes place before Drake's Fortune, but is not a prequel. Instead it is its own self contained story, with a few pointers to what is coming up in Drake's Fortune. You play as treasure hunter Nathan Drake, a character we have all come to know and love. This time he is accompanied by an old friend called Jason Dante and a young woman named Marisa (or Chase as she prefers to be called), the two have brought Drake to an archaeological dig site in hope that he will be able to work out how they died and if it can lead them to treasure. Of course, Drake finds a grave marking outlining the location of one of the fabled 'seven cities of gold'. Dante has got what he wanted from Drake and so tries to kill him but due to Marisa still needing his help, Drake & Chase escape Dante and so begins a race to find the city of gold.
The gameplay is exactly what you would expect from the Uncharted series by now, surprisingly the jump from a console to handheld has not hindered it in the slightest and everything from the previous titles (besides grenade throwback from Uncharted 3) has made it into Golden Abyss. A few new things have come into play here though, features that utilise the PS Vita's motion & touch mechanics, most of which aren’t very good at all.
Lets start with the stuff that involves touching the screen. You can interact with pretty much everything by tapping the screen, you can set paths to climb, pick up treasures, interact with mechanisms & weapons and of course solve puzzles just using the touchscreen. The only features I enjoyed using the touchscreen for was the puzzles and picking up objects because it was easier to use the screen than the buttons on these sections. Everything else though I tried to use on the buttons as often as I possibly could because the implementation of touch really threw the gameplay off, the actions didn't always register quick enough and they felt detracting from gameplay, especially when you had a big arrow blinking on the screen to tell you where and which way to swipe/touch. The touch implementation was really the biggest drawback in the entire game, and it was a shame because if it had been implemented better it could have been a great mechanic.
The motion controls were easily the worst inclusion in the game, luckily they can be turned off but they were unresponsive, more time consuming than doing it normally and extremely inaccurate. Motion controls could be used for things such as aiming with weapons, getting drake to jump from one ledge to another and...well that's it, both things are quicker and easier to do with real buttons and were a waste of time implementing into the game, make sure you turn them off in the settings if you don't want to use them though, they are on by default.
Golden Abyss is very pretty. At first I had an issue with the look of the game and I felt that it looked cheap but they grew on me as the game progressed. The textures look quite rough and edges of things are jagged, but it all brings back the Drake's Fortune look of environments which makes the imperfections fit. Faces look a bit weird and I feel that they could have put a lot more money into making the game look less rough but its still a fantastic looking game. Light yet again makes the game look gorgeous, an Uncharted trademark by now and you can expect some gorgeous skyboxes & envoronments.
As for sound design, the soundtrack sounds very similar to that of Drake's Fortune which is never a bad thing and voice acting is yet again superb with Nolan north returning as Drake and Richard McGonagle drops in for the 2nd half of the game as the ever brilliant Sully.
Golden Abyss is not a slimmed down handheld spin-off, its a great addition to the Uncharted franchise that can stand among the main trilogy as an equal. Golden Abyss is a game every Vita owner should have, despite its setbacks and is an excellent game from start to finish in its 10 hour campaign.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss – 9/10
+More Uncharted
+Nothing Lost From The Vita Transition
+Great Graphics
-Plot Has Been Seen Before In Other Uncharted Games
-Motion & Touch Controls
