In the UK, exactly one PSP game reached #1 in the chart, and it was in the PSP’s first week. Sony’s PlayStation Portable launched with Ridge Racer, and nothing afterwards proved the same success on that criteria, although its Grand Theft Auto games did once ported over to the PS2. Over in Japan, meanwhile, the PSP was not just home to Monster Hunter’s monster success, but carried on racking up hits right into 2012. So it made sense that Sony gave the PSP a sequel. The PlayStation Vita added a touchscreen and optional mobile internet connectivity, was home to a lot of fantastic games (personally just playing Persona 4 on the go almost made it worth it on its own), and dropped the crass sexist advertising angle. And, in the UK, exactly one PS Vita game reached #1 in the chart, and it was in the PS Vita’s first week.
Sony’s changing priorities over time are pretty neatly represented in swapping Ridge Racer (a Japanese-developed racing series with arcade origins) for Uncharted (an American-made action adventure series with cinematic ambitions). Their portable versions work to the same model, though: new entries in an established series, cut down as little as possible so that it can feel like playing a console game wherever you are. Golden Abyss is a prequel rather than a continuation of the story from Uncharted 3, but it tells the same kind of pulpy exotic treasure hunting story with the same kind of cutscene close-ups and the same kind of vistas of temples and jungles.
The PSP Ridge Racer was based on games from the PlayStation some years into the life of its successor. Golden Abyss, on the other hand, follows games from the then-current console generation. It is naturally a fair bit more compromised. Levels stick to relatively simplified topography, with all your handholds marked out in gold so you can’t miss them. It avoids any particularly involved environmental puzzles, keeping its puzzles to touchscreen setups with all the rules already mysteriously figured out and explained, and more hints and assistance along the way than you could possibly need. There is a tile sliding puzzle in which you can instead just pick up and swap the tiles. Sometimes the rigidity of the insistence on sticking to the established Uncharted model borders on the perverse, as when it puts you in a burning building with a pixelly mess of fire effects.
Sticking to tradition is an easier fit for the story. There is a scenery-chewing bad guy, a Central American general who has almost certainly killed fewer people than Drake. Sully and new characters Dante and Chase each get swapped in and out of place to make sure Drake has one of them around at any given time to provide pointers in the right direction and, more importantly, a gentle stream of banter. In something which was very much not a baseline for games, it shows an awareness of cinematic language and narrative techniques. It confidently does things like have Drake say “I don’t need Sully” before rapidly cutting to Drake telling Sully “I need you”.
There are actual character beats and arcs. Not particularly strong ones, but they’re a start. Drake gets a lesson in the real meaning of treasure-hunting from Chase, who doesn’t have money on her mind and does it for the love. She also eschews violence, while conveniently relying on a series of men who will happily kill scores of nameless goons for her. Her personal family connection to the area is also used well to generate some emotion about her archaeologist grandfather, and less well as a shortcut through how much the baddies have a valid point in objecting to these Americans turning up to extract their gold.
Set expectations at the appropriate level for an Uncharted game, i.e. a more polished version of the popcorn fare Tomb Raider had got to right before Uncharted turned up, and this is a success. More than that, though, the compromises for the format are integral to why I enjoyed it the most of any Uncharted so far. It’s still many hours too long for an action movie, but its fundamentally different structure gets it out of the exhausting pacing of previous games. Uncharted 3 had 22 chapters; Golden Abyss has 34 to cover about the same length of game. It breaks things up into sections of climbing and shooting in a familiar way, but they don’t outstay their welcome. Reduced ambition suits an unambitious narrative.
It even makes some good use of the console’s unique features. Swiping across the touchscreen for quick time events adds a sense of kinetic action. Aiming grenades by touching where you want them to go is a fun superpower, and motion control aim makes sniping work better too. At one point Drake has to hold up some parchment to the light, and holding up my Vita to the train window was an unexpected moment of meta revelation to match some of the best bits of DS equivalent The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
Golden Abyss really worked for me. I am not a natural Uncharted fan, though. Much of what I went on to love my Vita for — indie puzzle platformers, visual novels, Gravity Rush — was not the route to the UK mainstream. Its problem was that when it came to the things which were meant to be that route, none of them took off either. By some accounts Golden Abyss remained the UK’s bestselling game on the PS Vita for its whole lifetime, followed by fellow launch title FIFA Football. Much had changed in the six and a half years since the PSP arrived, but the Vita’s story ended up following a path as well-trodden as that of Golden Abyss.
Top of the charts for week ending 25 February 2012:
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