The troubling implications of Uncharted 2’s distaste for genuine problem-solving, as compared to Assassin’s Creed II and The Da Vinci Code.

Everyone loves Uncharted 2. It’s brought in stellar ratings and multiple Game of the Year awards. Even the more high-brow game bloggers, who go out of their way to resist the blockbuster hype, have sung its praises. The general sentiment is that, if you like games, you should really like this one. A lot.

Much of this is well-deserved, as Uncharted does a lot of things better than most. For example: action game dialogue tends to sound like it’s delivered by newly brought-to-life mannequins, forced to read scripts penned by nerds who substituted midnight movies for college composition. To Naughty Dog’s credit, the characters of Uncharted sound like humans talking to other humans. The central love triangle of Nate, Chloe and Elena even achieves a degree of on-screen chemistry, which is probably this game’s greatest achievement. If there were awards for Most Believable Humans of the Year, there would be no contest.

Uncharted 2 also offers several of the most memorable chase sequences of the year. It’s not giving away much to say that in an adventure game, you’ll spend time fighting atop moving vehicles, barely making leaps across yawning chasms, or running for cover from an oncoming military vehicle; those are all part of the United Nations’ treaty on required action game sequences. But through deft use of motion capture and camera angle — zoomed in tight on a flailing Drake just narrowly surviving each narrow escape — Uncharted 2 makes these sequences look as spectacular and feel as fresh as the first time you saw Arnold gun his Harley down the LA River in T2. If there were yet another award for Most Exciting 90 Seconds in a Single Player Game, Uncharted would have to be in the running for that too.

However, a game is made of more than just dialogue and short bursts of adrenaline (isn’t it?), so it’s only fair to look at the bigger picture. Never mind the occasional moments of cognitive dissonance (Has any man in history ever almost-but-not-quite fallen to his death, only to be saved by grabbing a friend’s hand at the last possible second, as often as Nathan Drake? Has any supposedly nice guy ever killed enough people over the course of a few days to fill a Tibetan mystery temple, and still come out the other end, not only not a psychological wreck, but chipper enough to make cute jokes and get the girl?). For better or worse, these are problems common to many games, and a topic for a much larger discussion.

No, Uncharted 2’s most troubling element is its approach to puzzles; the game has an apparent distaste for genuine problem-solving, or ever making the player stop and figure something out. And its an issue made even more troubling by the fact that many players may not see it as a problem at all.

To elaborate, let’s compare it quickly to a few other historical conspiracy adventures: fellow triple-A holiday release Assassin’s Creed II, and for argument’s sake, the wildly popular book The Da Vinci Code.

Taking the ten-thousand-foot view, Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed have a pretty similar setup. Both are action adventures, pit you as a hero uncovering a quasi-historical mystery, with the goal of preventing evil forces from obtaining a powerful magical artifact. Both feature locations so gorgeously rendered it’s like leaping Mary Poppins-style into a postcard. Both do a respectable job of fumbling toward a more honest and mature representation of sexuality in games, and both games propel you forward by emphasizing their well-realized characters.

And yet the prevailing sense seems to be that Uncharted was the more accomplished game. While it’s true that it looked shinier, played more smoothly, and above all was more tightly paced — an encouraging trend as we see more excellent ten-hour games and fewer padded-out twenty-hour ones — it’s important to remember the central strength of games over films or books: that’s control. Control lets you inhabit your character: sympathize with them as you (and they) struggle, or identify with them as you make choose their path through the world.

Control in Uncharted, an extremely linear A-to-B-to-C experience, comes down to not screwing up when fending off soldiers or jumping from ledge to ledge. But there’s very little struggle anywhere along the way. The supporting characters can’t die (unless they’re supposed to, in which case saving them isn’t an option either; sorry, buddy!). The next handhold when scaling a wall is always clearly marked with nicely exposed, laddery bricks. Even the puzzles and booby traps in each ancient ruin Drake visits are clearly spelled out in his handy journal. Though the journey through Uncharted 2 is a thrilling one, the game leads you through it like a child being lead through a zoo; it’s exotic and exciting, but takes little effort to get from “Ooh” to “Aah”, and without any danger of the snow leopard devouring your little brother.

At least Assassin’s Creed II makes you figure things out on your own. Searching for glyphs on Renaissance landmarks takes work, and solving the puzzles behind them takes brains. As a result, every little clue revealing the underlying conspiracy feels like a small victory, not just a cleared hurdle. Instead of the Uncharted approach of 1) enter room, 2) follow clearly laid out steps to open passage, 3) keep on jumping and murdering, in ACII there’s a sense of discovery and achievement in every step closer to the truth. For games that center around mysteries, one would hope that players would want to do more honest puzzle-sovling, and yet ACII probably gets dinged for its mental challenges (possibly the most interesting part of the game), as often as it gets praised for them.

That, in the end, is the troubling part. Everyone wants to feel smart without having to go through any of those nasty neural processes that might slow down the roller coaster ride. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is massively successful for its pop-anthropology and twisty turny plot, while frustrating any serious reader or critic for its terrible writing and manipulative mystery. Like Uncharted, Da Vinci Code doesn’t create pieces of a puzzle for the reader to put together, but relies on a protagonist able to pull just the right answer out of thin air at every crucial moment, spoon-feeding it to the audience before any dreaded head-scratching has to take place.

Before crying foul that “Uncharted isn’t about the mystery, it’s about the action and the characters!” relax for a moment and re-read the beginning paragraphs. There’s no question that those elements are the focus for this game, and on those terms Uncharted 2 is a huge success. A milestone, even, in terms of production value and characterization.

But in terms of the bigger picture — of what games are and can be as they evolve — maybe the fact that Uncharted gets so much praise for succeeding on those terms should be tempered with some reservations too. We already have Indiana Jones and his bookish offshoot Robert Langdon when we want to sit back and enjoy an adventure. Though we should thank the stars that Drake is almost as fun to watch as Indy, and miles better than the dreadful symbologist we watched Tom Hanks try to make likable, that’s exactly the issue. What we’re mostly doing is watching. Not analyzing problems, not exploring, not piecing together a mystery, but pressing buttons to get through to the next cool moment, letting the character do all the hard work for us and letting us feel smart without having to be smart.

So between the two (no one should read or watch The Da Vinci Code if they can help it), Assassin’s Creed II is the better game for all its rough edges. And though Uncharted 2 does some things spectacularly, and may make for a fun ride, it’s not a ride we’ll be much better for having gone on.