Last night was my first real night of video game playing after our big cross-country move. I fired up Uncharted 2 and was forced to spend 45 minutes downloading an update, during which time I played some Dragon Age: Awakening on my PC.

It’s hard to look at Uncharted 2 and call it anything other than a great game. But I found myself repeatedly annoyed and frustrated with the game’s puzzles, camera angles, and especially the game’s controls. I hate running around for 5 minutes in a small room looking for where I’m supposed to climb only to receive a hint that I need to climb up to a ledge. Thanks. Might as well have had that hint read “win the game”. It’d be equally useful. I hate running up to a ladder and pressing a button to climb it only to have that button make me jump off a nearby cliff, falling to my death. I hate waiting 45 seconds for a guard to turn his back so that I can sneak up and mug him, only to have Drake dash to the other side of the doorway at which he’s hiding rather than through the door. A second attempt to go through the door made me dash back to my original position. It’s pretty rare that I get this far into a game without having gotten some basic mastery over the controls. And I hated some of the platforming for the same reasons that I hated the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I’d try a jump two or three times and fall to my death before deciding that the game wanted me to choose a different path. After a half hour of searching for another path, I’d find that the one I tried originally was correct. It’s just that the first few times, Drake didn’t jump hard enough or something.

I really want to love this game. I’m partway through the train sequence, which I rage quit last night at half past midnight after my fiftieth death on the same checkpoint. When I go back to the game, I’m going to try harder to enjoy it. Everyone else loved the game, why oh why can’t I?