Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

"I'm sorry, do you have a plan to go with that grenade?" -Nathan Drake

I recently bought Uncharted 2 because a friend of mine wanted to be able to play online with me on the Ps3. We both didn't have any online co-op games, and after some extensive research we decided this game sounded promising. I never considered that I'd try the story mode, I'm not a shooting game fan, and they've never held my interest.

It was a fluke that I decided to try the actual game itself, and I LOVED every second of it. From the very beginning to the last chapter I was enraptured by the story. The main character is a fortune hunter, Nathan (Nate) Drake, who has given up the life. However, two old friends show up with information on Marco Polo's lost fleet and the legend of the Cintamani Stone. Nate embarks on a quest to find Shambala which supposedly holds this legendary stone.

From the second you press "Start Game" you're thrown into the action.

The opening scene has Nate waking up terribly wounded in a wrecked train car that's about to fall off a cliff. You're drawn into Nate's world of betrayal, intrigue, adventure, and excitement.

One of the best parts about this game is the fact that you never feel like you're repeating yourself. In many games you'll go to a new location and it feels the same as the previous one with just a few variations in the appearance. Every chapter you end up doing something different. Whether you're saving yourself from a falling train, to stealth missions in a museum, to swinging across a giant cliff. The gameplay doesn't get stale.

The only thing that works the same throughout the game is the gunfighting, but they managed to keep it lively enough with different formations, and the way the enemy would attack that you hardly felt fatigued from repeating the process.

The story is full of intrigue and just enough mystery you keep you interested but not confused. So many games bog you down with technical jargon and complicated names that you can get confused and lost. I never once got lost in the leaps of logic, and could easily follow and it kept me eagerly ready to continue in the story to find out more. The cast of characters were all really fun and fleshed out. Nate is a fantastic hero, I love that he manages to be both the hero and the anti-hero (because a treasure thief isn't exactly a good guy). His dry sense of humor, and his own set of morals makes him a very likeable character. The two women in his life are fun additions to the story as well, where I was expecting Chloe to just be annoying fanservice she turned out to be an interesting character. They manage to make you never sure who's side she's going to be on. And Elena's history with Nate creates a fun chemistry when they're together, and their witty banter (at the worst times) helps lighten some serious moments. Even the villain was extremely well done, they managed to make Lazarevic seem extremely evil without making him too cliche'.

The dialogue was FANTASTIC, and so was the voice acting. It was extremely easy to forget you were playing a game. The cut scenes made it feel like a movie at times, but they weren't intrusive enough to have you wondering when you'd get back to playing the actual game.

I could go on forever about how wonderful this game is. The online gameplay is really fun, but I don't have anything to compare it to so you can't count on me for that.

I'm mad at myself that I haven't played the first one, but I'll be fixing that shortly. (Ordered the first one off Amazon tonight!) I look forward to getting some backstory, and getting to know this cast of characters even more.

If you have a ps3 and you haven't played Uncharted 2, GO BUY IT NOW. Believe me. It's worth it.

"I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed." Marco Polo