Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an Action Adventure RPG game, and a sequel to the first Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. If you have played the first game before then like most gamers we have an expectation from Naughty Dogs, creators of the game, and Naughty Dogs did not just meet our expectations, but beat most of our expectations in the sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Uncharted 2 is a story of our beloved treasure hunter going around the world fining old forgotten treasures that most human believe were just myths. Uncharted 2 is filled with quite sneaking around areas, shoot out against large numbers of people, and hang off cliff sides, and solving puzzles, like an Adventure movie. At the end of the day Uncharted 2 the hero is trying his best to live another day without being killed by bullets, animals, mythic creatures, falling off cliffs and finally not getting run over by a truck this time.

The moment you turn on your PS3 and throw in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and press the start button and the screen loads you’ll be thrown into an epic movie scene. The scene look like a broken train with our hero on board alone and knock out of conscious and looking like he has gone through hell with bruises around his head and bleeding a lot from his ribs as if he was stabbed. While our hero is coming back to conscious he realizes what happening a barrels drops near his head with other debris and his seats breaks and falls back, while our hero instinctively tries to jump and catch the next seat above him, but loss grip and falls onto a railing nearly falls off to his death; but luckily he get a hand onto the railing which is at the back of a train that has gone off a cliff, and you can see the other half of the train on fire not too far away.  And this is where the epic movie scene ends and you as the player start playing the game and trying to save our hero Nathan Drake from the verge of his death, again.

There are many characters in the game that can be called hero, but one of them pushes ahead over the other and none other than the notorious, Nathan Drake. Nathan Drake the treasure hunter, handsome, smooth talker, lady chaser, and finally luckiest son of a bitch who just lives after the craziest events possible in the game, is our hero. Most people would agree with me when I say, Nathan Drake is the ideal fun, loving, treasure hunter you want to be, or be around when looking for treasure and adventure. While other hero characters such as Elena Fisher, Victory Sullivan, and lastly and the unforgettable Chloe Frazer. Elena Fisher the reporter that will do anything to get her story and is fighting for justice for the world, and lastly the love interest of Nathan Drake. Victory Sullivan the money lover, best friend of Nathan Drake helps him out of tight spots or Nathan help Victory out of tight spots either way they are great friends. And lastly the new character to this game is Chloe Frazer, a sexy lady who is a fellow treasure hunter and a thief and was an ex of Nathan Drake. But Chloe Frazer in the game is a double agent who is helping Nathan Drake, but is force to support the antagonist Zoran Lazarevic, a Serbian War criminal who is after the Cintamani Stone.

The game is based around one item in the game that everyone is after, the legendary Cintamani Stone of Shambhala or most common known as Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a mythic city hidden in the mountain of Himalayas. Everyone is after the Cintamani Stone because legends say that it can provide invincibility and possibly even give the possessor immortality. So what bad guy in this world wouldn’t want to live forever and be evil forever? The rest of the story and character development will be up to you to find out when you play the game, until then this is all you are getting from me, but there are plenty of obstacles and various enemies that get in the way of our heroes.

There are plenty of enemies in Uncharted 2 for Nathan Drake and his team to go kill. From the beginning and until the end of the game there are plenty of types of mercenaries that you will be forced to face. From regular mercenaries who are armed with Ak-47, to heavy mercenaries with heavy body armor and face mask armed with a shotgun, to the half mech human with a mini gun and loads of ammo on his back. Then there are the snipers in the game, which are easy to spot and kill on the easier difficulties. On hard and crushing difficulties you are just asking the sniper to pick you off in seconds, so unless you think you got a shot don’t put your head up. Then there are the mythical enemies in this game that are tough and fast, such as the Yetis. Yes I said Yetis, or more commonly known as the abominable snowman are in this game compared to the previous game of having zombies chasing you down. But when there are hundreds of mercenaries firing at you, or Yetis chasing you down you know that there is a big man telling them what to do. I am talking about boss fights if you didn’t pick up on the hint, but in this game there are not that many boss fights, but when there a boss fight you are usually a dual between you and your men, mythic creature, or machinery. For instance, I say fighting against helicopters count as boss fights, even other people don’t agree about them being boss fights I do because you are fighting one on one against them on a train and in the city. In the end you need a nice combat system to help make the fighting seem fair.

In Uncharted 2, the combat system makes the game very enjoyable. From the moments when you pick up your first gun you can tell it sounds like a real gun. The guns are very easy to use and have smooth shooting mechanic. Plus the grenades in the game are very easy to throw and are accurate; when it comes to load of enemy bunching up behind cover.  But don’t forget that if you are hiding behind cover the enemy units can all flush you out by throwing grenades at you. The cover system of the game is nice, but it has been used in another game like Gears of War series, but then again you can slide from one cover to another, but watch out it can get you into loads of trouble when you slide to your enemy cover. Even if you do slide onto the enemy cover you can always go hand to hand combat against him and knock him out. Sometimes you will not be in a heated gun fight, but in a quite area where there are guards, but you don’t want the alarm to go off, so why not just go behind them and break their necks instead of blowing their brains outs, plus it makes less sound and mess.  While you are not fighting though there are two things you will be doing, climbing and jumping or solving puzzles.

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, there are puzzle and they are enjoyable. Some puzzle will be quick and easy, but some will take time and need some time to think it through. The first puzzle you face in the game will take time getting there through the story, but technically it is the fastest puzzle to do, and simplest one. But the first two puzzles have to do with giant status piece and because there are giant status pieces you must climb around, swing around, fall, and look into your journal to figure out how to solve the puzzle. But once you finish with them they will only get harder and will take much longer to do. For instance, the Elemental Puzzle in chapter 23 of the game, you will look into Drakes journal at least ten to twenty times before you will solve it, because something is not obvious at all, but the game does give you a free be puzzle in the next chapter for the frustration you have in the Elemental Puzzle. When you are not solving puzzles you will be jumping around trying to get to one place to another and if you are not jumping place to place you will be climbing lots of cliffs, wall, mountains, and the falling train.

Overall the game does a great job blending the game in with a movie like feature, from the moment you started the game if felt more like you are watching a movie than actually playing the game. Even though you do plays more than watch the cinematic. But the video quality of the game is great, and the characters seem so realist that some people cannot tell the difference between real and computer generate anymore. The sounds in the game makes the game experience feel great, with rich sounds in the game you are always feel up to continue the game even if it you played through the whole night and it 5:30 in the morning you still feel pumped up and aching to know what happens next. In the end this game does deceiver a score of 9.5 out of 10. The only things I found that I didn’t like about the game was sometimes you didn’t know what to climb on and sometimes it take more than one try to make Nathan climb onto something. Other than that I suggest everyone has a chance to jump into Nathan Drake shoe and play an action adventure story of a treasure hunter. If you have not played the first game yet, I suggest you do before playing this one, you will be able to pick up some of the characters history together from the last one. 

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