Uncharted 2: Among Theives

I have to admit, after I purchased “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” from my local store, I was a bit wary that I may have just wasted sixty bucks. I never played the first one, “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune,” but from what I’ve been told, I know that it’s basically a mediocre Indiana Jones rip-off with pretty graphics. But I had heard good things about the second installment, so I decided to give it a shot. Good news is, it was completely worth the buy.
Let’s start out with the story. You play Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter and thief extraordinaire, with a witty personality and enough firepower to make John McClane from “Die Hard” blush with envy. He gets hired by an old friend to steal a lamp from a certain museum that may house the secrets to a lost fleet, belonging to Marco Polo, which was carrying a huge load of treasure from Kublai Khan, and suddenly vanished off the coast of Borneo. Nate is intrigued and agrees to help, only to be (kind of predictably, really) double-crossed by his friend, thus beginning a quest to find the treasure before the bad-guys.
But that’s not when we first meet Nate. Oh no, the game is actually a flashback, for the most part, and the beginning starts with Nathan climbing up a train that is about to fall off a cliff. And no, that isn’t a cutscene, either. You play every second of it, climbing for your life as pieces of the train fall off and break. Most of the game-play revolves around moments like this, where something incredibly exciting, and amazing to behold, is going on and you’re forced to continue climbing/shooting/running until its over, and I found my heart racing like it would if I were watching an action-packed movie. It’s an absolute blast.
Another aspect of the game is the gunfights. They’re large in scale, and the aiming and hand-to-hand fighting is smooth, which makes each firefight seem like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie, which I’m a huge fan of, so it’s awesome. The game keeps a T for Teen rating, so the blood is light, but that adds a bit to the style, focusing more on the acrobatics and the actually fighting, rather than how much gore is spewing out of a dude’s bullet wound.
Of course, all of this is assisted by the graphics-engine, which can be described by three words; “Holy Crap,” and “Awesome.” They are probably the best I’ve seen on the Playstation 3, with textures that look incredibly real and people who, while they have pixelly edges at times, look, move, and act as if they were actually alive. This all adds to the action scenes, making moments, like climbing up the train, so engaging and eye-catching that you can’t help but be dragged in. Also, when one of the ladies in the game kisses Nate, their lips actually pucker into a realistic kiss. I know that’s a weird thing to notice, but in most games when characters kiss each other, it reminds me of a little girl that’s pressing her Barbie-dolls’ lips together to fake a kiss, with a plastic “clunk.”
In conclusion, “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” is a fantastic game, and though I never played the original, if people say it was mediocre, than number two really makes up for it. It packs great graphics, great platforming, and a story that I really wish the new Indiana Jones movies would have had (maybe it wouldn’t have sucked then). The game isn’t that long, maybe only about six hours, but I loved every second of it and actually plan on going back for more.