Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
In case you are lazy and don’t want to read the rest of this review – this game is brilliant! I mentioned previously, elsewhere, that it was better than watching the new Indiana Jones film. I recently watched it again and it was actually pretty good fun. This game is still better though. You feel as if you are playing through a mixture of a book and film. The story begins with you waking up with a bullet wound in your stomach in a train carriage that is hanging over the edge of a cliff. How goddamn exciting is that? Once you manage to escape the tale cuts to chapter one and you see how you ended up in that situation.
The story is exciting and well told. There are more characters this time, as well as the ones from the original. For a game it is surprising how much depth and characterization can be squeezed in as you blow the crap out things. The voice over acting is impeccable and it’s fun just seeing how things pan out. The characters develop and all have their own believable motives. The story is epic and you jet all over the place robbing from Turkish museums, shooting it out in a warzone, fighting on trains going from jungle to mountains, discovering hidden temples, and so on. Ostensibly you are trying to find Marco Polo’s lost treasure but the story develops into so much more.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was the first game I played on PS3 and I was blown away by the graphics and story and gameplay. This sequel has astoundingly been superior in almost every way. The graphics are the best I have ever seen. There are times when you just stop and gaze in awe at the scenery around you. There is a sequence when you are on a train as it goes from lowland jungle into the Himalayas and the surroundings are so incredible I actually got shot by a baddie who had crept up on me. I really cannot say enough about how truly magnificent the graphics are.
The game itself is similar to the first in the you spend a lot of time climbing about, and a lot of time killing literally hundreds of people. There is more this time though. You have to take down helicopters, blow up tanks, escape falling buildings, and generally get out of dozens of scenarios by the skin of your teeth. The shooting and cover controls are perfect and so are all the little extras like sniping and chucking grenades.
I cannot stress enough just how awesome this game is! You will probably complete it in 10 or so hours, but you will probably then go back and do it all again on a harder setting and try to find all the treasures and unlock all the extras.
You won’t be done then though because there is more. Uncharted 2 has the funnest multi-player action since Killzone 2. It is superb. You have all the usual stuff like capturing areas, dragging treasures back to your base, elimination, death match and so forth but as there is so much you can do, it is frighteningly addictive. The element of climbing adds so much more. You can also sneak up behind people and take them out ninja style. You can hang off a ledge and pull people over as they walk by. It is just joyous fun to play and the incentives are there as you level up and unlock boosters and weapons and so on. On top of this you also have co-operative play, which I just started playing today. These are like mini adventures with their own cut-scenes and quests. You play with two others and work as a team as you chase down a treasure in a war-zone or lost temple.
As you can tell, I loved this game. You will be hard pressed finding a review on the internet that doesn’t say it’s brilliant. In fact, you would find it difficult to find anyone that doesn’t think it should be game of the year. I think it should be.
Watch the trailer below. Then buy a PS3. Then get the game. (Even the trailer is awesome.) You can thank me later.
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