Storyline and Setting

Picture Indiana Jones, the guy from Pitfall, and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider and throw them all into a blender and you have Nathan Drake of Uncharted, the ultimate treasure hunting, gun slinging, all around bad ass that gets the girls (yes, girls.) Drake and his older, cigar smoking side kick Sully manage to get themselves into a search for the long lost treasure from the voyage of Marco Polo. I won’t get into too much detail so I don’t give away too much of the plot, but it has many twists and turns and definitely does a great job of keeping your attention. Although it’s not all serious as you’ll find quickly that Drake and his fellow cast members are very comedic at times. I definitely found myself laughing from time to time.

Gameplay

This game has a great mix of game styles that makes for a very exciting, constantly changing realm.

1. Climbing: Drake just happens to be an amazing rock climber, among other skills, so a lot of the game is climbing from this ledge to that, jumping from here to there and hanging on for dear life only to pull yourself together and have at it some more. There are definitely point s in the game where it may take you a minute or two to figure out how exactly you have to maneuver climbing and jumping to get to the next area, so keep your eyes peeled and be observant.

   

2. Shooting: There are a lot more guns in Uncharted 2 as compared to the first. For me and my love of first person shooters and, well, guns in general I was definitely loving it. As in other standard shooters you can shoot from the hip or aim down the sights for a more accurate shot. Something else new they added was the run and gun shooting system. Of course you could run and shoot before, but Drake’s new trick is being able to shoot those pesky enemies on your six while still running forward. This definitely came in handy a few times. Another fun new maneuver is the ability to shoot over the top of ledges or to grab and pull enemies down to their demise into deep bottomless pits among other things while perched on the edge of a cliff.

   

3. Melee: I absolutely loved the melee system this time around. They made it very easy and rewarding to sneak around and take out pretty large groups of enemies one by one, completely undetected using a variety of moves from neck breaks to slamming heads into walls (niiiiiice). And to make things better when you successfully complete stealth kills the game will give you extra grenades or other weapon drops just following the path of the ninja.

   

4. The Puzzle System: There were a few points in the game that make you use your noggin a bit to open a gate or unlock some ancient sealed doorway. In most cases you use Drakes trusty journal (which actually has some pretty funny stuff in it if you take a closer look at some pages) to solve various puzzles or giant combination locks if you will.

   

5. Redesigned Cover System: The cover system in the previous Uncharted was pretty simple. Hide behind the wall, blind fire, and pop up and shoot while aiming down the sight. They made some minor tweaks to moving from wall to wall, sliding in and taking cover behind a wall, and jumping over and around walls and other cover. What they didn’t have before are the melee cover attacks. These allow you to grab an enemy either above or beside a wall you are taking cover behind and do a number of nicely animated slams or neck snapping attacks on.

   

   Final Thoughts

   On top of all of that goodness, the graphics were utterly jaw dropping at times. From the detail in the faces and expressions to something as simple as Drakes jeans getting covered in snow or water when he tromps through a stream or thick snow, it all just looked amazing. Uncharted is definitely at the top of what I personally have seen to come out of the PS3 platform. They really make for an exciting game that pulls you into the gameplay and story more than most games you’ll play. Big kudos to the voicing actors. I must say I was thoroughly impressed with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and am fairly excited to check more into the multiplayer aspect which from what I’ve briefly seen has a good number of game modes and maps. Bottom line if you don’t have the first one, pick it up, if you don’t have the second one, pick it up!! This is a great series that is on the fast track to becoming a PS3 classic flagship series.