Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
System: PS3
Release Year: 2009
IGN Score: 9.5


Uncharted is a gaming series that follows treasure hunter Nathan Drake on his adventures looking for some of the world's most valuable and historic artifacts. Think Indiana Jones or Lara Croft but with less cleavage. Just a warning - some plot spoilers are listed below. I did not, however, reveal how the game actually ends. The following plot outline is mostly taken from the wikipedia article on the game.

The second version of the game revolves around the doomed voyage of Marco Polo home from China in 1292. Polo departed with 14 ships and over 600 passengers, but when he arrived in Persia 18 months later, only one ship and 18 passengers were left. Polo never revealed what happened to his crew or lost ships.

The story begins in medias res, with Nathan hanging off a cliff high in the Himalayas (see picture above). After you struggle to get off the dangling train, the beginning of the story is revealed through a series of flashbacks. It is one of the most memorable opening stages of any game I've ever played. Former associate Harry Flynn and old girlfriend Chloe Frazer approached him with a job to steal a Mongolian oil lamp from an Istanbul museum. Nate accepts the job when he learns that the lamp may lead to the treasure of Marco Polo's lost fleet. Harry and Drake acquire the lamp, which contains a map showing that the lost fleet had been transporting the Cintamani Stone from the mythical city of Shambhala before being thrown ashore in Borneo by a tsunami. Taking the map, Flynn double-crosses Drake, who is arrested and imprisoned for three months. Chloe, who claims to have had no knowledge of Flynn's treachery, asks for the help of Drake's friend Victor "Sully" Sullivan to secure his release.

Nate and Sully follow Flynn and his boss Zoran Lazarevic, a Serbian war criminal who is widely thought to be dead, to Borneo. With the help of Chloe working within Lazarevic's camp as a mole, they discover that the lost fleet never actually possessed the Cintamani Stone. They locate a tomb containing the bodies of Polo's passengers, as well as a Tibetan phurba and a letter from Polo saying that the next clue is in Kathmandu, Nepal in a temple. Flynn and his men appear in the tomb soon after and take the letter, while Nate and Sully escape by jumping off a cliff into a river.

En route to the temple in Nepal, the pair runs into Elena Fisher and her cameraman Jeff, who are tracking down Lazarevic to prove he is still alive. The four reach the temple and discover that the stone and Shambhala are in the Himalayas. As they are about to leave, the group is ambushed, and Jeff is shot by one of Lazarevic's men. Despite Chloe's insistence to leave Jeff behind, the group pushes on until they are caught. Chloe reluctantly pulls her gun on Nate to protect her "cover", while Lazarevic executes Jeff. While Lazarevic and Chloe leave for the train yard, Nate and Elena manage to escape just as Flynn is about to kill them. The couple manages to catch up with Lazarevic's train on a stolen jeep. Nate boards the train and finds Chloe, who is upset about Nate having taken Elena and Jeff along earlier and refuses to leave with him. As the two argue, Flynn arrives and shoots Nate in the abdomen. With no other option, Nate shoots a pile of propane tanks, killing Flynn's men and sending Nate's half of the train over a steep cliff, which is where the opening scene in the game starts.

Nate escapes the train and travels through a snow storm, recovering the phurba among the wreckage before falling unconscious. He awakens in a Tibetan village, where he is reunited with Elena and is introduced to a German man named Karl Schäfer. Schäfer tells Nate that the phurba is the key to finding Shambhala, but Nate tells him he is no longer interested. To convince him otherwise, Schäfer sends Nate and the village leader, Tenzin, to find the remains of the men in his expedition, who were looking for Shambhala and the stone 70 years earlier.

As Nate and Tenzin search the Himalayas for remains of the expedition and for Lazarevic, unexpected plot twists happen and to expose them here would be unfortunate for those who haven't played the game. Let's just say things get weird up in the mountains.

Uncharted 2 is often said to be the best game on the PS3 and I agree completely. It does almost everything perfect. The game is visually stunning and impressive, even cinematic. As mentioned, the opening scene where Drake awakens on a train hanging from a cliff looks and plays so well it is one of the most memorable opening scenes of any game I've ever played. The story is at least partly factual, based around historic people and events. I enjoyed reading and learning about things like the Cintamani stone as I was playing through the game. Overall the story is quite interesting and engaging. The acting in the game is excellent too, and the dialogue is witty and humerus. The game has two memorable game babes in it as well in Chloe and Elena. And they don't just serve as eye candy, they play important roles in the plot and more than hold their own in gun fights.

Uncharted 2 is mostly a first person shooter, but combines many other gaming elements around the FPS model and does so quite well. First is platforming. You do a lot of jumping around in this game from object to object in order to advance. The way it is integrated in the game makes it look spectacular, exciting (is he going to make it??), and natural. For the most part it is done well, but there are some places where it is easy to jump the wrong way and fall off the cliff, resulting in death. The other aspect of the game that is used frequently is puzzle solving. Often you will reach a point in a temple where you have to position a series of objects a certain way in order to open a secret door to advance. This is done well overall, though it isn't nearly as complex or impressive as the puzzle solving seen in the temples in the Legend of Zelda series. As far as the FPS goes, it too is done well though there are some points in the game where the fighting is a bit ridiculous. It's usually you and one of the girls versus 20 or 30 of Lazarevic's guys who have shotguns, laser site riffles, RPG's, etc. In addition they frequently have riot shields and heavy duty armor. Simply, you are pretty much always out-manned and have a major disadvantage in artillery. Sometimes this gets a bit old but generally speaking the gunfights are enjoyable.

Very simply, Uncharted 2 is the best game I've played for the Playstation 3. It has some minor hiccups with platforming and the gun battles, but in general everything it does is spectacular. It's a relatively short game, clocking in under 20 hours. It is well worth your time if you're a PS3 owner. You won't be disappointed.