It wasn’t until the end of 2007 that the PS3 showed its first piece of soft­ware that truly put it ahead of 360 soft­ware. Now, 2 years later Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is still one of the best look­ing con­sole games around; though it was plagued with some stiff game­play and con­tained few ori­ginal ele­ments. Now Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is among us, and sure it’s most def­in­itely a looker but can it rise above and bey­ond to be the best?

Story

The story picks up one year after the ori­ginal. This time player’s fol­low Nathan Drake’s adven­ture to acquire the Cintamani Stone before the war­lord Lazarevic can claim it for him­self. Like the 1st game, Among Thieves’ plot can come off a bit hammy and pre­dict­able at times, but the excel­lent dia­logue character’s, and per­form­ances make the story a superb joy and you’ll be very sad that the story will be over in around 11 hours. To move the plot for­ward are the afore­men­tioned new char­ac­ters. All of them are excel­lently craf­ted and cre­ated but the story never does answer how Drake knows so many of them already. Plus even though Naughty Dog said they were going to explore Drake’s dark side, it is barely explored at all. Sure he says some naughty words and swears revenge but this can’t hide the fact that he’s prob­ably a giant teddy bear. Aside from these minor inter­fer­ences, Naughty Dog has craf­ted a mar­velous single-player that many developers neg­lect in this age of video games.

Score: 9.4/10

Design

There was always a bunch of jungle in Drake’s Fortune and that was it save a few scarce times. Among Thieves ups the ante with a pleth­ora of ori­ginal loc­a­tions includ­ing a war torn Nepal city, the Himalayas, an ancient vil­lage, and a jungle-like-swamp. With these amaz­ing new places brings new ways to play in these play­grounds. Sneaking, ver­tical com­bat, and a new improved plat­form­ing mech­anic are some new toys for play­ers to try out. These bring new levels of depth to the game­play, and while it isn’t ori­ginal it works to per­fec­tion caus­ing the game to be one of the most pol­ished games in a very long time. Also Among Thieves presents Naughty Dog’s first ever attempt at a mul­ti­player exper­i­ence and it is such a spec­tac­u­lar first time that it feels like they’ve been doing it for years. Modes here are com­mon and you’ll find them in basic­ally every other game, includ­ing a perk like sys­tem called boost­ers. However it is all imple­men­ted well and usu­ally runs without a hitch. What is the most appet­iz­ing and unique piece of the mul­ti­player is the 3-player Co-Op mis­sions. This takes scen­arios from the cam­paign exper­i­ence but re-writes events to cre­ate these mini-stories with 3 people. The whole thing is writ­ten with new dia­logue that is fully voiced. This is eas­ily the best part of the mul­ti­player exper­i­ence. Among Thieves is a very well designed game. It may not stray far from what other games have been doing but it’s a well defined for­mula that will impress all play­ers.

Score: 9.1/10

Gameplay

As expec­ted Among Thieves fol­lows a sim­ilar pat­tern as the first game. You take cover and pop up to shoot. However a lot of atten­tion was paid to make it much bet­ter. It is much smoother to play now. The game doesn’t feel as stiff as it used to be and the way things are designed allow you more ways to play. Scope from a top a build­ing or lead the siege with a riot shield. Blaze a way wildly with an M4 or beat them into a bloody pulp. There are just so many more options to con­sider this time around. Vertical com­bat plays a small role but most of the times it will be tak­ing cover behind walls, couches, and trees. Some very awe­some set piece moments hap­pen that will cause you to change how you want to play (Ex: A heli­copter chas­ing you down a train and blow­ing up the car that you were just on). Aside from the gun­play, the plat­form­ing is the other game­play ele­ment that dom­in­ates the game. Naughty Dog has gone in and made it much pret­tier; how­ever it can feel very clunky and can lead to some frus­trat­ing moments. The anim­a­tion itself looks fant­astic and when you’re basic­ally jump­ing from one little thing to another it works without a hitch. However when you get into pre­cise plat­form­ing then you’ll start hav­ing prob­lems. Sometimes the game has no idea where you want to jump and some­times put you in danger or just send you to your death. Other times you could be star­ing around for a long time and not even be able to notice where you have to be jump­ing due to the fact that some of the ledges can be very subtle. This makes the game far more dif­fi­cult than it needs to be and you’ll wish you could be in the silky smooth gun­play sec­tions again. While it isn’t com­pletely ori­ginal, Among Thieves plays extremely well. The gun­play is fant­astic and feels much bet­ter than the ori­ginal did (try going back to Drake’s Fortune after play­ing Among Thieves and you’ll see). We just wish that some more time would’ve gone into mak­ing the plat­form­ing sec­tions just as fluid.

Score: 9/10

Presentation

I don’t even know what to say that hasn’t already been shown. This game is abso­lutely phe­nom­enal no mat­ter what way you look at it. Textures are beau­ti­ful and crisp. Animations are real­istic and cap­ture the char­ac­ter. The act­ors put in phe­nom­enal per­form­ances in both their phys­ical move­ments and voices. Areas look so real that it feels like they actu­ally took the place they’re based on and just pas­ted them into the game. Every last inch of this game looks fant­astic. It’s obvi­ous that Naughty Dog put a lot of time into mak­ing this not only a fant­astic game to play, but also a superb feast for our eyes to lie on. Even the simplest of details make it in the game, such as how Drake matches his body to the geo­metry of the art­icle he’s tak­ing cover behind. This is no doubt the best look­ing game on con­soles right now.

Score: 9.9/10

Final Thoughts

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an amaz­ing exper­i­ence from start to fin­ish. So much was added on top of the first game that you’ll won­der how you ever played the ori­ginal without these addi­tions. The game looks abso­lutely beau­ti­ful and plays beau­ti­fully also des­pite some of its sad flaws. The only thing we can say now is go out and buy this game!