Video Game Vintage Title: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is an action-adventure third-person shooter platform video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to the 2007 game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. It was first shown and announced on December 1, 2008. Officially announced in the January 2009 issue of Game Informer, it was released in October 2009.

A critical and commercial success, it was named by Metacritic as the most critically acclaimed game of 2009, and won Game of the Year awards on IGN, Eurogamer, Game Informer, Joystiq, Kotaku, Giant Bomb, AIAS, X-Play, Game Developers Choice Awards, and the Spike Video Game Awards for the year 2009. A sequel and third entry to the series, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, was released on November 1, 2011.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Plot

Nathan Drake (Nolan North) escapes wounded from a train hanging off a cliff, before acquiring a phurba in the snow. In a flashback, it is discovered some time ago that to uncover Marco Polo's doomed voyage from China in 1292, Nate agreed to steal a Mongolian oil lamp which belonged to Polo from an Istanbul museum, with former associate Harry Flynn (Steve Valentine) and old girlfriend Chloe Frazer (Claudia Black). The lamp contains flammable blue resin, which lights a map that shows Polo's fleet shipwrecked in Borneo, carrying the Cintamani Stone from Shambhala. Taking the map, Flynn double-crosses Drake, who is imprisoned. Three months later, Chloe helps free Drake with the help of old friend Victor Sullivan (Richard McGonagle) and reveals that Flynn is working for Zoran Lazarević (Graham McTavish), a former Soviet intelligence operative turned warlord, who is after the stone. Drake and Sully, with Chloe in Lazarević's group as a mole, go after it themselves.

Infiltrating Lazarević's camp in Borneo, they discover the stone remains in Shambhala, having never been taken. A tomb contains the remains of Polo's crew, where Nate finds a Tibet phurba and deduces that its carrier will gain passage to Shambhala through a temple in Nepal. Nate and Sully escape after being found by Flynn and his men.

Sully backs out, so Nate and Chloe continue to Nepal, ravaged by Lazarević's mercenaries in search of the temple. There, they encounter journalist Elena Fisher (Emily Rose) and cameraman Jeff (Gregory Myhre) reporting on Lazarević. The four reach the temple, where Nate and Chloe use the phurba to discover that Shambhala lies in the Himalayas. After he is shot in an ambush, Chloe insists on leaving Jeff behind, but Nate and Elena help him and are caught by Lazarević. Chloe switches sides to protect her cover, while Lazarević kills Jeff and gets the Shambhala location from Drake, who escapes with Elena.

Elena is skeptical about helping Chloe, but ultimately follows Nate. Together, they catch up with Lazarević's train on a stolen jeep. Nate jumps onto it and fights through to find Chloe, who refuses to join him as he compromised them earlier, before Flynn arrives and shoots Nate in the abdomen. Cornered by Flynn�s men, Nate causes an explosion which derails half of the train over a cliff, returning events to earlier.

Nate recovers the phurba in the wreckage before falling unconscious. He awakens in a Tibetan village, reunited with Elena and introduced to an old German explorer, Karl Sch�fer (Rene Auberjonois). To convince Nate to continue his quest, Sch�fer sends him and villager Tenzin (Robin Atkin Downes) after the remains of Sch�fer's failed Ahnenerbe expedition for the stone decades ago. Travelling through ice caves, Nate and Tenzin fight off strange monsters, discovering that Sch�fer had killed his men to protect the world from the Cintamani stone. They return to fight off an attack by Lazarević's men on the village, but Sch�fer is kidnapped with the phurba. Elena and Nate follow Lazarević's convoy to a monastery, where a mortally wounded Sch�fer dies after warning Nate to destroy the stone before Lazarević can obtain its terrible power.

Alone, Nate finds and reconciles with Chloe, who gives him the phurba. Nate and Elena then unlock the secret passage to Shambhala underneath the monastery, but Lazarević corners them. He forces Nate to open the gate to Shambala for him, but the group is attacked by the same monsters. Lazarević kills them, revealing that they are human guardians of Shambhala. After opening the gate, another wave of guardians attack, allowing Nate, Elena and Chloe to escape.

In the main temple of Shambhala, the group discover that the Cintamani stone is in fact a giant amber of the blue resin embedded in a prehistoric tree of life. The true prize is the blue sap of the tree, which makes its consumer nearly invincible, explaining the mutated guardians. A wounded Flynn ambushes them with a grenade, killing himself and seriously wounding Elena. Nate leaves her in Chloe's care and sets off to confront Lazarević. Nate arrives just as Lazarević drinks the tree's sap, which renders him nearly indestructible. Detonating the pockets of resin in the tree, Nate defeats Lazarević and leaves him to be killed by the guardians. Nate reunites with Chloe and Elena and they escape as the city crumbles under the explosions.

Back in the village, Chloe asks Nate if he loves Elena, which he does not deny, before bidding her farewell. Sully leaves a recovering Elena to Nate. The couple pay their respects at Sch�fer's grave before embracing.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Gameplay

Uncharted 2 is an action-adventure platform video game played from a third-person view, with the player in control of Nathan Drake. Drake is physically adept and is able to jump, climb, and scale narrow ledges and wall-faces to get between points. Drake can be equipped with up to two firearms � one single-handed and one two-handed � and a limited supply of grenades. Drake can pick up weapons, automatically replacing the existing weapon he was using, and additional ammunition from slain enemies. The player can direct Drake to take cover behind corners or low walls using either aimed or blind-fire to kill his enemies. The player can also have Drake fire while moving. If Drake is undetected by his enemies, the player can attempt to use stealth to take them out, such as by sneaking up behind them to knock them out with one hit, or by pulling an unsuspecting foe over a ledge from which Drake is hanging. If all of the foes patrolling an area are killed stealthily then other waves that would normally appear do not. Some areas of the game require the player to solve puzzles with the use of Drake's journal, which provides clues towards the puzzles' solutions. When enabled, a hint system provides gameplay clues, such as the direction of the next objective.

Reception
Uncharted 2 received universal critical acclaim, earning numerous "Game of the Year" awards. The first publication to review Uncharted 2 was the French edition of PSM3. In their review, they called the game "Long, visually stunning, deep and explosive, Uncharted 2 combines all the qualities you can find in a videogame, and more! A new milestone has been reached in the videogame history." The magazine awarded the game 21/20, a score that was reached five years prior by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. PlayStation: The Official Magazine awarded the game a perfect score. In their review, they stated, "Forget Game of The Year. This is one of the greatest games of all time!". The UK edition of the magazine also gave the game a perfect score, and Uncharted 2 was later awarded "Game of the Year 2009" by the magazine.. Later, readers of the same magazine voted it the greatest PlayStation title released.

Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe said

...no video game has ever done a better job of capturing the style and rhythm of the movies. The action sequences in Uncharted 2 look as if they were shot by a team of cinematographers, then edited into a coherent and thrilling narrative. The game�s storyline is trite, but a first-rate cast of voice-over actors carry it off with flair.

The Los Angeles Times review suggested the game would "fit better on a big screen in some multiplex", and also added that "Uncharted 2 is ridiculously immersive, so much so that you forget you are controlling the actions of treasure hunter Nathan Drake ... everything is done right." In a review for The New York Times, Seth Schiesel described it as "perhaps the best-looking game on any system, and no game yet has provided a more genuinely cinematic entertainment experience."

The game has a GameRankings score of 96.38% and a GameStats score of 9.6/10. The game also received a Metacritic score of 96 out of 100, making it the most critically acclaimed game of 2009. IGN gave the game a 9.5 out of 10, praising its "stunning visuals" and saying "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is fantastic", and calling the multiplayer mode "one of the best multiplayer experiences that you'll find in any game around ... it almost feels like Naughty Dog has given us an extra game for free." X-Play's Adam Sessler gave the game a 5 out of 5, saying that "Uncharted 2 has the best single-player I have ever played".

The game was criticised for some negative issues, such as lapses in the control system. The New York Times noted that "...its finicky controls can frustrate at times." Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer found, "There are ... a few occasions where the platforming lets you down ... despite the feeling you were jumping in the right direction." IGN described certain repetitive gunfight sequences as "a little aggravating" and complained about the "very linear" climbing sections, yet calling it a forced complaint.

The game was placed 19th in Dengeki online's reader poll of the best games of 2009, making it the only western game in the list.