Now if you have no idea or have never heard the game company known as Naughty Dog, then I fear you might be living under a rock. Naughty Dog started with a little game called Crash Bandicoot, which they advertised as “the Mario-killer.” Sure the game wasn’t in the same class as Mario 64, but it was a fun game. Since then, Naughty Dog has issued multiple sequels for the Crash Bandicoot franchise and soon began to create Jak & Daxter, which became just as popular and even spawned a racing game just as Crash had done. Never did Naughty Dog rest for a second, and the deveioper worked long and hard on a new franchise titled Uncharted, released in 2007. Uncharted became one of the most popular and well received games on the PS3. Without fail, Naughty Dog went back at it, and soon (well, soon as in two years later) emerged with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. In Uncharted 2, our hero Nathan Drake is challenged with one of the greatest mysteries of all, the lost treasure of Marco Polo.

In Uncharted 2, the player controls Drake (as you did in the other game), a sly treasure hunter who’s sort of a mix between Indiana Jones (a man who’s quick on his feet and knows how to throw a punch) and Ben Gates from National Treasure (someone who’s willing to go to great lengths for fortune but not overly cocky as to hate him like Nicolas Cage).Not only does he have the qualities of some of the best treasure hunters out there but he even has a striking resemblance to Nathan Fillon. You know the captain from Firefly, yeah him, just look at the side by side, they even seem to have the same outfit. Coincidence, me thinks not.

Drake is not alone on his adventure, he teams up with many different people from his past such as: Chloe Frazer, voiced by the mischievous Claudia Black who I’m sure you’ve seen from such shows as “Farscape” and “Stargate SG1″. Elena Fisher who is voiced by Emily Rose from “Jericho” and the “Ghost Whisperer”. Victor Sullivan, voiced by Richard McGonagle who himself has done many voice over work for shows like “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and Green Lantern: First Flight and lastly Harry Flynn is voiced by Steve Valentine.

Now I wanted to play the game but just never gotten around to purchasing it, well luckily it was my birthday and my sweet girlfriend decided to purchase it for me as a gift. One thing I noticed about this game when I first started to play was I didn’t have to wait for it to install any files onto my PS3 before I got to play it. That is one thing I tend to hate; depending on how big the file is, it can take away some of the urge to play the damned thing. Once the initial loading of the game commenced I was up and playing, climbing up the giant train to save my life and little by little the train begins to break down and inch it’s way off the cliff entirely.

Once the basic “tutorial” is over then you really start to get into the game and like me all I could do is sit there and eye ball by screen. The character models, the voice overs even the levels shocked me. The characters are crisp and clean; the motion-capture has some of the best sequences ever accomplished in a game, and the cast selection for the characters you meet in the beginning and throughout the game is just perfect.

The game takes you to different environments and players are never once encountering the same level twice. Each new setting is as different as the last, Aallowing players to explore jungles, dive into the secretes of dark caves, even dodge bullets in war torn cites. qnd there’s much, much more.

Never once did I ever feel that the story was rushed or incomplete, making me feel as if the developer just didn’t care about the people playing it. No, Naughty Dog really used their two years wisely since the release of Unchartered to really give us a game that had a strong plot and interesting characters , and could easily be mistaken for one of the best movies of the year.

Now here comes the downside to the game, which I find is worth mentioning: the roll. There’s nothing wrong with rolling in games; it certainly helps to dodge bullets. But when the same button for rolling is also the button for sliding, as well as  covering, it can become quite annoying. For example, I start to run behind a rock for cover, but when I run and press the button so I can slide into cover, I end up rolling, passing the rock and  forcing me to get up and run back, exposing me to danger. This can start to get annoying when they gun battles really heat up.

I can say that Naughty Dog you have done us, the gaming public, proud and I can’t wait till I see either a sequel in the series (which better not be a racing game) or something totaly original, because I know it’ll be kick as (unless it’s a racing game).

9.0 out of 10

PS Uncharted 2 deserves it.

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