Pixelnauts.net

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves opens up with its hero Nathan Drake deliriously coming to inside the remains of a wrecked and motionless train. Struggling to gather his bearings, he rubs his bruised forehead just as a sharp pain quickly diverts his attention down to his abdomen. Clutching his gut, he sees his hands covered in crimson. "That's my blood?! That's my blood!" he exclaims, half worried, half confused; he's been shot. As if that wasn't trouble enough, not a moment after the realization, a barrel careens inches past his head and crashes through the double doors in the back of the train revealing a vast and snowy chasm. This train is vertical.

Before the immediate danger of the situation even has a chance to register, the train suddenly lurches backwards, throwing Drake from his seat and down towards the rocky abyss below. Frantically grabbing for anything that he can latch onto, he manages (at the last possible moment, of course) to reach out and grasp the train car's back guard rail.

Now, with nothing between Drake's feet and the ground hundreds of meters below the gameplay begins, and it's your job to scale back up the train and onto terra firma -- all the while dodging falling debris from both the cliff's edge and the train itself.

It's fantastic, edge-of-your-seat action -- and it's the game's training stage.

The heart-pounding opening scene sets the tone for what you can expect from Uncharted 2. Before you're through playing, you'll be leaping from collapsing buildings, scaling icy mountaintops, racing in cliff-side car chases, and generally swinging, climbing, punching, shooting, and just barely escaping all types of preposterously dangerous situations that'll have you reminding yourself to take a breath on more than one occasion. Uncharted 2 is a full-on action game, and it's action at its absolute best.

Although the pitch-perfect shooting, the vertigo-inducing cliff-scaling, and the huge action set pieces that not only look absolutely stunning, but are also shot with Spielberg-like skill, all make Uncharted 2 a game easily worth playing, they aren't the components that make Naughty Dog's latest game such an incredible experience. Uncharted 2 is so special because of the way that Naughty Dog has managed to fuse its cinematic and interactive characteristics together to make a complete gaming experience far beyond anything that has come before it.

Without getting into spoilers, let me give you an idea of what I'm talking about: in one scene you'll be controlling Drake as he's running along an urban rooftop scrambling to escape a pursuing helicopter (all in a day's work for Drake). When making Drake take a running leap onto a hanging sign, the following pre-animated cut-scene shows the floor buckling under Drake's feet just as they leave the ground. Without skipping a beat, you're back in control, now hanging from the sign, trying to figure out just what to do next. While it may sound trite, these moments happen in virtually every scene of the game -- without tedious loads or hiccups -- and add immeasurably to your immersion in the experience.