Hong Kong edition Uncharted 2: Among Thieves comes out finally

Oct. 26, 2009 - PRLog -- http://www.gameyeeeah.com/uncharted-among-thieves-p-1700.html

Fortune hunter Nathan Drake returns in UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™, a pulse-pounding third-person action-adventure/shooter created by award-winning developer Naughty Dog.

Here, then, is the biggest PlayStation 3 exclusive of the year, and it has a big agenda: gunning for Hollywood, no less.

The original exceeded expectations – dismissed pre-launch as a Tomb Raider clone, it proved to set new standards for action-adventure games.

But Uncharted 2 marries everything its predecessor got right with the technological maturity that comes with being a second-generation PlayStation 3 game.And the result feels, to a greater degree, better than any game that has gone before, like a film in which you play the lead character. Which is something the games industry has striven to achieve for decades, but hitherto failed to pull off.

This time around, Nate Drake's darker side is on view, although he still comes across as an inherently decent chap, albeit one with some dodgy mates.

After a flashforward in which he has to climb a mountain to safety from a railway carriage hanging over a cliff, he hooks up with Flynn and Chloe (the new love-interest), who break into a thinly disguised Topkapi museum to steal an artefact which leads to Marco Polo's (alleged) discovery of Shambhala, aka Shangri-La. Naturally, things don't go as planned, but most of the subsequent action takes place in Borneo, Nepal and the Himalayas.

Uncharted's gameplay mix of shooting, Lara-style swinging and climbing and epic puzzle-solving is once more to the fore, but pretty much every aspect of the game which could have been improved has been.

The third-person, cover-based shooting engine has been revamped and is now exemplary, a modicum of stealth-action has been added to vary proceedings, the climbing and leaping is unhindered by unhelpful camera-work (unlike Tomb Raider), artificial intelligence is much more convincing, and the virtual acting is the best that has ever seen in a game.

Decent co-op and competitive multiplayer modes, meanwhile, keep you interested after you've completed the single-player game. Die, and there's no pause for loading before you resume at the last checkpoint.

The result is truly epic, especially when you take into account the incredible graphics and fantastically intricate levels. And then there are the epic set-piece missions in which, seemingly, Drake's entire surroundings are blown to shreds yet, somehow, he always scrambles to safety.

Uncharted 2 provides the perfect means of reducing any remaining throwbacks who still insist on maintaining that games are mindless to embarrassed speechlessness – if you know any Daily Mail readers, you should make showing it to them your mission. And, of course, if you own a PS3, you're going to buy a copy – it goes without saying.

http://www.gameyeeeah.com/uncharted-among-thieves-p-1700....