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Ah tax return time; Butt-loads of free money to spend at will. To ensure I’ve got the best game reviews for you, I just built a top of the line gaming pc, got a new HD camcorder, a studio microphone, and picked up a Nintendo DS and a Playstation 3, and with that, of course I had to pick up the game everyone and their mom’s been talking about, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Uncharted 2. If you haven’t heard of this game then likely, you’ve been living under a rock, and I’ve got to say I was blessed to have this be the first title that I got to play on my new system. I don’t know if I’d call it the best game I’ve ever played, but it is pretty damn good. Combining Indian Jones with Michael Bay, you’ve got one hell of an adventure ahead of you, so let’s check it out!

The game opens up with you, Nathan Drake, badly wounded on a train about to fall off of a snowy cliff. Having just taken some head trauma, you struggle to remember exactly what happened, so the story will flash back to a series of events over the course of four months. Basically, you were confronted by friends Chloe and Flinn to hunt down some buried treasure left behind by famed explorer Marco Polo. As you progress through the story, you find that you’re actually searching for the lost city of Shambhala and the giant blue sapphire, rumored to contain magical powers, contained inside. Through your adventure you’ll encounter love triangles, betrayals, old friends, crazy ancient creatures, and of course an evil military dictator running the whole operation! From start to finish the story held my attention and kept drawing me in, I just couldn’t wait to see how everything was going to unfold!

From start to finish, Uncharted 2 took me 11 hours to complete. After completing each of the game’s 25 levels, you can replay them at any time because each level contains hidden treasures that give you money that can be spent on various things like tweaks to game-play, unlockable movies and various costume changes to play with. For people like me who die a lot, there is a great auto-save system built in and you have unlimited lives, so when you die, you’re pretty much taken back to the same spot you died at. There is also a pretty good hint system built in that gives you a big nudge in the right direction if you are ever stuck with a puzzle or can’t figure out where you need to go.

As far as I’m concerned, Uncharted 2 is a single player game. While a multiplayer portion exists, it just doesn’t really make sense with the game, as it feels like it was added after the fact, which is pretty annoying. I have no problem forking out 50-60 bucks for a single player game as long as it’s good. I don’t need to have multiplayer that doesn’t make sense, just because it’s a selling point.

Being an action/adventure third person shooter, you’re going to have a lot of different game-play mechanics on your hand, which is great. As I played through this, not once did I get bored with repetitious game-play. Besides the standard run-and-gun game-play, you’re going to be avoiding traps, solving various not-too-difficult puzzles, and platforming your heart away as you hunt down the ancient city of Shambhala. The platforming gets much more complicated over time as the paths to your objectives are not always obvious. The combat can be pretty involved as well, as there are many ways of accomplishing your goals. You don’t always have to go Rambo-style on the mobs of goons, sometimes sneaking up and taking out the enemies quietly can be very beneficial, and sometimes, simply running away is the only option!

The puzzles in the game start out relatively simple as well, and also get a bit more challenging over time. Nate carries with him a journal of the notes he’s collected and you need to make use of it sometimes to actually solve some of the puzzles. Besides platforming, solving puzzles and shooting at enemies, you’re often presented with a variety of other types of game-play including jumping between moving trucks on a convoy, fighting your way to the front of a train and even carrying a wounded friend through the battlefield. All in all, the game-play is one of the greatest features of the game, as you’re never doing the same thing twice. Simply put, Uncharted 2 is just very fun to play!

Uncharted 2 is absolutely beautiful. The graphics in the game are absolutely the best I’ve seen on any console game ever. It’s simply remarkable how Sony was able to push their hardware this far. Aside from the beautiful landscapes and environments, the fluidity and realism of the characters are amazing. It is truly believable that you are wounded in the beginning of the game, and the way in which even you climb and platform is absolutely realistic. This game just goes to show how great graphics can absolutely immerse you into the story.

In addition to the beautiful graphics, the game’s soundtrack is also amazing, it sounds very Hollywood and it really makes you feel like you’re watching an animated movie, and the voice acting that goes with it is top-notch filled with racy dialog. After playing for a while I knew that I recognized some of the voices, and low and behold, Chloe and Flinn are voiced by the same actors as Morrigan and Alister in Dragon Age: Origins. They were great in Dragon Age and they were great in Uncharted 2!

Well after playing through the game, I understand why the box says it received 25 perfect review scores; this game is absolutely amazing. The characters are enjoyable, the graphics and sound are stunning, the game-play is fun and varied, and the difficulty is right-on. I had a blast playing through this wonderful adventure and I absolutely recommend it to all of you out there who still haven’t played through it. I really don’t have anything bad to say about the game, it’s just wonderfully fulfilling and totally worth the 50 bucks! Make sure to rate this video and leave your questions and comments below. Check back often as I’ve got a full lineup of big-name games coming up over the next few months!