Another Day, Another Treasure

Is there truly honor among thieves?

When something is successful, it's almost guaranteed that a sequel will follow.

 With Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune being one of the most popular games on PS3, developer Naughty Dog immediately started working on the next installment. Now that the PS3 had been out for several years, the console was becoming easier to develop for, allowing Naughty Dog to take some risks in the planning process. They used, what was at the time, a brand-new development in animation known as motion capture. Individuals act out the scenes with a computer program recording their every movement. This allows for greater realism in facial expressions and body movements. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was in development for 22 months and was released in October 2009.

Set two years after the events of the first game, Among Thieves shows Drake on yet another treasure hunt. This time he's after the Chintamani stone, a lost relic supposedly located in the mythical city of Shamballa. He undertakes the quest with fellow treasure hunter and romantic partner Chloe Frazier. Along the way, he runs into his former acquaintance Elena Fischer, who is trying to track down a war criminal known as Lazarevic. Lazarevic is also after the Chintamani stone believing it will grant him enormous power. With the fate of the world on the line, the trio must turn myths into reality and locate the stone before it falls into the wrong hands.

This game starts with a bang...or rather a crash.

In my review of the first game, I mentioned that Naughty Dog seemed to be playing it safe with their story and that there weren't a lot of moments that added to its replay value. That is certainly not the case here. Among Thieves is filled with over-the-top action set pieces and engaging gameplay. Some may consider it too fantastical, but in a game where the main character is trying to find a powerful gemstone hidden in a lost city, that might be just what is needed. Although the villain is a bit of a one note character, the main trio playoff of each other well. The dialogue feels mostly natural, and the added movements and facial expressions make what any character is saying believable. The main narrative also has higher stakes than the first game, allowing players to be sucked into the adventure. It is somewhat longer than the first game, but only by a couple of hours.

The gameplay is similar to the last installment, mostly consisting of third person shooting action and intricate puzzles in the quieter moments. It did seem that there was quite a difficulty spike in the last third of the game. Enemies appeared in greater numbers and were often more difficult to take down. While a gradual increase in difficulty would be expected and rewarding, the sudden spike causes it to be frustrating. I had more trouble with several waves of generic enemies that I did with the final boss. The game's story does try to justify this jump in difficulty but that doesn't mean that it's enjoyable. This title was also the first game in the series to have a multiplayer component, which had active servers for ten years but at the time of writing is no longer available.

This puzzle requires players to bounce light around the room to open a secret passageway.

Traversal still plays an important role, but I found that I struggled more with that aspect in this game than I did the first. The controls require you to be precise and slightly miscalculating a jump could send you right back to your last checkpoint. There were times I thought I was going in the wrong direction because I kept failing jumps, only to realize that I was supposed to go to particular areas- I just needed to hit certain spots. It's also worth mentioning that finding your way through a level can be somewhat tricky as certain hidden pathways tended to blend into the environment.

Among Thieves was the perfect way to showcase how a sequel can build upon a solid foundation. Naughty Dog took what worked and made it more polished while also fixing what didn't. This game is still worth playing almost fifteen years later which is no easy feat. Naughty Dog was on a roll and Nathan Drake was quickly becoming a mascot for the PlayStation brand. But it would have been all too easy to end after only two adventures. After all, there were still more treasures to be discovered…