The speed bump in my road to Aion PvP has come. This past Tuesday I picked up Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and I cannot put it down. I’m about three or so hours in right now. That’s three hours of amazing story telling, fantastic combat, and eye candy that I had never yet experienced in a game. I had just come off of playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, which was an amazing game. I knew that any other adventure game I played would inevitably be compared to it. So far, while I loved Batman, this is edging it out in every way.

First thing you’ll notice about Uncharted is how beautiful it is. The level of detail in every bit of this game is astounding. You can stand in any given spot of the game and be in awe of the amount of debris around you as well as the lush backgrounds that really help immerse you in this world. One part that really took me off guard last night was during an escape I was attempting to make from a helicopter. It was shooting into the building that I was attempting to flee from, all while being attacked by armed thugs. It began firing rockets below my floor in an attempt to bring it down. Every hit from the rockets shook the building and caused all of the furniture, books, papers, and other random objects that filled the room to shift across the floor. It did it so realistically, that I actually stopped attacking the man with the gun to focus my attention on the physics happening around me. I’d never seen something so movie-esque in a game before. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I redid that entire sequence.

I was getting a bit perturbed for a bit with how many cut scenes there were in the beginning. It seemed like for every 5 minutes of on hands time I had controlling Nathan Drake, there were 10 minutes of cut scene. It wears down eventually to a nice balance of the two, and looking back, I really understand why those scenes were there. They do an excellent job opening up the games story while giving the player a tutorial without really shouting out “this is the damn tutorial, here is where you learn shit”.

Having played the multiplayer beta, I know that after I’m done with the single player element, I have something to look forward to. I don’t regret ever owning Batman, but a tricky thing comes when you create a game with no multiplayer. You don’t have good shelf life. I can’t see keeping Batman after I’ve beaten it, but I know Uncharted 2 will have a place in my library for a long time. Again, not to say Batman was a bad game at all, it’s an amazing game. In fact, I’d say it’s probably more amazing since they kept any ham handed attempt at a multiplayer side of the game out which could have brought players overall view of the game down. Ultimately, I’m just happy as hell that the PS3 finally has a multiplayer experience that can compete with the likes of Gears of War 2, which was one of the few reasons I wanted a 360.

I’m debating writing a ½ assed review for this game for two reasons. One, because it deserves better, and two, because this game has gotten so much deserved praise, that I’m really not sure that I could say anything that hasn’t already been said. I may end up just sharing some of my experience in the multiplayer game once I get done with the single player. Not sure yet. I’ll just state what’s probably already known to the general gaming populace; if you own a PS3, you need to buy this game.