Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of the big Playstation exclusives this holiday season and as such has received all kinds of hype. Even my mom, who doesn’t follow games at all has seen enough commercials to ask me about it. Sony and developer Naughty Dog have high hopes for Uncharted 2. The game even made WingDamage.com’s distinguish list of anticipated games.

Let’s get the gushing out of the way. Uncharted is a roller coaster thrill ride. It feels like an awesome Hollywood blockbuster movie. The game moves from awesome set piece to awesome set piece, pausing just long enough to get you to laugh before throwing another huge action sequence at you.

If you consider yourself a gamer you need to see and experience the train level. Drake makes his way over, through and around a speeding train while an attack chopper tries to murder him. This is just one of several moments throughout Uncharted 2 that distinguish it from other games.

One of the main reasons the game works so well is the protagonist Nathan Drake. He is genuinely likable and funny without feeling like Naughty Dog was trying too hard. Even when he is acting a little shady you find yourself pulling for him. The other characters also work well and add little touches of humor to the proceedings. The story takes you from Turkey to Tibet to mythical locales, and each one is gorgeously rendered.

The game is beautiful, and I don’t just mean in a ‘wow that game has a really high poly count or super nifty textures’ sort of way. Uncharted 2 is beautiful in the way a sunset is beautiful. The game takes you to all sorts of exotic locales and the views are simply stunning. This is one of, if not the best looking game I have ever seen. What really sets the game apart is the animation. Drake braces himself against walls, he slips, he stumbles, he moves more realistically than just about any other game character out there. There are a few moments when you’ll see the game take a little skip to make sure you grab the ledge but these are more for gameplay purposes.

Uncharted 2 can best be summed up as Tomb Raider meets Gears of War meets Metal Gear Solid meets Steven Spielberg circa 1981 (the year Raiders came out). I know that’s a lot of meets, but it really does blend together all these disparate styles. You want to sneak around and take out guards silently? The game lets you do that. You want to go all guns a-blazing? The game let’s you do that too. Unlike a lot of games that try to cram different style of gameplay together, Uncharted 2 executes each style to perfection.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune seemed to be broken up into platforming parts, then shooting parts, then some more platforming. Uncharted 2 does a better job of integrating the two segments together. At one point I was hanging off the side of a billboard trying to shoot hordes of machine gun toting bad guys.

My only complaint is that sometimes it is tough to figure out what Drake can grab onto versus what is background textures. I plummeted to my death a couple of times because what looked to me like a handhold was actually just a path to doom. It is frustrating when you are in the platforming zone, then suddenly plummet to your death because the game decides that you can’t hold those particular bricks.

The biggest surprise was the multiplayer. Matches were fast and fun. They play out like a faster paced Gears of War match with players lobbing grenades, taking cover and rolling around trying to shoot. The biggest difference is in the games verticality. Characters can jump up on ledges and shimmy to new locations which changes up strategies when you have to think in three dimensions. My favorite match type was Survival, where your team tries to survive wave after wave of steadily tougher enemies.

There is some talk circulating out amongst the interwebs that the Uncharted franchise is going to be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. I seriously doubt that any movie could really capture the intensity and fun of this game. When you play this game you will understand. This is my number one contender for game of the year right now. This is more than just a game, this is an experience. If you own a PS3 you need to play this game.