This past year brought some of the most impressive and epic stories gamers have ever seen, with the best of the bunch inviting us to step back into the shoes of some of our most well-known and loved characters. With Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale showed us once again that a point-and-click game can deliver a plot with as many laughs and surprises as any other game genre, and rekindled our love affair with Guybrush Threepwood. Batman Arkham Asylum presented gamers with an opportunity to do something many of us have wanted for a very long time: become the Dark Knight, and did so in a convincing fashion. In Assassin’s Creed II, Ubisoft moved the action from the Middle East to Italy, and through Ezio, managed to tell a much more personal and nuanced story. A lot of people will talk about the controversy of Modern Warfare 2’s “No Russian” level for years to come, but it’s also important to remember that the game had an incredible story of heroics, patriotism, and honor. But there was one game that stood above the rest by combining characters we know and love with a script that brought more thrills and surprises than any other title this year.

With Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog has successfully done what so many other developers have tried mightily to do for years: make a video game that is every bit as engaging (if not more so) than any Hollywood summer blockbuster. From the opening moment of the game, wherein we find our hero Nathan Drake trapped in a train that is about to go over a cliff, through each and every moment of play, Uncharted 2 weaves a storyline that is full of humor, action, drama, and surprises at every turn. By the time the story finishes, gamers will have been taken on a journey that would make any screenwriter jealous.