An early contender for Game of the Year has got to be Naughty Dog's action/adventure sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. With an average Metacritic score of 97, the PS3 exclusive has been nearly universally praised by critics and gamers as being as close to a perfect gaming experience as the public has seen in quite some time. Released shortly after the PS3 Slim and just at the beginning of the holiday sales season, many predict that it will go toe-to-toe with games like Modern Warfare 2, Assassin's Creed 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii for the season's must-have game. In a telephone conversation with IndustryGamers, Naughty Dog's Creative Director Amy Hennig stated that the game is already surpassing the developer's expectations.

"I would definitely say it's exceeding expectations. Being in the industry for a while you learn to try to manage your expectations because you'd rather be surprised with good news than disappointed. It's a tough business, but from the early numbers I've seen getting reported back it's exceeded any estimates we had internally, and it's certainly outsold the first game by many, many times. That and the critical reception so far has been really gratifying."

Hennig went on to say that since the game is selling so well, the promised DLC may come sooner than expected, and will be out before the year is over. While not specifically saying what the downloadable addtions would bring, she did give some tantalizing tidbits about what may be included, and assured the world that Naughty Dog won't treat DLC as an afterthought:

"We're working on that now, and what we're prepared to say is that there will be DLC available before the end of the year. Without going into specifics, it'll involve new maps, new characters, things like that. Some of it will be free of charge and some of it will be purchasable. We've got a lot of people on the team working on this stuff, some really cool stuff that people will be excited about. So we're definitely taking it very seriously."

As Sarah mentioned in her review, Uncharted 2 has that distinctive "one more chapter" feel that only the great games pull off so easily. So to know that we're going to see more of Nathan Drake before the year's end is really just the icing on an already delicious cake.