Going back to play the Uncharted series was like cutting down the tree of cinematic gaming and looking at its growth rings. Compared to how thin the first game was, Uncharted 2 was a great evolution, but it's still pretty close to the center. You can tell that the developers learned a lot from their first swing at the genre, with an expanded, more interesting cast of characters, and one of the most legendary intros in gaming. The story brings you to a better variety of locations, the setpieces are more ambitious, and the shootouts are more interesting, addressing the problems with Drake’s Fortune across the board. However, with the connecting thread of all these elements still being a dry implementation of third-person shooting, it’s not the revolutionary step up in quality that would elevate it to a timeless classic. Instead, it’s the perfect period-piece for a moment in gaming history. Its successes are the highest out of all its peers, while sharing the flaws of a design that still needed years of refinement. Among Thieves may not be the best experience if you go in fresh, but there’s value in seeing the best of what 2009 had to offer.