Addresses every issue I had with Drake's Fortune. And then some!
Among Thieves, happily, addresses (successfully) every single issue that I had with Drake's Fortune and turns what could have ended up being just a passable sequel to a good game, into a near-perfect follow up that will blow your socks off.
One of the things the game does amazingly well is grab your attention right from the start by opening the game with an event that actually takes place towards the middle of the story. This sequence is a mind-blowing ascent up a train car dangling off the edge of a Himalayn mountain and a gunfight with a squad of enemy mercenaries (with the occasional flashback intertwined). The ascent up the train car is phenomenally executed and as intense as any sequence of any game I've played. It is during the following combat that the game introduced me to the single best enhancement that this game has to offer. In Drake's Fortune, encounters with enemies always ended in a too-long gunfight with several waves of pirates (even though you were on an unpopulated, unknown island in the middle of the ocean fighting a rag-tag group of treasure-hunting mercenaries). But now, in Among Thieves, you have the option to dispatch of enemies in stealth, and the mechanic works surprisingly well. Drake is able to sneak around the environment, ducking behind walls and crates and barrels to keep out of the enemies' sights. When in range of an enemy, a simple tap of the Square button performs a context-sensitive stealth take down. These range from simply jumping onto his back and taking him down with a chokehold, pulling an enemy over a waist-high wall and beating in his skull, grabbing enemies around a corner and smashing their head against a wall, or grabbing an enemy's belt buckle while hanging over a cliff and tossing him over the edge to his death. There is a tremendous amount of variety and brutality in these take-downs, and they are a lot of fun to perform. Best of all, its possible to make it through most encounters with enemies without EVER raising an alarm or firing a gunshot!
The other major appeal to this game (as evident by its opening scene) is its epic action sequences and set-pieces. Inspired by Indiana Jones and other such action-adventure movies, every hour of gameplay has its own delightful events. And any time you're on a train, you know awesome stuff is about to go down. The train-climbing sequence at the beginning of the game is one example, but another instance of having to fight from the rear of a train to the front, car-by-car, is another. You might think jumping from car to car might get boring, but Naughty Dog managed to give each car a unique and interesting challenge.
The game is also blessed with superb production values. Visuals are the best available on any console, and voice acting is fantastic as well. The game takes itself a bit more seriously than its predessesor, so it doesn't seem to have quite as much humor and wit as Drake's Fortune, which is a bit dissapointing, but doesn't ruin the game.
Another problem with the game is that I sometimes got confused as to where to go next. I'm not sure if this is the result of poor level design by Naughty Dog or if the insane amount of details in the environment simply overwhelmed me. In either case, it is sometimes hard to tell exactly what parts of the environment can be interacted with (i.e. climbed on). Platforming can sometimes lead to cheap deaths thanks to an occasionally akwardly positioned camera, but overall still works very well.
While it still has some minor flaws, Among Thieves is a HUGE improvement over an already exceptionsl game in Drake's Fortune, and (In my humble opinion) single-handedly makes a PS3 woth having. Or at least, it makes it worthwhile to get yourself a good friend who's willing to let you play their PS3.