I remember it quite vividly. One day, when I was a kid, my dad brought home a VHS tape to keep me occupied on a lazy Saturday afternoon. He popped it into the player, and I watched in awe as the Paramount mountain logo dissolved into an image of an actual mountain with the exact same shape. My jaw dropped as I watched a rugged adventurer first pilfers a golden idol, then gets betrayed by his friend (“Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!”). What followed was an epic and exciting tale of archaeology and discovery that kept me spellbound for not just an afternoon but also my entire life.

I owe my current career as a screenwriter to Raiders of the Lost Ark as, in addition to my humanities-focused schooling, it fostered in me a love of visual narrative and a love of history. Being also an avid gamer, having played games of all sorts since Zork on the Commodore 64, I was also keeping a vague lookout for games that would capture the same feel as the Indiana Jones films amidst all my dealings with three headed monkeys and final fantasies.

I’d found such experiences over the years with, of course, the Indiana Jones licensed games and Tomb Raider, but, Fate of Atlantis not withstanding, they all felt… inadequate. Leave it to Kevin Butler to show me the way.

I was a bit late jumping on the console bandwagon, and as such had completely missed UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune. But after purchasing my PS3, finally, I started casting about looking for a good game to play. I found quite a few, of course, but the minute I saw Kevin Butler’s UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves commercial (you know, the one about the girlfriend thinking it was a movie), I knew I just had to get it.

And when I popped it into my console, I knew I had found the greatest Indiana Jones game ever made. Of course, this made me go back and get the first one, and my love for all things UNCHARTED was confirmed.

There is much, much more to like about Naughty Dog’s masterpiece of a duology than a surface similarity to the Indiana Jones adventures, and I am honored to be given the opportunity to write about them and share them with all of you.

I’m also on Twitter as @thegeenster, and can be found to occasionally blog at thegeenster.blogspot.com.

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