For those bent on seeing a reinvention of the way game stories are conveyed, Uncharted 2’s continued cinematic ambition will leave few convinced. To be sure, this is developer Naughty Dog’s evermore realised attempt at replicating film; peerlessly acted and its action keenly staged.

Similar praise was heaped on its predecessor, too, but its success was only in part. Because if last year’s Metal Gear Solid 4 represents everything wrong with the videogame cinematic, relegating fun to non-interactive form, then Uncharted 2 represents everything right. Rarely has a film fit so harmoniously within a game, neither part stepping on the other’s heels.

Certainly its success hinges on the promise that anything you’d expect to do as Nathan Drake, you can. From being shook up in the snow globe-like chaos of a toppling building, to a cat-and-mouse escape from a hulking tank, the game is full of thrilling play that a lesser game would sterilise with a cutscene.

Indeed, scripted scenes are easily contrived, but disbelief can be effortlessly suspended by an accomplished sense of peril and drama – of which Naughty Dog has no deficiency. From battling a helicopter in a tangled urban sprawl, vaguely reminiscent of Half-Life 2’s chase in City 17, to a narrow corridor escape from a careening truck, evocative of Call of Duty 4’s flee from a downed copter, its set-pieces are of a class typically reserved by the likes of Valve and Infinity Ward.

Needless to say, this is linearity in the finest sense possible, made all the more impressive as Drake’s nimble frame is tailor-made for the open-world slums of InFamous rather than a game set so firmly on rails. In contrast to, say, Bionic Commando’s excessive flirtation with an open-world – fencing off levels with pretence and excuse – Uncharted 2 invisibly leads you from place to place conveying only hints of freedom and thrusting you along at a carefully plotted pace.

Even with locales far removed from the original’s dense jungles and deep caves, Naughty Dog maintains a mostly clear focus that ruined urban spaces don’t easily lend themselves to. Granted, some anomalous level design is near unavoidable for a character so adept – you can grab windowsill X but not Y – though it’s a fair trade in raising the tension through the virtue of diverse dramatic space.

And the emptied streets of a war torn Tibetan city are a fitting place for Naughty Dog to showcase gunplay’s refined adherence to the framework of Gears of War. With scoped rifles and riot shields, there’s a welcome if entirely expected variation that was absent from the original (as the slightly grating repetition would suggest). The incentive for Naughty Dog is broader, though, as the partially cleaned up controls and extended toolset have merited the series its first foray into multiplayer.

For competitive and singleplayer alike, the original’s clearly defined line between its various parts has been aptly blurred. In what’s easily the game’s simplest yet most gripping scene, you’re caught mid-platforming suspended on a web of street signs as troops of armed mercs converge from all sides. The only option is to hang on tight, twist, shimmy, and shoot in an elegant display of player skill – or, more precisely, a cunning trick of design which congregates several mechanics into a single space.

There’s no doubt that Uncharted 2 holds fast to simplicity and finds opportunity in merging its parts. But as its mechanics meet, there’s only so much mileage to work with in an overly long game. It eventually sputters on creative fumes as what seems like the final climax yields to another, padded with the game’s second crumbling bridge sequence and a buff but boring final boss (see Batman: Arkham Asylum and BioShock).

However, a precipitous fall in invention in its final stages is of little consequence when taken as a whole. Many developers have the ambition but lack the skill to reduce the cutscene to its sole purpose: furthering the human drama and stringing levels together. If you’re wondering why talk of Nathan Drake’s latest story has been omitted here, it’s because Naughty Dog’s ability to direct a stirring yarn is an empty revelation. Uncharted 2’s triumph isn’t its film, but rather its ambition to be one in videogame form; a clear distinction to make, considering it means playing begins where lesser games would have it end.