Uncharted 2 Notes

Wants to update as soon as I put it in the drive a 20mb patch takes about 5 minutes.
I choose hard.

We start the game with Nathan sitting is a carriage of a train, though something is wrong.
Nathan is beaten up and bleeding from a hip wound. He looks around and realises that the train carriage is hanging over a cliff, as boxes fly past him and the door of the carriage opens onto a thousand foot frozen drop.
We get control as Nathan hangs from the bottom of the carriage. We have to clamber around the inside and outside of the carriage as bits fall off and it slides further and further over the edge of the cliff. rails bend, rocks fall around us and Nathan is wounded and being tested to his endurance limits. eventually I get to the top carriage and we have to run through it as the whole thing falls over the cliff. Nathan has to jump at the last second to avoid plunging down with it. He lies exhausted at the cliff edge.
A flashback shows a dejected looking Nathan drinking alone is what looks like a carribean bar.
A man that Nathan obviously knows comes up to him and they get a drink and sit down. The man is called Harry Flynn and he has a business proposition. A client wants them to obtain a mongolian oil lamp, i presume which they will steal from a museum. Nathan tells Harry that it's a dangerous job and a three man one at that. Harry introduces Chloe Fraser who will be their driver.
Nathan is suspicous of why the collector wants a worthless oil lamp. Harry shows Nathan a piece of Marco Polo's journal which tells of secrets hidden in the lamp regarding the location of the lost fleet. Apparently Marco Polo sailed 14 ships loaded with Kubla Khan's treasure and all but one was lost. Nathan is definitely interested in the location of the lost fleet, if not the job for the collector. They agree to get the lamp and the location of the lost fleet and screw over the collector.
We are back on the cliffside, with Nathan staggering along amongst the wrecked carriages.
I find a man lying dead andd take his gun, there is also a treasure here.
We have to shoot a padlock to open a door inside a carriage.
Usual analogue sticks for camera and movement.
X is jump.
L1 is aim R1 is shoot
R2 is reload.
We progress through the wreckage and someone shoots at us, they are fairly easily despatched.
We are inside a carriage trying to get out when a tanker explodes and another carriage hurtles down the mountainside and smashed into the one we are in. Nathan is knocked unconscious again.
He flashes back to after the meet with Harry and it seems that Chloe already knows Nathan of old. She tells Nathan that she is purely in business with Harry and once they are done with the job she wants to split the money with Nathan and go off with him into the sunset. Nathan seems to be smitten a little with Chloe, though it looks like she is playing the pair of them.
Nathan climbs out of the carriage and back onto land again, this time he finds a dagger lying in the snow.
Another flashback, this time to the heist, The three are in a boat going in through the sewer pipe. They split up, Nathan and Harry into the museum and Chloe to cut the power as they enter.

Chapter 2 Breaking and entering.
We get control back inside the sewers with Harry on the heist.
This seems to be a basic tutorial on the platforming. X to climb ledges and jump.
We can hang on ledges and pipes and clamber along. Jump from ledge to ledge while hanging.
There are poles to swing on.
We are show how to stealth knock out guards by pressing Square when close behind them.
There are alarmed doors which need to have their junction boxes switched. You follow the wires from the alarms to find the box.
Flynn takes out guards and assists you, the a.i. is quite impressive, scripted, but nice.
The pair of you clamber around through windows and over roofs then into a huge courtyard filled with guards. You have to stealth knockout the lot of them.
Then into an area which is densely packed with guards. Flynn gives Nathan a tranquiliser gun to use on the guards.
We shoot them in two's similar to Army of Two but much more intuitive. Flynn simply shoots his target a few seconds after you do.
More clambering, including pushing a cart over to make a jump possible.
There is a section where you use a rope to climb higher then to swing from side to side to reach a ledge.
Then you have to wait near the tower until the lights go out as per Chloe's end of the job.
Inside the tower a cut scene shows Nathan smashing the lamp to find a cloth map inside. It is blank. Nathan burns the resin inside the lamp and the blue light it glows with reveals the invisible ink on the map. It seems the ships were hit by a tsunami near java and crashed aground near a large mountain drawn on the map.
The map talks of the cursed cargo from Shambala. Nathan is excited and tells Flynn that Marco Polo must have found Shangri la. Flynn then double crosses Nathan and leaves him in the tower with no rope to get out. He shoots a display setting off the alarm and leaves Nathan to his fate.
The area fills with guards on the balcony above us, laser sights fill the air. We are told to dodge using circle to avoid being caught in the sights. We have to run through a few area jumping and getting through manholes into the sewers. Nathan comes up through a manhole and into the guns of about five men.
The next cut scene shows Nathan in Jail three months later. Sully comes and bails him out with Chloe. Nathan is of course distrustful of Chloe. Sully tells Nathan that Flynn is working for someone called Lisarovich. They have found the ships and are working to find the Chintamani stone which Nathan tells us is a huge sapphire as big as a mans head.
Apparently it also has mystical powers.
Nathan needs to get into Lisarovich's files as he has the diary of Marco Polo. With this Nathan is sure he can work out where the stone is quicker that Lisarovich.
Chloe is to provide a distraction and Nathan and Sully are going to sneak into the camp to get a look at the files.

Chapter 3 Borneo
First session 1:15
Sully and Nathan are in a jungle, Chloe tells them to go to a charge and pick up the detonator.
Some armed solider types appear and it's our first shoot out.
We come to a camp and have to fight it out with the guards, then arms the explosives already planted in the camp. Which seems a bit backwards, why plant the explosives in the enemy camp and not arm then when they were planted, so that Nate and Sully wouldn't have to fight all the men and then arm the bombs to blow up the now empty camp.
We boost Sully up to a ladder to get out of the fight box.
Then a little interlude where we are taught some melee skills. When you are grabbed during a fight you press triangle to break out of a grab.
Some men are working on a generator and we follow the pipe from the generator to the camp.
A cut scene shows us that Lisarovich is a bad man, he is a huge military type hard man who guts one of his own soliders for stealing a trinket from the dig site.
flynn and Chloe are in the camp.
Flynn is getting an earbashing for not finding anything yet.
Nathan sets of the charges in the camp we came through a little while ago and Lisarovich goes to investigate as planned. We now have to get into the camp and find some info. There are of course sentries left behind. Sully says he will cover you from above with a sniper rifle.
We get into the camp by stealth killing a few guards and shooting the rest.
Inside the camp Nathan finds Marco polo's diaries along with a lot of other stuff relating to Shambala. Seems that the stone was never on the lost fleet. It looks like Lisarovich is looking for the trail to Shambala itself where the stone may still be.
Nathan asks Chloe via radio if Lisarovich has found any bodies. Seems he has not, which is odd. If 600 people were run aground here there should be some bodies.
Nathan thinks they went to higher ground to avoid the Tsunami. Our next stop then.
Soliders begin to flood the camp however and we have to survive as more and more of them flood in in waves. Grenades are introduced here. Tapping L2 fires a grenade, holding L2 brings up an arc indicator allowing you to aim them.
We have to take out the soliders, then assist Sully as they target him instead. Finally a machine gun nest in a tower must have a grenade thrown inside to blow it up.
We then follow the way up to the mountain.
Up the path we find a temple entrance. Chloe joins us.
Inside the temple there are lots and lots of skeletons all with black teeth. We get to wander around and find a piece of resin, the same blue glowing stuff that revealed the earlier text. We light a torch with the stuff and notice a trail of blood that glows bright blue in the light. Following it to a wall we get to push it down with sully. Inside we find more bodies and it looks like they were fighting each other. Nathan finds a chest, inside is a dagger like object which Nathan tells us is a holy object, not a dagger. A map tells us  that the way to Shambala can be seen using the dagger only in a specific temple in Nepal.
We are given control back in the tomb.
ON getting out Chloe goes on ahead and I am screaming at Nathan that she is going to betray them.
She comes back into the entrance as Sully is being helped up by Nathan and brings Flynn and some goons with her. Flynn gets the map and orders Nathan to be taken to Lisarovich. As they are being led down the mountain Chloe knocks down one guard and the rest of them help her with the other. Seems she wasn't double crossing them, yet.
We are now fleeing down the hill with guards on our tail.
A little fighting hand to hand and some platforming. Then a cut scene where Nathan and Sully jump a huge distance into a river to get away from Flynn.

Nepal.
Chapter 5 Urban Warfare.
Nepal is in the middle of civil war, which is perfect cover for Lisarovich to come in and tear things apart looking for the right temple.
Nathan is driving around in a jeep and is attacked by a large humvee. We get control after he is forced off the road.
We now get the scene that was shown so often before release. I know how to play this in my sleep.
Nathan shoots the jeep blindfiring and running towards the screen. It blows up.
We now make our way through the streets of Nepal, which are beautifully rendered by the way.
Some platforming in the middle of two fight boxes to get between them.
At the end of the second fight box we have our ass saved by Chloe who rockets a truck with an emplaced gunn for us.
Nathan realises that symbols on the dagger will reveal which temple they should be at. They need to be at higher ground to find the symbol, Chloe suggests a hotel which is the tallest building in the city.
We have a blocked door to bypass and must do some platforming to get to the other side of the door.
The street fills with soldiers as we do.
I fight the soldiers and then we are prompted to shoot the lock out to let chloe in.
We then have to boost  her up and follow her through some bombed out buildings.

Chapter 6
On the other side we come upon some more of Lisarovich's forces.
Chloe has a plan involving a grenade and we split up.
This is a fairly big fight box with a temple, and lots of buildings in an l shape. We ambush the first wave and then move waves come in from other directions flanking you. Making it impossible to stay put and forcing you to move and think.
Eventually I kill them all and we now have to climb up inside the hotel.
Once in a new guard is introduced, he has armour and seems to be only vulnerable to melee.
Chloe is trapped in an elevator and we must turn the power back on to get her out.
We have to climb through the bombed buildings making routes through the devastation. There are also some soliders to break up the climbing, something the first uncharted never did.
There is a swimming pool on the roof where Nathan does a Marco Polo joke.
Once up at the highest point you spy the temple in cut scene, however Lisarovich is already there.
A helicopter Spots you and it's time for a fight.
Nathan and Chloe take a zip line from building to building.
Nice scene of Nathan clambering accross a walkway between two buildings and the copter shooting it down around him.
We get to a rooftop being hotly chased by the copter.
Gunfight on the roof with the copter in attendance.
We make our way through the buildings inside and more men arrive to fight.
We make our way through the fight to a large room, the copter blows the wall out and while men try and kill us  the copter shoots rockets at the room, the whole builidng starts to come down around us and the only option is to jump through to the next buliding as the place comes down around you.
In the next builidng we go to the roof and jump to the next building.
there is more shooting and we jump from roof too roof. The helicopter turns up for a boss battle.
We have to shoot it with grenades as it circles the roof trying to shoot us. soldiers turn up to make it more fun.
Nathan and Chloe are split up when a zip line breaks sending Nathan away from her.
Nathan comes around a corner and bumps into Elena from the first game.
She is after Lisarovich and reveals he is a war criminal.
Chloe arrives and there is a girl spat, which is quite humerous.
Nathan wants to save Elena and Chloe is jealous.
A helicopter turns up and its moot as they have to run for it.

Chapter 7
They're coming with us.
We run from the helicopter into a fight box with an emplaced gun at one end.
There is some nice clambering to flank it.
Through the buildings to the other side, we see a tank below us terrorising resistance fighters.
We come into a temple courtyard.
Elena and Jeff are left in the temple while Nathan and Chloe examine a huge statue.
Drakes journal is introduced. Here we see a picture of the statue with it's four arms in different positions from they are now.
We have to clamber around the room until we get the arms arranged as the journal picture.
Once done a keyhole opens up and we put the dagger in and it opens.
The water drains from the floor of the temple and we get a new door.
Inside is a labryinth of tunnels and it soon opens out into a temple.
The floor collapses here and we end up in a spike trap, shooting the cogs off the wheels of the trap stops it killing you.

Chapter 9 Path of light.
Nathan and Chloe come to a huge room with a gold statue in the middle, the statue extends it's arms as the pair enter.
It seems we have to move mirrors so that an intricate pattern of light hits faces which then open their mouths for the blade key and bring the blades of the knife down.
When all three have been done by plaforming your heart out the blade drops onto the statue on the floor and kills it and it's mouth opens a door.
Inside in cut scene Nathan sticks the blade into a key slot and the circular floor moves to form a relief map of mountains and the beam of light gives the location of Shambala which Nathan marks on a map.
The fun ends as noises from above herald the arrival of the soldiers.

Chapter 10 Only one way out.
We make our way back through the way we came exploring the puzzle of the tomb only this time it's filled with enemies, including snipers.
When we get the Elena and Jeff's location they are missing. Outside in the courtyard of the temple we find more soldiers and a rather fine gungfight in the rain.
Once done we find Jeff wounded and Elena tending him.
Chloe wants us to ditch Jeff but Nathan won't.

Chapter 11 Keep moving.
We start with Nathan holding Jeff up, we move slowly and Elena and Chloe are doing the shooting. We bascially as the title suggests have to keep moving following the fairly obvious corridor as gunfights and rockets explode around us. We get inside a building and a cut scene starts. There is nowhere left to go for us carrying Jeff. Chloe is going nuts and Flynn and the gang burst in. Chloe points the gun at Nathan and pretends to be on  Flynn's side. Even Flynn is beginning to doubt her. Lisarovich comes in and shoots Jeff. He finds the map on Nathan's person and they no longer need him. Flynn is left to kill them. Elena slugs Flynn and in the scuffle they both run away.
We now have to run and jump through the area avoiding being shot.
Eventually the duo get away, Nathan tells Elena that he is going after Chloe and she is of course jealous and incredulous of Nathan's stupidity.
Of course she decides to join him on his foolhardy jaunt.

Chapter 12 Train to catch.
We have to fight some soldiers then clamber around some puzzles in the streets.
We end up on a signpost with soldiers coming from all sides. We have to do the entire fight on the post and clamber from side to side to avoid being shot.
Then we get to the trainyard.
Nathan is going to sneak onto the train and save Chloe and Elena is going to drive in and get them out of the yard once done.
Nathan goes into a train workshop and finds a train carriage, he undoes the break and it careers out into the yard. Which is no good as he is in it and it attracts all sorts of bad attention.
We have to survive in the carriage with enemies on all sides.
Until Elena drives in and we get into the jeep with her.
In cut scene the jeep drives after the train and Nathan jumps onto the train.

Chapter 13 Locomotion.
We get to clamber all over the moving train, inside outside on top. Dodging signals and fighting soldiers.
Then the helicopter arrives and tries to kill us.
We shoot it with a rocket and have to turn a wheel to open a door to trigger a rather dramatic cut scene of carnage.

Chapter 14 Tunnel vision.
We go through the tunnel fighting along the train, there are chaingun men to deal with, you shoot the straps on the logs to knock him off the train.
The helicopter needs to be shot down, and while we do so it's rockets need to be shot out of the air, we use an emplaced gun to do this.
We have to fight a boss type character.
Simply shooting and punching him, but he is much more resilient than the average characters.
There is a cut scene where Chloe tells Nathan to go and she does not want saving. flynn comes in and shoots Nathan in the groin, the injury we saw at the start of the game.
Nathan shoots some gas cannisters that are piled together and causes the crash we saw the aftermath of at the start of the game.

Chapter 15
We have to climb the train again, though this sequence is shortened from the first time.
Then we cut back to the scene where Nathan picks up the dagger in the snow. Lisarovich's men come looking for the dagger and there is a fight box here among the train wreck with waves of soldiers and some armoured men for good measure.
I watch a cut scene of Nathan collapsing in the snow in the middle of nowhere and being rescued by a sherpa type figure.

Chapter 16 where am I.
end of second days play 5:30

Chapter 16 Where am I.
Nathan wakes up in a village high in the mountains. A sherpa tries to help and assist him and gives him a drink, it seems he has been unconscious for a few days.
The sherpa takes him out of the house he is in and we have to follow him through the village.
The village is beautiful and children scurry around the stranger and cows moo at Nathan.
The graphics here really are beautiful.
The sherpa takes us to a hut and inside we find Elena. She is glad to see us, there is a bit of catching up and then Elena introduces Charles who has been living in the village since his own expedition to find Shambala failed. He tells Nathan who is fed up of playing the hero since Chloe rejected his offer of rescue that Lisarovich must never be allowed to get the Chintamani stone. He tells us that slivers of the stone have granted enormous power in the past to figures from history like Ghengis khan. If a monster like Lisarovich gains the entire stone then who know what devastation he will wreak on the world.
Nathan is still adamant that he isn't going on. Charles tells the Sherpa Tensi, to take Nathan to see what became of Charles' expedition. Charles thinks this will change Nathan's mind. Nathan reluctantly agrees.

Chapter 17 Mountaineering.
This is a trip though snow and ice filled mountain caves.
Jumping from icy ledge to icy ledge. Swinging on ropes and clambering around the walls.
Wolves can be seen tracking us from on high.
Eventually we come to the wolves slaughtered as if by some animal.
In the shadows as we watch nathan clamber in the distance an ape like figure moves. A yeti?
We come to a large area where we have to puzzle our way.
I find a gun on a body of one of charles's dead men.
The yeti attacks, an ape with goat like horns.
There is some shooting and some punching and close combat shooting as it grabs you.
Eventually when you have it's invisible health down enough Tensi stabs it from behind and it runs off. You then progress up into a temple like area.

Chapter 18 Heart of Ice
Inside the temple the game really does turn into tomb raider instead of tomb raider lite.
Only it's better than tomb raider as it doesn't leave you hanging for hours working out the puzzles and they are slightly easier and much more fun.
Tensi goes to one side of the temple as there are pressure plates which suggest this is a two man job to get to the secret of the temple. The temple is old but it suggests that it is a test for the body and mind. There are levers to pull and huge cylinders with handhold and blockages to negotiate.
Then we are into the workings of the giant statues, cogs and pulleys like the innards of a clock. Tensi goes to his side and follows you opening the way for you as you open the way for him.
Finally you both stand on pressure plates and huge statues lift from the water and make a bridge to the statue.
Inside the inner sanctum you find Charles Schafers men, all dead, shot by Schafer himself.
nathan find out that they were SS. The yeti makes it's presence known and it's time to go.
Only this time there are two yeti.
We  have to pull a lever, which makes an elevator come down from the ceiling.
We have to survive the yeti until it gets there and then get onto it.
As we do the yeti jump on and we have some quicktime and shooting at the yeti as it hangs on Nathan's foot to get away.
The lift takes the duo to the top of the mountain and we can see in the distance that the village is burning.
We cut to the village and Elena is herding children to Safety, Charles is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 19 Siege.
We now have a huge run through the village which is under attack from Lisarovich's men. The villagers are fighting back with crossbows and whatever guns they can take from the dead soldiers. Though the villagers are being massacred.
This feels like a corridor shooter rather than a fight box shooter, or just one huge sandbox fight box. Whatever it is it's great fun.
We get to Tensi's house as it seems he is looking for his wife of children, i'm not sure.
A tank appears and blows the hell out of the house as the duo dive for cover.

Chapter 20
Looks like a boss battle with the tank now.
The boss battle is a long affair, the tank essentially follows a script set by the position of Tensi. You follow Tensi to set points and the tank will follow you both. You have to shoot soliders as you go and jump around the roofs of the houses and run through alley. The tank follows and blows things up and uses it's machine gun. Occasionally you come accross rocket launching soldiers who when you kill them give up their rocket launcher with one rocket left. each time you hit the tank with a shell you get a checkpoint. Around four or five rockets and the tank blows up.
Tensi finds his daughter
Elena sees that Charles is being taken by the soldiers.

Chapter 21
Nathan and Elena give chase in a truck. We have a fun section where we jump from truck to truck fighting soldiers as we go. Occasionally the truck you are on goes on fire if it's hit enough and you have to jump to another.
You come to a truck with a grenade launcher and have a traditional if fun emplaced gun on a vehicle section. This does not go on for long and your truck is run off the road.
The bad guys think you have died, silly them, don't they know you are the heroes.

Chapter 22
Nathan and Elena track the convoy to a monastery and see Lisarovich being given the dagger and charles being led into the monastery.
We are going in on foot.
We climb up the cliffside and can either stealth or go in all guns blazing to the troops here.
Then up to the main monastery courtyard, here we have a large fight box with two stages. A river runs through it and once we have cleared one side we have to use movable cover to get close enough to deal with the emplaced gun on the other side.
Here there is a clambering flank position for the gun and a secret to boot.
Once you get to the gun more men fill the first side of the fight box and you get to give them a pasting with the emplaced gun.
Now we have more clambering puzzles in the crumbling monastery.
A locked door must be opened from the other side so more clambering.
We climb up around the frame of the broken down building and up into the next. It's filled with soldiers and we have a shoot out. as we near the bottom a rocket launcher solider becomes trigger happy and  the building starts coming down around us.
We now get a sniper rifle and fight back against the soliders.
An army of soldiers come at us accross the bridge and it's a hard fight. We then have to go up the inside of a tower as snipers in three towers across the way make it hard.
At the top is a sniper rifle.
A rocket guy is shooting at you and the whole tower is in danger of collapsing.
When you shoot him the tower he is in collapses.
You now have to take out the tower snipers as a hoard of soldiers comes across the bridge at you.
Then you cross the bridge and have a thrilling clambering sequence as it collapses.
Now a fight box with lots of soldiers.
We have to climb a little to get higher up the fight box and are now above where we last fought.
We get into a rectangular room with a balcony and it's a tought fight with soldiers from all sides.
At the top of the stairs we find a room in which Schafer lies injured.
He tells us that Lisarovich must be stopped. Lisarovich is heading for the tower, where apparently the dagger can be used to show the way to shambala.
We have some climbing to get to the rooftops and then somme fighting and climbing combined on the roofs.
We come to some soldiers shooting at something unseen. I bet it's a yeti.
Yes it's the two yeti. They are climbing fast and ignoring the men unless they get in their way.
We have to deal with many men in this area and then move onto the next.
Again a fight box with lots of soldiers and two chaingun toting men.
We climb a bit more around the crumbling monastery and find our way into the tower.
A cut scene shows Chloe Flynn and Lisarovich in the temple. They don't know what to do with the dagger and Lezarovich is getting sick of Flynn's excuses.
Chloe is left alone in the room with the dagger and Nathan drops in. She is relucant to give him the dagger but she does.
In this room we have a puzzle to solve. There are four stones to be placed on four pedastals. They are in our journal. Air fire water and earth are all associated with the stones and the animals on the walls. When you place each stone in the right place then another level of the puzzle opens up.
Now you have to rotate symbol wheels to the right symbol beside each pair.
The colours are as you would expect, apart form water which is clear instead of blue.
This had me for a while but once you see it it's as plain as day.
The dagger into the centre pedastal makes a ladder and a door open. The view outside clearly shows a large symbol on the ground the same as the pedastal in the room. It is obvious that Nathan has to now insert the dagger into it.
We zip line down to it and find some soldiers to kill in the large fight box.
Once done we get the dagger into the symbol turn a wheel that rises from the ground and a waterfall opens up in the mountains and fills up two channels that we have been seeing earlier.
I remember looking at the ornamental tree that was at the top of a flight of stairs into nowhere. Now we find the water rushing into it and opening up a door under the tree.
We have a zip wire and a fight box between us and the tree door. There are lots of dead soldiers littering the place.

Chapter 24 The road to Shambala.
Inside the temple are simple stairs down to some doors.
We come to a room with a blue globe in a shaft of light. There are daggers all around the walls. Turning a few at random triggers the globe to move, which seems to do the trick.
I don't know wether i got it at random or it wasn't meant to be that hard.
In cut scene Lezarovich arrives with chloe and Flynn and takes everyone hostage.
Nathan is forced to use the blue resin to reveal where in the wall to stick the dagger to open the way further.
A huge cavern opens up with a way across, as they watch the way moves to block the path.
Flynn and Nathan are sent to sort things. We have to clamber for a bit then get into a room with more sliding symbol puzzles.
The answers are as always in the journal of Marco Polo.
When the puzzle is solved the Yeti's turn up.
We have to survive for a set time period before Lezarovich arrives and saves the day with his sawn off shotgun.
The yeti are actually blue zombie like giants, Lezarovich calls them Scarecrows or guardians.
We progress into Shambala itself and it is beautiful, a hidden paradise of green pastures and temples.
Lezarovich is about to shoot Nathan when the natives turn up and are far from friendly.
Nathan and the gang escape in the confusion as tons of natives hurl poison darts at everyone.

Chapter 25 Broken paradise.
We are running as fast as we can while the world explodes around us. The soldiers are on our heels and the natives are on theirs.
When we run far enough a soldier shoots a rocket and the builing we are standing on slides down the hill. When we get to the bottom all the soldiers are dead and the gang are happily alright.
Chloe wants to escape and Nathan and Elena want to go and destroy the stone, an argument ensues and eventually Chloe joins them.
The inevitable fight with the natives occurs and they are hard to kill.
Lots of running and gunning needed to avoid their crossbows and anger them into coming for you by hand. Where you can run backwards peppering them.
Once you get one down you can pick up his crossbow which is an effective weapon. Another zombie appears with blue flame grenades just to add interest. Killing him you then have to clamber out of the area.
Blue resin seems to ooze from plants, shooting it clears vines from the way to proceed.
We come into a large temple area. We are allowed to explore for a while then the soldiers arrive. While we are fighting them the natives arrive.
One of the dead chaingunners weapons makes quick work of the natives.
We have to use Nathan as a broken counterweight to open a door.
We are then into the storm drains of the city. Fighting with the soliders.
Into a courtyard fightbox with more soldiers then pushing a cart up to a wall to get higher.
We now come to the temple where the stone is supposed to be.
Inside we have a large fight box with soldiers and natives in waves.
We climb up through the temple unhindered by anything other than stairs.
At the top we find a tree like statue with a huge stone in it's base. Nathan examines it and finds that it is resin and not a sapphire. He looks at the carvings and realises that the sap from the huge tree which is growing outside is the actual source of power here. Not a stone. the sap dries into resin and hence becomes stonelike.
Lezarovich has already been here and realised this. Flynn appears with a bullet hole in his chest, his reward for being such a faithful servant to Lezarovich.
Flynn uses his last grenade to try and take the gang with him and succeeds in wounding elena.
The gang go after lezarovich.
We get a long corridor type fight with soldiers.
Nathan tells Chloe to leave with Elena as he goes after Lezarovich.
She argues but Nathan ignores her and leaves the pair of them.

Chapter 26 Tree of life.
We go down a pathway and see Lezarovich and a few of his men at a large glowing pool at the bottom of the tree. Lezarovich drinks some of the sap and after a few seconds of gurning his scars heal themselves.
Nathan shoots the pool and it explodes killing all the  soliders, however, Lezarovich gets up and his wounds heal.
He comes after Nathan and we are into the final boss battle.
Lezarovich is invulnerable too bullets, however, explosions are another matter. There are loads of sap clusters and we must basically run around avoiding Lezarovich's shotgun shells, grenades and grabs. All the while watching for him to get close to a cluster and then shooting it blowing it up in his face.
Doing this around ten times eventually starts a cut scene.
With Lezarovich downed Nathan is holding him at gunpoint, Lezarovich calls Nathan a monster, and asks him to count how many men he has killed today. He tells Nathan to kill him. Nathan hesitates and Lezarovich laughs. Nathan stands back as the natives arrive en masse and rip him apart.
Nathan now has to run along a massive bridge which we saw in the distance earlier, the whole bridge is falling apart however, this is a fairly spectacular scene as the bridge really does fall  apart as Nathan runs along it. at the end we have a scene where the natives are about to attack Chloe, the bridge falling apart saves them but only just.

Nathan and Chloe take the wounded Elena out of shambala. Back in the monastery she passes out they fear for her life. Back at the village Nathan prays for Elena, Chloe sees and decides to bow out of the running for Nathan's affection. She leaves and Sully chases after her. Elena is getting better and they walk off into the sunset jibbering nice couple like dialogue to each other. The credits roll.

12 hours 41 minutes
42% of trophies on first playthrough on hard.