Uncharted 2: Among Thieves/Broken Paradise

You've finally made it to Shambhala, and it is a treacherous place indeed. The local guardians don't care that you're basically on their side (you want to keep the bad guys from abusing Shambhala's secrets too), so you'll have them to worry about as well as Lazarevic's men. An interesting dynamic in this chapter, is that the fighting between the two other groups gives you the chance to sit back and watch or move around unnoticed. If there's one thing you should know about this level, it's to use the guardians' Crossbows against them. By the end of the chapter, you should finally understand the true secret of the Cintamani Stone, which only makes your plans to thwart Lazarevic all the more urgent.

Get acquainted with the guardians
You start out pinned between Lazarevic's men behind you and a Shambhala guardian in front of you. You don't have any weapons yet, so you'll need to just start running. Go straight forward into the ditch and up the other side. Keep running and go right around a broken wall, then cross the stream behind it and run up the steps in front of you. Keep following the path around a giant statue's head, until you can finally jump across a gap to a lower platform. You'll be swarmed by Lazarevic's men here, but just as an RPG gunner is about to take a shot, a guardian hits him and sends the missile into a support pillar, causing the whole structure to slide down the mountain. Pick up the M4 when you gain control and keep the wall in the center of the platform between you and the soldiers. Don't get near the edges or you'll fall off and die. When the platform crashes at the bottom of the slope, jump off the lower edge to another platform and continue down to the next area. Pick up the AK-47 down there and head into the center of the area.

Stock up on ammo for your rifle, and head up the stairs on the opposite end of the area from the waterfall you came down. While you're over there you'll be attacked by some of the guardians. Get to cover quickly, as their crossbows can cause you a ton of damage. Go back into the main plaza and wait for them to come down and attack. Run around backwards in circles firing at the guardians and dodging their melee attacks. When you finally kill one, pick up his Crossbow. With the Crossbow, you can now take out guardians much more easily. When both are down, you'll see a new guardian type show up. These guys swing around a fiery, blue resin ball and send flaming explosives out at you. After the battle, go around stocking up on Crossbow ammo. When you're done, head back up the stairs at the end of the area and hop up onto some rubble where you can start climbing the statues with the little gold ledges at their feet. Circle around to a platform on the left then jump across to the next platform. Turn around and shoot the treasure down from the chest of the middle statue at the previous ledge. After getting the Phurba Thogchag, continue on by jumping to the gold squares on the thing hanging down from the giant statue's mouth. Climb up and around it and jump to the next platform, then hop from structure to structure across the middle of the area to a gap in the wall you can go through.

Trapped by soldiers
Follow the rubble into the jungle, and shoot the blue sap in the vines on the wall at the end. The sap is highly explosive, so don't shoot it while you're very near. Whenever you shoot it in this chapter, the vines it grows on will retract. The vines you shoot here reveal a path up some stone steps. Head up the stairs and shoot down the treasure up on the left to receive the Clay Yamantaka Head. Across from the treasure are more vines you can shoot, which leads to another small area with a rope going up the wall on the far side. Jump to the stones in the wall to the right of the rope and climb up them until you can jump to the rope. Wall run to the left and jump to some more stones there. Climb up them and jump to the peg on the left with the blue fire pot hanging from it. While dangling there, shoot out the vines in front of you, then swing jump to the ledge it reveals. Head through the room to the hole in the wall on the other side, and shoot the blue sap directly across from you to remove the vines from the archway down by the girls. Jump down there and go through the doorway and up the stairs beyond. This takes you to a new area where you'll spot the tower where the Cintamani Stone must be. Jump down to the new area.

Head in the direction of the tower and you'll come to a part where the stones abruptly break off and you can see a bridge going over to the tower above you and bunch of waterfalls in the distance. Go down to the lowest level over here and all the way to the right to pick up the Gold-leaf Statue Head. Head back up and go to the elevated floor right above the middle of the area. When you get up there, you'll find that some soldiers have started infiltrating the area from where you first dropped into it. Let them all get into position, then cross the top platform you're on and jump to a ledge off the side which leads to a broken down pathway serving as ramp back down to the lower level. This takes you behind one of the guards standing under the side of the second floor. Head over to him and stealth attack him. Head farther under the elevated platform where the girls are, until you get to an archway on the left. Through there you'll see a soldier in black patrolling around in a circle. When he turns away from you and starts back to the far point of his route, go after him and take cover behind the mossy log he stops by and stealth grab him over it.

Across the ditch in front of you, you should see another soldier in black patrolling back and forth. Down in the ditch is another enemy. If you're facing the ditch, head over to the next cover (a pillar) on the left, then go down into the ditch on the other side of it to get behind the guy down there. After stealthing him, head over to the other side of the ditch and wait for the soldier patrolling over there to head away from you, then climb up and stealth him from behind. He drops a Dragon Sniper, so trade your Crossbow for it and get cover as far away from the three guys that are left, while still having clear shots at them. Take out the armored chaingunner first with a few headshots, then the RPG gunner that shows up above them, followed by the guy next to him with the laser scope. After that, take out the remaining enemies, who shouldn't cause too much trouble for you. As soon as you kill the last of them, two guardians show up, so immediately head over to your Crossbow and switch primary weapons. Taking out the guardians with the Crossbow should be no sweat. If at any time during this area you mess up your stealthing, or you don't have the crossbow, this fight becomes very ugly. You'll have to fall back on traditional methods of running around from cover to cover taking guys out, which doesn't work very well against the highly mobile guardians. Go to the door at the bottom of the steps leading down from one side of the elevated platform. Halfway up the steps, you should see some moss-covered stones in the wall on the side. Climb up them and go right to the door mechanism. Climb along the yellow ledge above the door to the other side, and hang from the chain there to open it.

To the tower
In this new area, trade your Crossbow for the M4 leaning against the low wall and head over the side of the ditch beyond it into the water. Get cover behind a pillar and aim past and above the soldiers walking away from you to the guy at the top of steps. He has the M32 - Hammer, so you'll want to take him out first. Hopefully you got the Desert - 5 in the last area, because it makes headshotting him in one go easier, as well as the ensuing fight. Take these guys on normally, but put higher priority on the armored shotgunner that comes walking up during the gunfight. When no more guys are coming, go down the waterway and take out two more of the armored soldiers. Don't venture too far down though, because you'll fall into a laser scoped sniper's sights. After killing those two, head up the stairs on the left and get cover behind the wall up there with the Hammer leaning against it. Use that to take out the sniper across from you. Take the walkway around to the right side of the waterway on the top level, then jump to the next platform along the wall, up onto the one after that and over to yet another one on the other side. While you're doing this, guys start pouring into the area from the side you're heading toward. On that last platform, get cover behind the far railing and take out the M32 - Hammer user directly below you and the laser scoped soldier across from you. The other two soldier will continue up the waterway if you wait long enough, and you can get them with the Hammer from behind. When everyone's taken out, you'll start talking to the girls. If you're still on that last platform on the left, look directly up above you and shoot down the Fibula Thogchag before reclaiming your M4 and climbing the stones in the wall at the end of the stream.

Up at the top, drop down through the hole in the floor and head out into the main area where you'll be assaulted by a squad of soldiers. Get cover behind a low wall and blind fire the armored soldier, who will walk right up to you, then take out the rest normally. To get an advantage from the start, aim at the blue sap next to the statue as you're walking down to them, and when they show up shoot it to deal some damage. Either way, push the cart over with Elena when they're dead, then climb up it to the ledge above. Instead of heading up the steps you find, go past them and jump the moss-covered railing at the other side and head across the upper ledge back to the other side of the area. On the first set of timbers going across, you'll find the Unusual Bronze Mask. Go back the way you came, and this time go up the steps. The long flight of stairs leads up to the tower you've been trying to get to. Proceed down the hallway to a large room where a fight is ongoing between Lazarevic's men and the Shambhala guardians. It's a really big mess, so just stick to the basics: move from cover to cover taking guys out. While you're in the firefight, take notice of at least one Crossbow location (most easily accomplished by just taking out a guardian yourself), because when the soldiers have all been wiped out, a new wave of guardians will enter the room. Take out the mobile ones first, then the fireball throwing ones. Circle the walkway around the outer wall of the room until you reach the highest landing at the top of some stairs. This is the way you need to go to continue up the tower. Before you do so, however, look out into the middle of the room and shoot down the treasure glowing in the hand of the statue in the middle. Go down and pick up the Mani Jewel Thogchag, then return to the landing and head through the archway out of the big room.

Go after Lazarevic
What follows is a long set of hallways and stairs going up to the top of the tower. At the top of the first set of steps, look up to your right and shoot down a treasure from the mouth of a statue at the ceiling. You'll get the Wooden Vajrapani Mask. Keep going up stairs and around the landings at the tops of them to the next set of steps. After you've gone up a couple flights, you'll find the Bronze Statue Head against the far wall of a landing across from the bottom of the steps going up. If you hear Drake say "We're almost there" you've passed it. When you get to the top you'll find what you at first think is the Cintamani Stone. However, it doesn't take Drake long to figure out the real secret of Shambhala.

After regaining control of Drake on the other side of the tower, you'll need to get your party across the bridge ahead. Run over to the crates and pick up a Dragon Sniper and start going to work on the bad guys down the way. Take out the snipers with laser sights first, then the armored soldiers walking up the middle, and finally the guys poking their heads out from behind cover. You don't get too many rounds, so make them count before switching to your primary (once again, hopefully the M4). After the first wave, a couple more guys will show up, so take them out too. Eventually you'll need to move up the bridge. Go ahead and run up, but take your M4 with you instead of the Dragon Sniper. A new set of enemies will approach, and you'll need to dispatch them in the same manner. When you get to the end, follow the walkway off to the side. Elena is in no condition to continue on, so after convincing Chloe to take her back to the gate, you'll continue on to deal with Lazarevic by yourself.