Awkwardly Gripping, or, How I Learned to Love the Demo
I've owned a PS3 since the year it was released, yet for a variety of reasons I'd never played Uncharted until the original and its sequel were released on the Playstation Network. I've constantly been curious with myself as to why that is, especially since the demos for both Drake's Fortune and Among Thieves were some of the more entertaining, intriguing demos I've come across in my five-plus years with the system.
But now that I've beaten Drake's Fortune and am coming perilously close to the end of Among Thieves, I fully understand that awkward doubt that was planted in my head all the way back in 2007. If I decide to really get into this game reviews thing and talk about Among Thieves I'll explain what makes that game so much more deserving of its praise there, but Drake's Fortune really felt like a game that top to bottom was being given way too much of a break thanks to its technical excellence. Even that then-pinnacle achievement only reaches so far within the world of Uncharted: the shooting has been derided in the right circles thanks to underpowered guns, enemies that can take multiple shells of anti-aircraft ammunition and a hero that feels just so barely unable to always hit the mark he's aiming at . The jet skis, I'd assume, are just the icing on the cake of tech display gone wrong; what good is beautiful water if you're too busy stopping and popping to give it a good look?
See, my main complaint with Drake's Fortune, and it's successor, is that this is a game that promises you an intriguing adventure full of secrets and platforming, but somewhere along the way it gets so bogged down in combat the (admittedly rote story) becomes something of a reward for bothering to care about the game you're actually playing, which is a shame. The game opens incredibly, with Nate and Sully exploring a gorgeous jungle in search of some long forgotten treasure, no enemies or conflict in sight other than Nate's attempts to traverse the world in pursuit of his goal. But once the combat begins it seems to never end. Once the plot twist is dropped on us everything gets especially egregious; not only did I feel completely disconnected from the world I thought I had gotten into (in a very bad, disappointed way) but the character of Nathan Drake lost all of his identity as an explorer trying to live up to the legacy of his assumed ancestor. Gradually but explicitly, he had transformed into a Contra character wearing Aeropostale.
I understand that plot is a secondary thought to gameplay almost as a rule, but when the voice acting and graphic cutscenes (not to mention the lush environments that surround the excessive pirate murdering) are all that's carrying your game to enjoyability it's a shame they get so marred by conventional wisdom. Even as I breezed through Drake's Fortune in less than two days, oftentimes incredibly eager to see what would happen next, I found myself asking "why?" as many times as exclaiming something was awesome, and by the time the plot twisted I just wanted to get things over with so I could move on to the next one. Truth be told, somewhere around Chapter 17 I switched the game to Easy mode for perhaps the first time in my life, not because the game was TOO difficult (it was definitely proving hard) but because I was bored, plain and simple. The next (I suppose it's beyond current at this point) generation of consoles has left me jaded for a variety of reasons, but the top of that list is reserved for games like Uncharted that are purported to be one thing when they're really something very different. I was told this was a grand adventure meant for anyone with a PS3, when really it's just another shooter with curiously abundant cover and zombies at the end.