Uncharted: Drakes Fortune Review - A Little Bit of Everything
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is Naughty Dog's first outing on the PS3 and an impressive one at that. This PS3-exclusive bring the cover mechanic (made popular by Gears of War) to Sony's machine in full force.
Story
Uncharted's story centers around Nathan Drake, a man in search of answers to the death of his famous family member (and oh-so well known explorer) Sir Francis Drake. With the only clue being a engraved ring he sets out to search for not only the cause of Drakes death, but what he was looking for when he died. Joining in on the journey is the determined and capable reporter Elena Fisher and pal Victor Sullivan on a search that takes them through more trouble then they were prepared for.
Sound a bit familliar? I have to say the story definatly has a "been there done that" sense to it in the beggining, but continue on and you'll find it spices up this slighty over-used story base to create a tale worth hearing (or is that playing?)
Presentation
- Graphics
What can I say, this game is absolutly stunning. The environments feel great and are deeply detailed. Every tree, rock, and leaf hits falls in place well to create a very beleivable world to explore. The water in this game is also amoung the best seen in games, rocks near water look wet and and it reflects beautifully. Smaller effects like swaying trees and airboure leaves also add to the overall look. The only negative is the on and off screen-tearing, never over-bearing but sometimes annoying.
- Audio
The voicework in this game is top-notch and follows the game "Hollywood" feel, the games score ranks as one of my favorites and is integrated well into the gameplay, often times cuing you to an incoming encounter or the end of one. Ambiance sounds like birds, moving trees, wind, and water are impressive as well. Overall the detail in Uncharted is magnificant from beggining to end.
Gameplay
Uncharted has definatly taken note from other games in the gameplay department. You'll find the Gears of War covering and over-the-shoulder shooting mixed in with the Tomb Raider platforming, what impressive though is that these elements do not feel like cheap knock-offs. The covering is every-bit as capable as in Gears and throughout the entire game you'l seldom-to-never find an object that you would want to cover behind that you can't. Gunplay is simple with L1 bringing you to Aim Mode and R1 to shoot (or just R1 to blind-fire), "O" is used to cover. You can cary 3 weapons total (Small arm, Large arm, and Grenades). The games A.I. isn't particularly amazing and compensates more with quantity of enimies. They will take cover and occasionaly run at you but they don't really work together.
Thakfully the platforming is much better than its pedigree. Navegating platforms is fairly easy and consisits of long jumps and ledge hopping, the only real platforming difficulty is the occasionaly hidden hand-hold or finding the first grip in a sequence.
Other thoughts
The game has a medal system (now integrated with Trophies) and there are 61 treasures hidden for discovery. Sadly the just appear as shinning dots in the world (though you do get to see a 3D figure once you collect one), it would have been nice to see the treasure have some cool mechanic attached to them.
One thing working out of this games favor is the lack of Multiplayer, it is well worth the price in my humble opinion but online junkies may be hesitent. It's a shame since multiplayer would world well here. Also I thought the games highest difficuly, "Crushing", was a bit annoying since it opted for damage ratio ( 2 hit you're dead) difficulty instead of an A.I. intelligece boost.
Overall
I would easily recommend Uncharted to anyone looking for some fun gunplay with a movie-like story. The game is high on action and the characters are funny and likeable. It is a game you'll want to play more than once and dosen't get old quickly. The graphics are amazing and the world is believable and detailed as well. The only smears to its record are the lack of multiplayer and somewhat bland treasure system. In the end though Uncharted belongs on every PS3-gamers shelf and looks to be a great start to a franchise I'm sure we will hear plenty about.
