Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

What do you get when you combine Gears of War,  Indiana Jones, and Tomb Raider? Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. What a great fusion of games, right? While this combination hasn't quite been perfected by Naughty Dog it's definitely something to build on, and it's certainly one of the funnest action-adventure games I've played. 
 
You play as Nathan Drake, a treasure-seeking decedent of Sir Francis Drake himself. At the start of the game him and Elena Fisher, a new reporter just trying to get a story, have dug up the coffin of Francis Drake from the bottom of the ocean. They don't find his corpse, but what they did find was Francis Drake's journal. One thing leads to another and they eventually wind up attempting to chase down the lost city of gold (El Dorado). Victor "Sully" Sullivan, Drake's friend that's in debt over his head, and Drake end up ditching Elena (so their discovery won't reach here producer thus getting on the news) to go search for El Dorado by themselves.   

 Things aren't easy though. First of all they must explore the dangerous jungle and traverse the dangerous terrain and deal with all the things the jungle brings (such as a 500 year old dark, underground hidden passageway?) Then they run into a few enemies of Sully, notably Atoq Navarro and Gabriel Roman whom Sully owes lots of money to due to a "few bad deals". From there Elena shows up again and it's a race for the treasure. Along the way they hit many dead ends, run into more than a few dangerous situations and get split apart often. The game's story has enough twists, turns, and interesting character development for me to dub Uncharted's story as one of the best I've ever experienced.  
 
The game breaks down into a few gameplay styles. First, the one you'll probably doing the most, is the combat. The game is a basic over-the-shoulder-third person-cover-based shooter. In all honesty, this is probably the weakest part of the game. I know, I know, it sounds weird that the thing you do the most is the weakest but "weakest" doesn't necessarily mean bad. The controls aren't what makes the combat mediocre, however. It's the enemies. They can take a whole hell of a lot of damage. The worst part is that it seems inconsistent, for example you may shoot some one in the face and they may die. The next time you do it with the same gun they won't. It literally seems like the change of your headshot actually being a headshot is random. The enemies just seem like sponges for bullets. 
 
Later in the game difficulty becomes a problem. Enemies that have snipers, grenade launchers, shotguns and other powerful weapons are everywhere and it becomes very overwhelming. Then there's the poor grenade placement. First of all, in this day of age you should not have to switch to your grenades to use them, a key bound just for your 'nades is almost a necessity, unfortunately in Uncharted you indeed have to switch to them to be able to throw them. My next complain regarding grenades is just how their controlled, you can either use the godawful Sixaxis motion control to change the strength of your throw or use the analog. The only thing is when you use the analog it changed the camera too, so it's impossible to know where it'll actually land. Also, the jetski part of the game sort of fails with combat as well. You have to drive and shoot. You can't do both at the same time, you have to stop the jetski, shoot, start it up and repeat. Not cool.  

 Next up on the gameplay list is platforming. While the platforming isn't difficult whatsoever and it really amounts to trying to spot the next place to jump. As long as your not overly anxious or just being stupid you won't have problems with platforming. In a way platforming just does it self, all you have to do is press a button here and there and that's that. Grabbing on to vines, ledges, rocks, pipes, and other conveniently placed objects just doesn't get old. It does have flaws though. The main one being you can pretty much only grab onto things that you must grab onto, and it's sometimes difficult to spot what you can actually scale. 
 
Then there's the puzzles. The journal Drake found in Francis Drake's coffin comes in handy here. So along the way Drake may see symbols or signs on the wall or the floor and he'll get a light bulb moment, "Oh, that's in the journal!" and you must use what Francis Drake has written to solve the puzzle, when you do so in classic videogame fashion it'll probably open a secret door.    


That's the game's gameplay in a nutshell. As for the rest, everything is superb. Graphically, the game is one of the best in existence. The water in the game is the best I've ever seen. This really shines in the jetski part of the game where Drake and Elena are traveling up a river, the water just rushing down against you is simply jaw-dropping. When you get out of the water Drake's clothes are drenched and the water will slowly drip to the ground as the sun dries up his clothes. Other than that, the lighting, explosions and the shadows have no equal (at least on consoles). Then there's the sound. While the gun sound effects could be better, the incredible soundtrack definitely makes up for it. All the music fits the gameplay extremely well and stops and starts when it should.  

The campaign clocks in at around 8-10 hours. That's definitely not long, but it's about the standard for a singleplayer game. As for extras, there sure are a lot of them. Sixty treasures are spread out within the setting of Uncharted for you to hunt down, along with lots of medals for you to earn. These medals will then unlock "behind-the-scenes" and "the-making-of" type of things, character skins, and the ability for you to just pick your weapons when and where you want. The game sports four difficulties (on of them is unlocked from the get-go) so it definitely encourages multiple playthroughs, maybe making it worth a purchase rather than a rent.