Great mixture of two genres, prime visuals and effective sound.
Uncharted's gameplay is a great combination of Tomb Raider inspired platforming and puzzle solving sections and Gears of War inspired 3rd-person shooter sections where you combat human enemies.
But the platforming and puzzle sections are too linear, lack innovation and don't provide any significant challenge for the eye-finger coordination or any stimulation for creative thinking.
On the shooter sections, the cover mechanic is useful to avoid enemy fire, but also too stiff, particularly in tight spaces. Gathering ammo dropped by the bad guys sometimes isn't a seamless task. Also, the enemies require an absurd amount shots to die, which makes the task of defeating them more complicated, less believable and, more importantly, less fun than it could have been. All this, combined with an excessive number of trained armed forces, add up to gunfights lasting longer than they should and to gradually become less thrilling. There's also little variety of enemy types, they're all very similar (except one, near the end), and not many different weapons for you to shoot them or for them to shoot you with.
The vehicle sections are entertaining, provide a welcome change of pace and add a much needed gameplay variety. Another gameplay variety is the option to fight one enemy near you with physical attacks but, although it's good to have an alternative way to take down foes, seldom is a viable one because all men have guns and only takes a few bullets for Drake to die.
The graphics are excellent in every aspect. The character animations are varied, fluid and look believable. Almost all environments are extremely impressive, in both technical and artistic departments, especially the water and the jungle. The sound effects are alright and the soundtrack is suitable for the action-adventure theme and the pace of the game but neither one is mind-blowing or memorable.
Impressive voice acting that makes the visually stunning cut scenes fairly engaging to watch, despite the fact that the speech lines are average material and that the characters are two dimensional. The story on the whole is poorly developed, lacks the originality needed to stir the imagination and doesn't raise any questions that incite you to think about any relevant matter.
The campaign ends less than 10 hours after it starts, there are no other modes to play and you probably won't play it again, unless you have lots of free time to kill and don't have any other entertaining things to do. In other words, the game is too small for a full price tag.
It's not boring to watch someone play the game but it's not very fun either.
Resuming, Uncharted is a great mixture of the 3rd-Person Shooter and the Fantasy Action Adventure genres, with big production values, but could've been much better.
==============================
SCORE ::::::::::::::::::::::::: ((( 8.0 / 10 ))) - (in a scale of 0.5 increments, without a formula)
==============================
GAMEPLAY = = = = = = = = ( 8 )
GRAPHICS = = = = = = = = = = ( 10 )
SOUND = = = = = = = = ( 8 )
VALUE = = = = = = ( 6 )
==============================
NOTE:
It's possible that, those who played other high quality modern 3rd-Person Shooters with cover mechanics (Gears of War came out before it), may find the gameplay somewhat derivative and the rating I gave it a bit too generous, since those have better combat mechanics and sharper shooting controls. But I haven't played nor will I ever play those games because I don't find them interesting. So I rated the gameplay in comparison to the games I did play and wrote a review destined to those who, like myself, didn't play any cover-based 3rd-Person Shooters before but have seen videos, read about and/or watched other people playing them.
