Highly Recommend
Plot
Two guys Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan / Sully out to search a long lost treasure of Sir Francis Drake and use a TV show host, Elena Fisher, to fund an expedition so she can make a video documentary. The coordinates to Sir Francis Drake's coffin is on Drake's ring; even though there is no record of Sir Francis having relatives Drake still believes he is his ancestor that drives him to his answers.
The story will get you hooked and if I were to relate this to a movie it would be "The Road to El Dorado" distributed by DreamWorks and "The Descent" distributed by Pathe Distrubution / Lions Gate Films. If you've seen any of those movies this game would be it, if they were to ever combined themes.
Campaign
The game's length is decent I would say it was finished around ten hours roughly with a lot of action to keep me interested. The length of the game is roughly the same amount of time it would take to finish a Gears of War campaign. The Campaign expands to 22 different chapters / levels that spawn from tropic environments, to rivers, to ancient buildings, to caves on a single island. The level designs are based on linear paths and with very little to explore around. With that said the level designs are amazing it would be safe to say this game is streaming throughout the entire time. There will be no loading screens what so ever very similar to what you'll see in a Grand Theft Auto game but the very first loading screen isn't as long.
The enemies come in groups and work together to flank you and your friends. The one on one battles can be easy it's only when your enemies have back up where it will be challenging. This keeps you from blowing through the enemies with no tactics / skill and can change the way you play. You can run up shooting your gun from the waist, punch a few guys, pop back in cover, and shoot a destructible object to take care of the rest. You'll die a few times which means you got to up your game for the more challenging enemies. As you go farther enemies will get harder when they come in bigger groups and better weapons.
As you go to each chapter / cut-scene there will be a seamless transition from cut-scene to each chapter that sometimes you don't even realize you can move. That brings me to the cut-scenes in the game that very much reminds you of a movie. The character Nathan Drake swears in a comedic way and with smart witted remarks to characters around him. Even though the story moves like a movie the game itself will feel like a long first episode of a new series.
Value
Treasures / Medal Points
As you go through the levels you're able to collect treasures and medals that will allow you to open up new stuff to mess around or look at. The medal points that you can earn can be as easy as finding 15 treasures to earn you "Enthusiast Fortune Hunter," to combat medals when killing five enemies with a single punch, after softening them up with gunfire "Steel Fist," or killing 10 enemies with grenades by aiming while hanging from a ledge "Grenade Hangman." With each medal earned it gives you points and the max number of points earned can be 1000 medal points. The treasures that you'll be able to find will be "Strange Relic" that looks like a golden egg with accient writings around the width, a "Silver Spanish Chalice" of course is silver shaped similar to a wine glass with distinctive patterns, to a "Decorated Gold Ring" which is self explanatory. The total number of treasures that you can find is 60 and can examine every finding by rotating the object with your right analog stick.
Gallery
Other bonus materials consist of a gallery with two kinds of content to look at movies and artwork. The movies will be story cut-scenes from the campaign and featurettes about the game. The featurettes will consist of The Making of Uncharted – Part 1 / 2, Tech Dive – Facial Animation, to Making a Cutscene – The Bridge. The artwork will mostly have concept art of how everything you see became to be and pictures of them (developers) fooling around or working on the game. There are even pictures of glitches of that was in the game with eye balls popping out of eye sockets, heads going into bodies, or teeth falling down the character's neck.
Rewards
Rewards consist of everything you've gotten like medal points, galleries, and treasures. This part of the game is where you can change settings within the game from costume selections based on heroes / villains, weapon selection, to one shot kills. With the customs you can make Drake wear a Naughty Dog Drake shirt, have a cartoon Drake, or even have Victor Sullivan / Elena Fisher costumes. A large portion of these sections is unlocked by earning medal points through the campaign. You can even change the rendering to Sepia Tint (an orangey brown look), to a Next Gen Filter (everything is brighter with an orange tint), or have Slow Motion on.
Game Play
Duck and Cover
The game-play is very similar to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Summit, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, or Gears of War. This is because the way how you're able to handle the gun when receiving enemy fire you're able to hind behind objects. Depending on where you hide objects will be destructible making you vulnerable to an attack. Going into cover is done by pressing the circle button and once latched onto cover you're able to blind fire or pop out to shoot. You can also jump from cover to cover by holding the left analog in the direction you want to go. What I like about this game that most games don't have is character reactions. When Nathan is being fired at he'll react to their actions by using his hands to cover his head. You can also jump over any cover to get to the next one or to sneak up on your enemies.
Hand-to-Hand Combat
The hand-to-hand combat is very simple and will depend on how you approach your enemy will determine what animation is triggered. To enter into combat mode you must press the square button then from there you can do combo moves. You can do a fast combo square 4x or square, triangle, square to pull off some moves. Everything has to be timed and if timed perfectly you can make your enemy drop twice is much ammo on the floor when dead. You can even do a gunslinger combo by pressing square (to enter into combat), R1, Square. Stealth combat is performed by sneaking up on your opponent and pressing square (to enter into combat) if not seen. The hand-to-hand combat does expand a little beyond what they show you so there are other combos besides the two they tell you to do.
Weapons
The weapons in the game don't vary as much but picking which weapon you want will be using the D (Directional)-Pad. You're only able to carry two weapons at a time and aim with the R1 button to fire at your enemies. You can switch sides on where you want the over the shoulder camera to be on when aiming your weapon by pressing the L3 (left analog stick). The SIXAXIS is used for the grenades by pulling back on the controller to determine the arch / distance.
Other
The health system is determined by how black and white the screen will get as well as his heart beat this eliminates the hub. The hub itself virtually has nothing on the screen so the focus is more on your actions instead of stats. When going to obstacles you are able to balance using the SIXAXIS and it will appear as a special action icon. Everything works fine the controls aren't broken everything does as it's suppose to. For those that are wondering you don't have to use the SIXAXIS if you don't want to if it isn't your thing.
Graphics
The graphics in this game would have to be one of the best I've seen for a 2007 game and still holds up today. The amount of detail with this game is amazing when Drake goes into the water his clothes gets wet, the water effects in my opinion better than Bio Shocks or on par, and plants sway in the wind it's amazing. Going into the caves shows you have well the lighting is in this game and going to a dark to a heavily lighted environment is impressive. This game is beautiful even the characters themselves are heavily detailed. Nathan Drake's hair you can see each and every individual strain of hair when he's in the light.
Audio
The audio in this game is great the voiceovers, on par with great acting from big budget movies you can see today. The surround sound works so if something is on one side of the screen those particular speakers will adjust to the game's environment. In simple terms everything sounds as it should be and it's like watching a James Bond movie with surround sound.
Conclusion
This is an amazing start for a new franchise for Naughty Dog that no one should be missing this generation. The game is set up that it's more like an episode anything can happen that is non-relating to this story. I can't wait for what is next for the franchise.
