Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a combo of all of the best action platformers I’ve ever played. Nate Drake is the new Indiana Jones (without the grimy clothes and whip) in this game that includes aspects of Tomb Raider and Zelda, as well as some wild west gun slinging.
Nate is a direct descendent of Sir Francis Drake, the legendary Spanish explorer on the search for El Dorado. Nate hypothesizes that his famous ancestor faked his own death once he discovered more about El Dorado to keep the competition away. Claiming to have been buried at sea, Nate searches for Drake’s coffin. Upon finding and opening it, he discovers he was more right about Francis Drake than he originally thought. Being a treasure hunter and a prestigious hawker of antiquities, Nate sets on the trail to find the lost treasures of El Dorado.
Uncharted hosts some fast action, beautiful graphics, and a host of puzzles. The PS3 controller is set up well for Uncharted, making it easy to aim and fire a myriad of weapons at your enemy A.I. The actions of rolling, punching, running, firing, driving, and swimming are easily executed as Nate blows his way through the jungle and ruins.
The graphics are done really well, although some of the character models look a little plasticky. However, you can see the stubble on Nate’s face and watch his eyebrows shift to make different facial expressions. The environments are great and have been given a lot of extra detail. The graphics are so honed that you can read symbols on the walls of the ancient temples to determine which order to press them in without squinting and guessing. The enemies are also done really well, with life-like limbs and individual faces.
There are many puzzles, but if you are a fan of Tomb Raider or the like, they should be pretty easy to figure out. Move a block to trigger an event, shoot a powder keg to open a wall, etc. There is a lot of climbing to do as well, which can be irritating because a mis-press of the X button can screw you over, causing you to jump too early or too late and be forced to start the sequence again.
If you are dumbfounded, at least you have the L2 button. Pressing the L2 button will give you a hint as to what your next task or move is to complete the puzzle. Oftentimes, pressing L2 will make Nate look directly at the solution. Easy enough huh?
The music is okay, but nothing really notable. It stays in the background during gameplay and highlights emotions or sequences in the cut scenes. You’ll be subjected to a lot of monkey noises in the jungle and some haunting crashes in the temples, but it’s nothing epic unfortunately.
The enemy A.I. in Uncharted are smart. They roll and hide to get out of your range, fight back, throw grenades precisely at you, and run towards dropped weapons. This makes the gun play really challenging because you must direct Nate to run for cover often. One memorable scene is when you are in a car driving down a curvy, hazardous jungle/cliff trail and you must blow up trailing Jeeps and blocked paths. But, besides being totally awesome and providing some great stunt moves by flying Jeeps, you as the player must prevent Nate from being shot to death while helming the gun. The enemies have great aim, unfortunately.
Lucky for us, if we’re smart enough, it is almost impossible for Nate to die, unless you jump or fall off a cliff. There is no kind of life bar. Instead, when Nate is close to dying, the screen turns gray and hazy. All you have to do is get Nate to some kind of cover and he’ll return to full health after a few seconds of hiding. In addition, there is no limit to how many lives Nate can have. You die, and you start from an auto-save point. It’s nice to know that you’ll be able to make progress through the game as long as you can hide and avoid pits with sharp objects.
I have two complaints with this game: the camera sucks and I want the gameplay to be more challenging. The camera gets in the way of just about every action I try to take. It is an automatic camera as well as a manual one, but the automatic camera sucks and I can’t get the manual camera around walls or objects at all. Many times while trying to look at a specific object I had to resort to aiming at it with my gun just to make it easier to see. As you can imagine, trying to fire at enemies, sneak around a corner, or figure out where you need to jump next is really a pain. Too bad, because that one flaw really hinders quick gameplay.
As I already mentioned before, the puzzles are easy and Nate can’t die. I don’t want Uncharted to be frustratingly hard, but I also don’t want it to be mind-numbingly easy. I played through several of the first levels without having to think about how to solve the puzzles, because not only were they linear (as in: one and only one right answer) but L2 always gave the answer away. Since Nate can’t die it means that I run into the heat of battle carelessly and when seeing gray made Nate hide. Not to say that I could sneak in and plan my attack, because the damn camera prevents any attempt at sneaking around anyway!
Overall, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune has an interesting plot, beautiful graphics, and exhilarating gameplay. Just a few bugs prevent this game from being a 5 out of 5, which is unfortunate because of all the other extra work put into it to make it great.
Platform: PS3
Developer: Naughty Dog
Rating: T for Teen (Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco, Violence)
Players: 1 player adventure
Genre: Action Adventure
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1 Comment
great Article. I found the same problems with the Automatic Camera. I got to the point where I cant see anything I am doing, and the game is more frustrating with the camera than even worth trying to finish the game. Old PC Version of Far Cry was far superior. I am not sure to toss this game or trade it in due to the camera issues.