Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Review
Charting a New Course
by Chris Scott
reviewed on PS3
Tomb Wars
The game utilizes a two-pronged game experience; half of the game is platforming, exploration and puzzle solving, while the other half is centered around cover-based combat. Think Tomb Raider mixed with a healthy dose of Gears of War. It does all this without ever feeling like it copied the gameplay mechanics of either of these games.
Controlling Drake is a breeze and outside of a few camera angle problems, you will never have a problem controlling his actions. Some problems do rear their heads when Drake enters a combat situation though. To be fair, the problems aren't ever the result of Drake handling poorly, but rather some hit and miss collision detection errors in regards to your gun battles. There are times when you will have an enemy in your rifle sights and put a put one into the back of his brain, only to see him turn towards you and begin firing. You are likely to put more than a few more bullets into him before he goes down. This poses a big problem later in the game when you are facing off against enemies with body armor. Of course this spotty detection may work in your favor. Putting a round in your enemies' kneecap might end up killing him. It can get frustrating as you never know when the magic bullet theory is going to rear its ugly head.
This combat problem tends to just be a minor annoyance in most cases though, as you should have plenty of ammo to get you through most firefights. Aside from these collision problems, gunfights play out like you would expect them too, with a lot of hiding behind cover and taking shots at advancing enemies. If you leave yourself too exposed, you will quickly end up dead. In fact, figuring out the proper time to move from one piece of cover to another is probably the hardest 'puzzle' you will have to solve throughout game. The true puzzle sequences of the game are all pretty easy and should never tie you up for more than a few minutes, although some of the jumping puzzles may leave you a little frustrated. Overall the cohesion between the different elements is fantastic and makes for a fun playing game.
A Rewarding Experience
While the overall story and gameplay is pretty straight forward, Naughty Dog has done a good job of adding incentives to play through multiple times, including a very XBOX 360-ish implementation of rewards. Coupled with the Rewards -which Sony should be implementing with the release of Home- there are a number of hidden treasures to discover that unlock hidden bonus materials. There is nothing quite like getting rewarded for playing a game and Uncharted does it wonderfully.
At this point in time there are only a few must-own Playstation 3 titles and Uncharted is one of them. The game blends a cinematic styling with oldschool gameplay and throws in some new gameplay mechanics to boot. This makes Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune not only one of the best games on the system but also one of the freshest and most fun experiences available in gaming right now. If you have a Playstation 3, you should do yourself a favor and play Uncharted. Naughty Dog has delivered a great first entry into what is sure to be one of Sony’s big franchises in the future.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
