Review: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)

We do love a good treasure hunting adventure movie, and so do developers Naughty Dog apparently, because playing Uncharted is like taking part in a cross between Indiana Jones and National Treasure. You control Nathan Drake, a hybrid of Brendan Fraser and Nathan Fillion, a descendant of Sir Francis Drake who is on a quest to find the golden statue of El Dorado. Cue plenty of platforming, shooting and clever wit.

Uncharted is on the whole presented like a big budget summer blockbuster. First of all it’s gorgeous, the fantastic lighting effects really bring the jungle environment to life, secondly the animation is top notch, thirdly the orchestral scores are just what you’d expect from a big screen movie and finally even the voice acting is superb. Nathan Drake is your loveable rogue who has a quick quip for every occasion, your female sidekick Elena is far from being your typical heroine, instead she’s an incredibly strong character that isn’t just here for teenage boys to masturbate over. Finally there’s Sully who is the mentor of Nathan and the sort of person you’d expect to be played in by Sean Connery or Michael Caine. The only gripe we had with the voices was the standard British villain. A comedy character who is one step away from saying “mwuhahahaha”.

The core gameplay of Uncharted can be split into two categories, platforming and shooting. Like Tomb Raider you’ll be expected to traverse dangerous ledges that break away and make suicidal jumps at regular intervals. Unlike Tomb Raider though Nathan does lock onto the next ledge as long as you’re at least in the right area, so rag doll deaths are kept to a minimum. The most amount of deaths from these sections will come from the collapsing walkways and scenery. These are moments that you’d expect most developers these days to shoehorn a QTE (Quick Time Events) into, not here though because when the walkways starts to fall down around here you need to run like the wind and make some amazing jumps to survive. Unfortunately, despite these moments being all controlled by yourself giving you a great sense of accomplishment, Naughty Dog have still introduced a few QTE distractions. All of them are completely unnecessary. One early moment had us press the circle button just to dodge some falling crates. Why we couldn’t have done this in-game we’re not sure. It’s also almost impossible not to mess up on the first attempt because it only flashes on screen for a second. We’d played for about an hour and a half thus far and nothing like this had happened, so it came as quite a shock when we saw Nathan’s body crushed to death.

The shooting part of Uncharted is slightly inferior to that of the platforming. What lets it down the most is the cover system. Pressing circle to snap into cover works for the most part, but when on the move it’s far from ideal. It feels incredibly cumbersome when compared to the system used in Rainbow Six and Gears of War. The shooting mechanic fares better. Guns feel like they have some weight behind them and assault rifles in particular are quite deadly. We often thought though that some of the enemies had extra layers of armour on because it takes half a clip to actually kill them.

Even with its faults we were kept hooked till the end. The story and script is well written and full of set pieces. The jeep chase and jet ski sequences in particular stick in our mind. Even near the end where the plot goes a bit strange and supernatural we still wanted to carry on till the conclusion. And at only six hours it’s a decent bite size chunk of gaming. Though this will all depend on whether you have little time on your hands or are a fan of 100 hour RPG’s.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is a rare treat for a console that is currently starved of triple A exclusive titles. A few problems don’t detract too much from what is an engrossing story and compelling gameplay. A definite franchise in the making.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver