Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (PS3) Review

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is an exclusive action/platformer game for Sony’s Playstation 3. Uncharted was developed by Naughty Dog who are most known for the Crash Bandicoot series as well as Jak & Daxter. When Uncharted was announced everyone had fairly high hopes for the game as Naughty Dog are a brilliant game developer. At the time of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune’s release Sony’s Playstation 3 was in quite a bad state as the console had little to no games worth mentioning/playing. Uncharted was the only game Playstation 3 owners had to look forward to, at the time as Metal Gear Solid 4 was a long way away.

Read on to find my full review of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune…

In Uncharted: Drakes Fortune you play a character named Nathan “Nate” Drake who is a fairly cocky bad ass and has made a living in tomb robbing with your accomplice in crime Victor “Sully” Sullivan and your also followed by a newswomen named Elena Fisher who is a frisky blonde and is there to record the events of the hunt for the mysterious golden city. The games story line is based around hunting down the city of El Dorado with the clues Nathan’s ancestor ‘Sir Francis Drake’ left you to follow. One thing which I did love about this game was the fact that the majority of the story was extremely believable about what happens and was really well written (Kudos to the writers!)

However that’s where the praise ends, after about three quarters of the way through the game the story line takes a complete 180 degrees in the opposite direction. If you’ve played the game you know exactly what I am talking about and it killed the story for me. The game went from a Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia to a survival horror and it just did not fit the game.

At the time of the games release it did truly show what Sony’s Playstation 3 is actually capable of doing and what people can expect to see there games looking like in the future. I know it’s an odd thing to talk about but the water in this game is some of the best I’ve ever seen. When your running along side a babbling brook you can see the sunlight coming through the tree’s above you and reflecting in the water, its honestly break taking. Another thing which I did l love in the game is when your running through a thick forest you see all the tree’s brushing against you and moving just like they actually would.

The Animation in this game is still one of the best I have seen, such as when you’re running, you can see all the limbs of the character moving like they actually would. Another good example of the great animation in this game is when someone is shot off a ledge you’ll see there body slowly fall backwards and fall over the back of the barrier and plummet to there death and it looks fucking amazing. The only slight problem I had with the graphics on this game is occasionally certain surfaces such as cliff walls looked extremely plain and not the nicest thing to look at, but other then that there is nothing at all to complain about.

The general game play of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is based around major platforming elements with a fair bit of gun play and it works extremely well in the environment the game is set in. Through out the game you encounter different styles of platforming such as jumping from ledge to ledge hunting down different levers to open a specific door to continue through the chapter or solving puzzles where you have to move puzzle pieces to make a certain image or pattern.

One thing which also worked really well in this game is how when your environment changes the game play complete changes to, the best examples of this are; when your on the jet ski and have to keep switching between Nate and Elena to blow up the barrels/enemies to continue in the level, but then when your in jungle its mainly based around proper platforming elements such as jumping between ledges and solving puzzles. Also another thing which worked fairly well were the quick time events such as when an object was about to crush you and you had to quickly hit a specific button (I died so much on these things it’s insane because I couldn’t hit the button quick enough.)

The game was occasionally extremely frustrating as they were so cheap with the ammo the enemies used to drop. I died numerous times just because I had to keep trying to beat the shit out of the enemies because I had no ammo for anything. Another thing which did annoy me every so often was how crap the camera was occasionally, such as when jumping around a corner it would get caught on the wall and I would fall to my death or in the tight corridors there would be a ton of enemies and I couldn’t see where they were because the camera would be having a fucking hissy fit and make me stare at the wall.

One of the best experiences I had in this game was running through the dense forest to hear a waterfall in the distance and hearing the water crashing into the jagged rocks below, it sounded fucking fantastic! But then out of no where some ass hole would jump from behind a rock and start unloading a AK-47 which sounded horrible like tin cans behind smashed together (the same as every gun in the game…) Except when the bullets are whizzing past your ear it sounds brilliant in 5.1 surround sound.

The only reason I’m giving Uncharted a decent score in lasting appeal is because were quite late to reviewing this game it now has trophy support so it gives you a bigger reason to go back and try and unlock some of those precious trophies. The story in Uncharted is something worth coming back to, but not on a regular basis’s, at the least 1 or 2 months so you have pretty much forgot what happened in the story and relive that great experience again.

If you own a Playstation 3 and haven’t played this game yet, get off your ass now and go pick it up. It is one of the best games you can pick up and now that is has trophy support and is available in the ‘greatest hits’ collection meaning you can pick it up for $30/£20, so its well worth the money. I have had my PS3 for about 1 month now, and I’ve only played it for about the 10 hours and that was when on MGS4. This game has got me back into my PS3 and I don’t regret it purchasing it for shit.

Note: please forgive me for any puctuation/grammical errors, all of our editors are away this week.

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