Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

by noodles on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 09:51 - Comments: 0

I went in expecting adventure and got a shooter. Gears of Indiana Jone... - I mean, Uncharted was not what I hoped it would be.

A descendant from a more or less famous treasure hunter, Francis Drake, you climb into the pants of Nathan Drake. With your travel-companions, a female journalist that's documenting your treasure-hunt and a older male long-time partner-in-grave-robbing, you follow uncover clues that will supposedly lead you to the lost city of gold, El Dorado. The story plays out in the same manner that the movie-series The Mummy rips off the Indiana Jones franchise. There's old languages, graves, tombs, clues, trails, multiple characters after the same treasure, a hint of super-natural, and yes - even Nazis. It's basically a summer-blockbuster-adventure-movie in interactive form, except the main emphasis is on the gun-fights and not the adventure part.
This leaves you with the same interest that you would have in it'snon-interactive counterpart. Some will be swallowed by it, some will finish their popcorn and then leave the theater to wait for the DVD instead.

Gameplay-wise it's a third-person-shooter. Basically, if Marcus Fenix, of locust-bustin' Gears of War-fame, had a baby with Lara Croft, plain busty Tomb Raider-fame, that baby would be Nathan Drake. While some puzzle-solving and platforming does take place, it's overshadowed by gun-fight after gun-fight. I actually felt that the adventure parts were my reward for getting through the shooting parts. Like most third-person-shooters these days, there's a mechanic called "cover system", which allows you to duck out of the way from enemy bullets and cower behind a wall, pillar, box, or other bullet-resistant material. From here you can pop out, deliver some random or aimed lead-showers of your own, and then duck back down.
Amongst all the shooting and platforming you're also supposed to be "lookin' fo' tre'sha", and you pick up random things like pendants, goblets and necklaces. These serve no other purpose than unlocking bonuses, such as behind-the-scenes videos and alternate costumes. Every five earns you some points in the awards-system, which is also fleshed out with awards for your shooting, like killing ten enemies with grenades while hanging from a cliff, or snapping the neck of 20 enemies.

Visually this game looks great, if you disregard a whole bunch of texture pop-in.But once the textures are in place it really shows how even the earlier PS3-exclusives took advantage of the hardware. They went the extra mile and made sure that if your character is wet, his clothes look wet. However, they did not take into account that perhaps he would only be wet up to his knees, so if you're wet, you're wet all over. And even if the script is of the same standard as most other summertime escapes from reality, they lines are, for the most part, delivered in a convincing manner.

If you're looking for something not too deep to kill the rainy days this summer, I can recommend Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Be very much aware that you'll be playing a shooter with adventure-sections put in for diversity, and won't take on the role of pseudo-Indiana. But there's a good chance you'll get into the whole experience anyway; I was, eventually. Also, there's a chase-scene that was some of the most fun I've had while playing third-person-shooters. With Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves around the corner, there's really no reason to pass by that used copy of Uncharted for $20 - or whatever your currency is - anymore. Just pick it up, walk over to the counter, THEN LEAP THAT SUCKER, SWING YOUR WHIP AND ROLL UNDER THE SECURITY GATE. Don't drop your hat.
Dun du-dun daaaaa, dun da-daaaa....

tags: uncharted nathan drake fortune