Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Sony stalwarts Naughty Dog bring us Uncharted, a Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones puzzling action game which takes some of the best elements of a number of different titles, and blends them together to provide a very solid, and sometimes outstanding experience.

The game has been doing the rounds in demo form for some time, and it does suffer slightly from the unbearable hype that other PS3 exclusives such as Heavenly Sword have garnered this year, as software starved owners have pinned their hopes on a number of SCEA published titles.

To my mind, certain reviewers seemed to be playing Heavenly Sword through a very large pair of rose-tinted spectacles because while the game looks and sounds fantastic, it really is a rather dull and turgid affair. While there are several attempts at breaking up the monotonous button mashing action with mini-games and tacked on Sixaxis support, the core gameplay was far too repetitive and boring for me.
Production values were obviously incredibly high (including the Andy Serkis produced cut scenes), but the overall package smacked a little much of “could do better with more time”.

What Uncharted does is deliver a game that also looks incredibly good, but is also varied enough to stop you from getting bored.
The plot is thus: You play Nathan Drake, your kind of everyman explorer (think Indiana Jones with a trendy haircut) who has teamed up with a reporter named Elena who is funding a visit to search for the coffin of legendary explorer Sir Francis Drake.

When a clue in Drake’s coffin points Nate and Elena (as well as the shady Sully) to an island in the Pacific and the fabled treasure of El Dorado (nothing to do with the ill-fated BBC soap of their early 90s) they find a group of mercenaries are also after the treasure.

The easiest way to describe the core gameplay of Uncharted is Tomb Raider minus the frustrations, coupled with Gears of War style combat.

Much has been made of the motion captured movements of your main character, and the control feels a lot more natural than any of Ms Croft’s adventures. That said, it isn’t completely perfect. While Nate swings and climbs around the environments, you can’t clamber just anywhere. Stand up against a small rock formation and try to jump and he looks like he is going to break into the YMCA dance routine. You soon learn to look for the environmental hints as to where you can roam, but anyone hoping for some kind of free roaming environment where you can achieve your goals via a number of different routes is going to be disappointed.

The pacing of the game is pitch perfect right from the beginning. There is no tutorial as such, but you are introduced to the combat straight after the opening cut scene, before being whisked off to the island to spend the next twenty minutes solving a series of simple puzzles (with the wise-cracking, cigar chomping Sully in tow) to acclimatise yourself with Drake’s range of movements.

Combat is straight out of Gears, minus a lot of the frustrations. Drake leaps from pillar to post with consummate ease, and it is very difficult to get stuck in a situation where the character will not respond when there are enemy grenades flying left and right.

Speaking of the enemies, the AI of your adversaries is outstanding. Like most games they tend to appear from the same trigger points each time, but their movement around the environment changes every time you play. If you wait in one spot for too long they will surround you. It’s not uncommon to find yourself completely pinned down, and at the harder difficult settings it can be a real challenge to clear wave after wave of your foes.

Naughty Dog have broken up the core gameplay with a series of vehicle sections. They don’t really enhance the genre at all, but they’re a fun and welcome distraction. The first section will have you manning a grenade turret on the back of a jeep, taking out pursuers as you attempt to escape from the first of the two main villains. It’s a tried and tested formula that has been used in a number of other games, but it’s fun for five minutes.

The second, and far more substantial is the use of a jetski to get around one of the later environments. You drive the ski around, whilst occasionally switching to Elena on the back to take out enemies along the way using either a grenade launcher or high-powered pistol.
What Naughty Dog has got just right is the pitch perfect pacing. The vehicle sections end before they get too tiresome, and the combat/puzzle solving/adventuring ratio is just right.

At the time of writing this I am 85% through the game, and as with Ratchet before this, I don’t want it to end. I’ve been playing it every night this weekend and absolutely love it. The game looks and sounds fantastic (special note to the excellent score), plays well and has an engaging story.
Voice acting is also top notch, it’s a tight, well written and humorous script. Drake and Elena are two of the most likeable characters I’ve seen in a videogame for a long time. Can you remember the last time you looked forward to watching a cutscene?

I hope Sony set aside a marketing budget to at least compare with Heavenly Sword, as in my humble opinion this is a far superior title that is worthy of every PS3 owners attention. It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but fans of slick action adventure games should check it out immediately.

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Category: Reviews, Videogames