Sunday, February 17, 2008

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune Review


When I bought my PS3 I bought three games for it. One of those games was Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. I had heard so many good things about it that I just had to play it. It just so happens that it is one of the best games I've ever played. I had read online that it was like Tomb Raider while others were saying no it wasn't. My opinion is that it is definitely not like Tomb Raider. 
Sure you a character who who doubt searches 
caverns and tombs for treasure, but that is where the comparison ends because this game destroys every Tomb Raider game I've ever played.

From the very beginning of Uncharted you feel like you're a character in an adventure movie. The cut scenes are awesome. The voice acting was great. The voice actors made the characters really come to life. I never felt like I was just listening to people add generic voices to the characters. The main character Nathan Drake will make you chuckle more than once with some of his comments. 
On top of all of this the story was really good too. After every level I just felt like I had 
keep playing to find out what would happen next. 
I've played too many games where I just don't care about the characters or the story.
This happens while playing a lot of shooters. Not the case here with Uncharted.

The gameplay was tight. Nothing new really, except a few instances where you have to use the six axxis controls to throw grenades, balance on a log, or throw some bad guys off of you by shaking the controller. I actually enjoyed this after getting the hang of it. It wasn't something that felt tacked on, and it wasn't overused. Uncharted didn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to controls, but I don't want that anyway. I want a small learning curve and that's what I got. You won't fall to your death from a cliff a million times like in the Tomb Raider games. The controls are quite forgiving when you make jumps. The gun play aiming system is nothing you haven't seen before either. Again that's a good thing. When Nathan is starting to lose too much life your screen will go from color to grey. You don't have a life bar. Many shooters are doing this these days. 
It's basically like seeing red in COD4.

I also enjoyed the scenery in Uncharted. They did a great job with the graphics. I have seen better graphics, but not much better. 
The realtime graphics are great and the water looked incredibly real. 
Once in a while the frame rate would slow down, but it was nothing that was distracting.

I liked the in-game "Achievements".  When you got so many kills or headshots you unlock in-game bonuses. An obvious attempt at having achievements like the Xbox 360, but having the achievements as ingame unlockables which I have no problem with. I thought it was cool.

If you're a fan of shooters you will most likely enjoy this game. It's not strictly a shooter, but you do spend a whole lot of time in shootouts with bad guys. I actually like shooters where you have to take cover and shoot the bad guys, and that's exactly what this game delivers. It's one part shooter and one part action adventure with some easy puzzles to figure out along the way to progress through the story. You also have treasure to find throughout every level which is also an added bonus.

With all of that being said I really cannot recommend buying this game. It's incredibly short. I ended up beating Uncharted in under 10 hours. It's a definite must rent though if you own a PS3. I traded my copy in to Gamestop already.

Final Score = 9.5/10

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Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360)







About Me

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Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States
I'm 38. I'm addicted to Xbox 360 gaming and Dallas Stars hockey. I make a decent living at a boring job where I run two autoclaves and do various other tasks. My escape from this boring as hell life is video games, hockey, and music. I generally listen to Metal music, but I also love 80's tunes as well as 70's tunes. I have an unusual love for the band Overkill. They do it for me for some reason. Blitz is GOD!

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