I am terrible at shooting games. I have pretty much stopped trying. I do however, enjoy puzzle solving and platforming.
My friend owns a PS3. He's great at shooting games. He hates platforming.
So weren't we lucky when Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came out for the PS3, and we could co-operatively go through a fun new game from Naughty Dog. I would handle the platforming and he'd handle the shooting. As we actually played the game, we discovered this was extremely easy to do, but I'll get to that later.
Basics:
This is a third-person adventure game set in tropical jungles and ruins. I know what you're thinking: this is an incredibly original idea. And I have to agree; I mean, who's ever thought of a treasure hunter who goes around jumping ridiculous distances and following clues while being shot at by generic bad guys that seem to spawn out of nowhere? Outrageous. To snap out of sarcasm for a moment, it does have a little bit of variation at the end, but changing the bad guys does not change how generic and spawny they are. At least it's a game for the PS3 that's not entirely brown.
Storyline:
You play as Nathan Drake, a brown haired treasure hunter in need of a shave. He claims that the historical figure Sir Francis Drake faked his own death and had children, and that he, Nate, is a descendant of the man. This is supported by Nathan having a ring hanging from his neck that has the coordinates of Sir Francis Drake's coffin. What luck. You join the story as he has just pulled the coffin up from the sea, and is being videotaped by Elena Fisher, a mildly hot chick who is making a documentary (gee, I wonder if the camera makes it to the end?) and funding the whole operation. Your friend Victor 'Sully' Sullivan, another treasure hunter and a hooker enthusiast, is also on board.
Anyway, you pull up the coffin and GASP! it's empty except for a diary that states where the legendary El Dorado is located. So off to find the city of gold. As it turns out, El Dorado is actually a solid gold statue that is GASP! also missing from it's rightful place. Another interesting feature of this tropical island is a German U-Boat in between two very steep waterfalls. You may ask me, "How could a submarine get to a place like that?" and I would answer "The game says that they got there during flood season" in a very cynical manner. Really. That is not an explanation. That's what a lot of the game is like. Things not being properly explained and leaving people like me, who rather enjoy logic, twitching in response.
An awful lot happens in the story, and as the incredible amount of cut scenes are only mildly interesting in that they tell you stuff you don't know, I'm not going to ruin it for you. But there are some things even the newest of gamers will expect. Anything that makes sense is predictable, and anything that isn't predictable is brain-bendingly improbable. My standards were probably too high though. It does at least have a story that is central to the game, which is much more than many games.
Sound:
The voice acting is really good. The main characters are great, and when you get shot, the NPCs say things like "I got him!" in a nice convincing manner. Sometimes the chick yells "Nooooo!" when you die; it's pretty great. The sound effects are quite good. Things you are supposed to shoot (people, locks, explosive barrels) sound appropriate when bullets fly through them, but everything else (lights, doors, non-explosive barrels) seem to be lacking in that sense of realism. The music is pretty good, with an equatorial jungle beat that suits the setting.
A fun bit about the music, is that when you're in a shoot out it plays, and as soon as you're out of danger it stops.
"I think I got the last one" he says.
"Nope, the music's still going. Yep! There's another one; he just spawned to the left."
"Aha!"
This was very helpful as my friend and I were taking turns, and I didn't want to get shot because some hostile spawned at the wrong time.
Graphics:
Pretty waterfalls and neat colonial buildings highlight this game. When you come out of water you're wet, and you slowly dry off. It's clever. But I have very high expectations, based on the television ads (I know, mock me now) and the game we'd been playing previously (Half-Life 2: Ep 2). The hair is blocky and the leaves don't move when you touch them. The graphics are pretty good I guess, but I think the technology has exposed a potential that video game makers have not yet realized. I know this isn't a movie, but with all the cut scenes it comes close, and I just expected a little bit more. Whimsical though. And at the end there's a bit where you have to turn on a generator or something, and the lighting is terrific.
Controls:
They're okay I guess. The X button drives me mad though. There is apparently some secret to jumping that I just don't get. My friend said that perhaps the degree to which you press the X button makes the difference. This is not the case. You have to have perfect timing. So as you're running along trying to get the camera to point in the right direction, you have to press X at the ideal, mysterious time or else Nathan will hop instead of leap, and be sent into a murky abyss. This happens a little bit too often for me to blame my own imperfection.
Gameplay:
There are four parts to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Cut scenes, jumping, shooting, and treasure finding. As cut scenes do not count as gameplay, I'll review the other three. You may say to me, "But hey! They also have bits where you can punch people!" this is true, but as you can't hide behind cover in the middle of punching someone, it doesn't get utilized very often.
Jumping: Nathan is an incredible acrobat. He jumps unbelievable distances with ease. The offset of this is that he sometimes hops instead (see Controls). Other than that little quirk, jumping is pretty fun. If you're not being shot, chances are there's something in the area you're meant to climb on. Vines, pillars, little different coloured bricks, almost anything really. When you have this much upper body strength Parkour becomes the only way to get around I guess. Overall, the jumping aspect of the game will cause a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Thrilled and surprised when he makes that big jump, and exquisitely frustrated when he doesn't. The latter was pretty common for my friend and I, but hey, maybe you'll fair better.
Shooting: You're running along and then suddenly you see a room full of indestructible crates and random pillars. It may appear empty, but you know that as soon as you take a few steps forward the villains will spawn, and a dramatic shoot out will occur. It's convenient, I guess, that if a room is full of cover you know to arm yourself with the right gun or whatever, but it detracts from the realism. It does not matter how many grenades go off next to or on that crate, it remains solid and flawless. Apparently metal locks are significantly weaker than plain old wooden boxes. (Half-Life, you lied to me!) I suppose I should stop complaining as cover is the most important part of the gun fights. When you get hurt, the colour fades and bloom increases until you die. The way to restore health is to stop getting shot. It's like ducking in Redsteel, except not nearly as fast. It's a redeemable feature, I think, that while you're behind cover the enemy can move around and find a way to shoot you. It's good that you can't stop time. Another addition of realism is the amount of guns you can carry. You are not someone that magically carries around an epic arsenal (are bags of holding THAT common?) without explanation. You carry two guns and a few grenades. Something small and something large (and a few grenades). As a result, you generally snipe with your handgun so that you can have the shotgun handy. I love the shotgun. We named it 'Betsy'. Occasionally you get an actual sniping rifle, and it's stupendous. Unfortunately, it only has three shots.
Treasure Finding: As you go along you will find some of about 60 treasures. As far as I know, they are of no consequence except to show off to your friends, but perhaps they unlock some extras. I guess they're also shiny, so that's a plus. There are also awards you get for reaching certain benchmarks. 'You've gotten an X amount of headshots' and so forth. I guess if you're going to play the game another time to make sure you didn't miss any plot expositions, you might as well earn all of these so you have something to show for it.
Complaints:
There is a part where Nathan has to jump across some balconies and shoot some guys through windows. After the guys are all shot, he is faced with no way off the balconies. The game offers one of it's helpful hints telling me how to aim. There is a a large door at the end of the line of balconies. I shoot it with the heaviest artillery I have on hand. It does not react in anyway whatsoever. I shoot the lock with a puny little handgun. The door opens wide. Now, I'm not a physicist, but I have a quarrel with this logic.
The humour. There isn't much. The ad made me believe clever one liners were to be had, and a part of me wanted to believe this game was similar to the Indiana Jones movies. There are very few gags in my books, but I guess some is better than none.
The hot chick factor. Now you may say to me, "But you're a heterosexual girl!", and that would be true, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to see hot chicks in my video games. There is only one woman in the entire game, and she has too much eye liner.
SPOILER ALERT BEGINS!
The U-Boat in between the two waterfalls has a captain in it that was supposedly murdered by the 'things'. How did that happen? Really, I don't get it. I will just assume that I missed some ingenious explanation as it was about 4 am at the time, but it does confuse me a bit.
SPOILER ALERT ENDS!
Compliments:
I'm sure you're surprised by this, as I've taken a rather negative slant and made it keel all the way over, but the game had good aspects. The faces of the characters emote well and are believable. The enemies have varying outfits, rather than being clones of eachother, which I think shows an honourable effort on the designers part. Also, the music is good, and the twist at the end is surprising and mildly awesome. It adds another layer to the game. The locations are brilliant, with a beautiful landscape to toil around in. The weapon system is also worthy of my praise.
Overall:
It's a pretty fun game that I'm giving a hard time. If you like jumping around and shooting stuff without thinking too much, this is the game for you.
Rent it
My friend owns a PS3. He's great at shooting games. He hates platforming.
So weren't we lucky when Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came out for the PS3, and we could co-operatively go through a fun new game from Naughty Dog. I would handle the platforming and he'd handle the shooting. As we actually played the game, we discovered this was extremely easy to do, but I'll get to that later.
Basics:
This is a third-person adventure game set in tropical jungles and ruins. I know what you're thinking: this is an incredibly original idea. And I have to agree; I mean, who's ever thought of a treasure hunter who goes around jumping ridiculous distances and following clues while being shot at by generic bad guys that seem to spawn out of nowhere? Outrageous. To snap out of sarcasm for a moment, it does have a little bit of variation at the end, but changing the bad guys does not change how generic and spawny they are. At least it's a game for the PS3 that's not entirely brown.
Storyline:
You play as Nathan Drake, a brown haired treasure hunter in need of a shave. He claims that the historical figure Sir Francis Drake faked his own death and had children, and that he, Nate, is a descendant of the man. This is supported by Nathan having a ring hanging from his neck that has the coordinates of Sir Francis Drake's coffin. What luck. You join the story as he has just pulled the coffin up from the sea, and is being videotaped by Elena Fisher, a mildly hot chick who is making a documentary (gee, I wonder if the camera makes it to the end?) and funding the whole operation. Your friend Victor 'Sully' Sullivan, another treasure hunter and a hooker enthusiast, is also on board.
Anyway, you pull up the coffin and GASP! it's empty except for a diary that states where the legendary El Dorado is located. So off to find the city of gold. As it turns out, El Dorado is actually a solid gold statue that is GASP! also missing from it's rightful place. Another interesting feature of this tropical island is a German U-Boat in between two very steep waterfalls. You may ask me, "How could a submarine get to a place like that?" and I would answer "The game says that they got there during flood season" in a very cynical manner. Really. That is not an explanation. That's what a lot of the game is like. Things not being properly explained and leaving people like me, who rather enjoy logic, twitching in response.
An awful lot happens in the story, and as the incredible amount of cut scenes are only mildly interesting in that they tell you stuff you don't know, I'm not going to ruin it for you. But there are some things even the newest of gamers will expect. Anything that makes sense is predictable, and anything that isn't predictable is brain-bendingly improbable. My standards were probably too high though. It does at least have a story that is central to the game, which is much more than many games.
Sound:
The voice acting is really good. The main characters are great, and when you get shot, the NPCs say things like "I got him!" in a nice convincing manner. Sometimes the chick yells "Nooooo!" when you die; it's pretty great. The sound effects are quite good. Things you are supposed to shoot (people, locks, explosive barrels) sound appropriate when bullets fly through them, but everything else (lights, doors, non-explosive barrels) seem to be lacking in that sense of realism. The music is pretty good, with an equatorial jungle beat that suits the setting.
A fun bit about the music, is that when you're in a shoot out it plays, and as soon as you're out of danger it stops.
"I think I got the last one" he says.
"Nope, the music's still going. Yep! There's another one; he just spawned to the left."
"Aha!"
This was very helpful as my friend and I were taking turns, and I didn't want to get shot because some hostile spawned at the wrong time.
Graphics:
Pretty waterfalls and neat colonial buildings highlight this game. When you come out of water you're wet, and you slowly dry off. It's clever. But I have very high expectations, based on the television ads (I know, mock me now) and the game we'd been playing previously (Half-Life 2: Ep 2). The hair is blocky and the leaves don't move when you touch them. The graphics are pretty good I guess, but I think the technology has exposed a potential that video game makers have not yet realized. I know this isn't a movie, but with all the cut scenes it comes close, and I just expected a little bit more. Whimsical though. And at the end there's a bit where you have to turn on a generator or something, and the lighting is terrific.
Controls:
They're okay I guess. The X button drives me mad though. There is apparently some secret to jumping that I just don't get. My friend said that perhaps the degree to which you press the X button makes the difference. This is not the case. You have to have perfect timing. So as you're running along trying to get the camera to point in the right direction, you have to press X at the ideal, mysterious time or else Nathan will hop instead of leap, and be sent into a murky abyss. This happens a little bit too often for me to blame my own imperfection.
Gameplay:
There are four parts to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Cut scenes, jumping, shooting, and treasure finding. As cut scenes do not count as gameplay, I'll review the other three. You may say to me, "But hey! They also have bits where you can punch people!" this is true, but as you can't hide behind cover in the middle of punching someone, it doesn't get utilized very often.
Jumping: Nathan is an incredible acrobat. He jumps unbelievable distances with ease. The offset of this is that he sometimes hops instead (see Controls). Other than that little quirk, jumping is pretty fun. If you're not being shot, chances are there's something in the area you're meant to climb on. Vines, pillars, little different coloured bricks, almost anything really. When you have this much upper body strength Parkour becomes the only way to get around I guess. Overall, the jumping aspect of the game will cause a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Thrilled and surprised when he makes that big jump, and exquisitely frustrated when he doesn't. The latter was pretty common for my friend and I, but hey, maybe you'll fair better.
Shooting: You're running along and then suddenly you see a room full of indestructible crates and random pillars. It may appear empty, but you know that as soon as you take a few steps forward the villains will spawn, and a dramatic shoot out will occur. It's convenient, I guess, that if a room is full of cover you know to arm yourself with the right gun or whatever, but it detracts from the realism. It does not matter how many grenades go off next to or on that crate, it remains solid and flawless. Apparently metal locks are significantly weaker than plain old wooden boxes. (Half-Life, you lied to me!) I suppose I should stop complaining as cover is the most important part of the gun fights. When you get hurt, the colour fades and bloom increases until you die. The way to restore health is to stop getting shot. It's like ducking in Redsteel, except not nearly as fast. It's a redeemable feature, I think, that while you're behind cover the enemy can move around and find a way to shoot you. It's good that you can't stop time. Another addition of realism is the amount of guns you can carry. You are not someone that magically carries around an epic arsenal (are bags of holding THAT common?) without explanation. You carry two guns and a few grenades. Something small and something large (and a few grenades). As a result, you generally snipe with your handgun so that you can have the shotgun handy. I love the shotgun. We named it 'Betsy'. Occasionally you get an actual sniping rifle, and it's stupendous. Unfortunately, it only has three shots.
Treasure Finding: As you go along you will find some of about 60 treasures. As far as I know, they are of no consequence except to show off to your friends, but perhaps they unlock some extras. I guess they're also shiny, so that's a plus. There are also awards you get for reaching certain benchmarks. 'You've gotten an X amount of headshots' and so forth. I guess if you're going to play the game another time to make sure you didn't miss any plot expositions, you might as well earn all of these so you have something to show for it.
Complaints:
There is a part where Nathan has to jump across some balconies and shoot some guys through windows. After the guys are all shot, he is faced with no way off the balconies. The game offers one of it's helpful hints telling me how to aim. There is a a large door at the end of the line of balconies. I shoot it with the heaviest artillery I have on hand. It does not react in anyway whatsoever. I shoot the lock with a puny little handgun. The door opens wide. Now, I'm not a physicist, but I have a quarrel with this logic.
The humour. There isn't much. The ad made me believe clever one liners were to be had, and a part of me wanted to believe this game was similar to the Indiana Jones movies. There are very few gags in my books, but I guess some is better than none.
The hot chick factor. Now you may say to me, "But you're a heterosexual girl!", and that would be true, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to see hot chicks in my video games. There is only one woman in the entire game, and she has too much eye liner.
SPOILER ALERT BEGINS!
The U-Boat in between the two waterfalls has a captain in it that was supposedly murdered by the 'things'. How did that happen? Really, I don't get it. I will just assume that I missed some ingenious explanation as it was about 4 am at the time, but it does confuse me a bit.
SPOILER ALERT ENDS!
Compliments:
I'm sure you're surprised by this, as I've taken a rather negative slant and made it keel all the way over, but the game had good aspects. The faces of the characters emote well and are believable. The enemies have varying outfits, rather than being clones of eachother, which I think shows an honourable effort on the designers part. Also, the music is good, and the twist at the end is surprising and mildly awesome. It adds another layer to the game. The locations are brilliant, with a beautiful landscape to toil around in. The weapon system is also worthy of my praise.
Overall:
It's a pretty fun game that I'm giving a hard time. If you like jumping around and shooting stuff without thinking too much, this is the game for you.
Rent it
F yet a list of some of the sorts of 'secrets' that can be unlocked by Treasure Hunting: