Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a 3rd person shooter with some adventure elements, it was developed by Naughty Dog and released in 2007 for the PS3.

Uncharted is a game about a fictional descendant of Francis Drake called Nathan Drake who finds a map to El Dorado and sets off to find it along with his old friend Victor Sullivan and a journalist called Elena Fisher.
Unfortunately after a few chapters both of them are gone after the first few chapters, so you have to deal with Drake talking to himself and looking at things in the distance. Thankfully he does find Elena after a while and that's when the story really picks up and gets much better.

Most of the time Uncharted is a 3rd person cover shooter but it also has a lot of climbing and jumping about to do, I wouldn't call it platforming because it's very linear and lacks the sense of free movement a platformer generally has, it's enjoyable because Drake moves quite fast and the combination of crumbling ledges, large jumps and swinging vines make it quite exciting. There is also some puzzles, they are all rather simple and the game almost gives you the solution, though it's still fun to jump around the rooms moving various pieces to solve them.


The main gameplay is about using cover to avoid getting shot by the bad guys, unfortunately I'm not very good at 3rd/1st person shooters on console so I wasn't very good but Uncharted somehow felt a bit worse than others I've played, Drake goes down pretty quickly but the enemies are bullet sponges who also manage to physically dodge most of your shots while never running out of ammunition or grenades to throw at you.
Enemies will come in waves so many times I tried to get ammo before the next lot got there but that never worked out.

This get really tedious because you end up going from room to room and knowing that a bunch of enemies will magically pop out if you see a knee high barrier near the entrance, it doesn't feel natural and it also feels like padding to make the game artificially longer. The only combat encounters that felt satisfying are the turret sections, one of them you are in the same position an enemy was and get to use that turret on a bunch of enemies, the other involves Drake on the back of a truck taking out the pursuing vehicles with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.

Most of the combat tactics you learnt go out the window in chapter 18, there's no cover and the new enemies can't be melee'd, so I ended up running around while holding R1 and feeling very very dumb. It changes back in chapter 19 but it still has those enemies running around along with the most powerful mercenaries. The combat works for the most part but it really isn't that interesting or exciting to me.

Along with the story I also really liked the graphics, I was honestly expecting something really dated because this is a console game made back in 2007, there's a lot of colourful lighting and wonderful environments, despite most of the chapters being ruins it all looks rather unique because each area has a different palette and different lighting conditions which heads towards sunset. The animation is also nice because it blends the actions together to make the movement look much more natural.

The music is pretty good, I didn't notice it most of the time but it sounded like some kind of South American jungle music which is appropriate and the sound effects were all suitable. Only problem was when the scripted voice audio didn't sync up to the action that was going on.

Overall I'd give it a 7/10.
It was a fun game and I enjoyed it much more as a whole than it's individual parts because the shooting brought most of it down and if it wasn't for the amazing environments or the interesting characters I don't think I would've felt like completing it.
I've heard good things about this series and everyone tells me the sequel is much better so I hope that's true.