Here’s something I don’t often do – review a PS3 game. Now it’s not because I’ve been biased towards other machines, it’s simply that if there’s a game on all formats I prefer to get it on the 360 as that’s my console of choice. However, with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, I had to play it on the PS3 as it’s a Sony game. Luckily, the TV ads for this game don’t do it justice and what you get here is a great action adventure which feels like a cross between Prince of Persia, Gears of War and Indiana Jones.
You play a wise-cracking treasure hunter in a similar vein to Nicholas Cage in the movie National treasure, except he’s more likeable and has more personality than Nicholas Cage. In fact, all the main characters look great and are extremely well voice-acted, something that makes you want to keep playing as you really want to know what happens to these characters.
To cut a long story short, you go after a big bounty and of course there’s an English bad guy and what sound like his South American henchman trying to stop you and get to it first.
The game is basically a mix of shooting, puzzle solving and climbing. The shooting has been nicked straight from gears of War but it works really well. The secret to success is finding cover, rolling to new cover and popping out to shoot when enemies are reloading or stop shooting and it works very well. These enemies are also quite clever and will take cover, try to outflank and sneak up on you. Get too close and you can fight them hand-to-hand to stop them and nick their weapons and ammo. And there are a fair few things to shoot. You have a pistol, machine pistol, grenades, a grenade launcher, an AK47 and a shotgun. And you can also shoot barrels to make them explode movie-style and get behind mounted machine guns and let rip into oncoming idiots.
When climbing around you’re more agile than a monkey that’s been down the gym. You grab onto ledges, shimmy across and luckily, grab them if you walk off the edge – something which saves your sanity during long climbing sections. Puzzles are quite simple and usually involve climbing to get somewhere, pulling switches in the right order or shooting things.
This is a very polished title from Naughty Dog, the same guys that brought you crash Bandicoot. It outraids Tomb Raider, gears up nicely when compared to Gears of War and the main guy in the game is way cooler than the Prince of Persia,
If you want to live through an action movie and spend longer than an hour and a half doing this, then this game’s for you. It gets an almost almost perfect 9 out of 10.
