Uncharted Drake's Fortune

Uncharted Drake’s Fortune is a story full of action, adventure and mystery.
Nathan Drake believes he is a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, a famed explorer of the 16th century.
A clue in the coffin of Sir Francis Drake leads fortune hunter Nathan Drake on a journey for the great treasure El Dorado. His journeys lead him to a mysterious forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But nothing is what it seems on the island as drake and his companions become stranded and being chased by mercenaries. As they fight their way around the island, the secrets of the El Dorado treasure become known to Drake, and the people hunting them with dire consequences.

GAMEPLAY
In uncharted there are three different types of gameplay, Hand-to-hand fighting, third person shooting & platforming. You will not even notice that you are switching between actions as they blend so well together.
The gunplay is great; the cover system works very well with you being able to blind fire whilst staying in cover, and the ability to roll from cover to cover.
The platforming sections are very nice, easy to follow and if you get stuck you can get a hint which points the camera in the direction you need to look to follow the path. Climbing buildings, jumping chasms, making sure you don’t fall the cliffs. You will have so much fun doing these areas.
Melee combat is pretty basic and easy to use, good button combinations will see Drake perform a variety of moves on his enemies. Stealth kills from behind; knock them out on the wall next to them.

The enemy of uncharted are not your normal game type enemies, these guys are smart.
They will try to flank you whenever they can and give you good hit when they can at any chance.
The AI of the enemies is really good, they are unpredictable most of the time.

GRAPHICS
This game uses the PS3 power to its best.
Everything in this game is visually spectacular, from the doors showing their age to the stones and brick on the walls showing the detail of cracks and moss growing on them.
Shadows when travelling through the jungles and the lighting is just fantastic, it gives the feel of a true adventure. The water just looks real, the wet clothes after Drake has gone for swim. Every detail has been thought about in this environment.
Character animations are just as good. The facial expressions are very convincing, much like a human would do in real life.


SOUND
With a great home theatre surround system this game becomes very different from just listening to it through your TV speakers. You can hear the enemies trying to flank you, the noise of feet coming from behind is suspenseful as you are not sure when they going to attack.
The gunfire and explosions during the action is awesome, each character has their own dialogue and voices which you can hear coming from all over during an intense gunfights.
The jungle scenes are great also even just standing still you can hear the water in the nearby river running, the leaves of the trees blowing in the wind and noises of the local wildlife is just soothing to ears.

VALUE
This game is not perfect but it is very close to it. A couple of small gripes that I have are the tilt controls didn’t really need to be in the game at all, and the lack of online play. Online play was rectified with Uncharted 2.
Naughty Dog did implement its own in game medal system. Which had plenty of challenges.
And then updated the game to support the trophy system on the PSN which is another reason to play through game again and again.


CONCLUSION
Naughty Dog did everything right with this game. It’s a great exclusive for the PS3.
This franchise will build and build and get better and better as we have seen more recently with Uncharted 2. I for one cannot wait to hear where Drake and the crew will head off to next maybe Egypt or are they searching for the lost city of Atlantis? Who knows but maybe we will find out soon?
This game is absolute delight to play. Great gameplay and great eye candy, graphics wise I mean.
Although Elena is pretty hot

My Score 9.5/10

Pros
+ grahpics fantastic
+ smooth gameplay
+ excellent story

Cons
- no online

Good work! I agree the Uncharted games are awesome. Yet to finish the first one, but number 2 was probably one of my favorite games of all time.

thanks mate, thought id do one for the first one seeing as there is already a review for uncharted 2 on the site. they are both great games.