Get yourself lost in Uncharted, cause it's worth it!
Cons: fire fights are repetitive, partner A.I. never helps.
Uncharted is one of those games that makes you feel like your watching a movie, but your the director. Uncharted is Naughty Dog's first entrance into the next gen market, and they did well.
The game starts you out with a good tutorial scene, letting you go through basic combat skills such as shooting, cover, and melee attacks. Then the story gets good. You play as Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter who just happens to get into trouble...a lot. Nathan is supposedly the descendent of famed explorer, Sir Francis Drake, and you learn right of the bat that leads into the story of the game that Drake, is not in the coffin he was buried in. But instead, Nate finds his journal. The journal is what sends Drake, his friend Sully and Elena Fisher, a reporter, on the hunt for the famed El Dorado. The game continues on, with the story getting better and better, and even introduces a good twist. There is a lot of humour in this game that adds a good shine on its already good story. Nate is the source of most of the humour in the game with it coming from him saying or just doing something stupid. An example of this would be "Strangers trying to kill me; leaving my map on a burning plane, Elena's missing; most likely dead. That's great. Great start, Nate." That was from just after Nate crash landed on the mysterious island.
Gameplay wise, the game has its ups and downs. The fire fights you have throughout the game become very repetitive and tedious. Most of the time it's cover, shoot, cover, shoot, move to another cover, shoot...etc. As the game continues, there are sections where it's simply run and gun. Speaking of which, one thing that I liked about running and gunning in this game, is that Drake will shoot behind himself at enemies while running, which becomes quite useful near the end of the game. The cliffhanging sequences have their moments where you might say "that was easy" while other times, it might be "man, this is hard". But relatively saying, the climbing scenes get pretty basic as the game progresses. As for weapons, I like the system. It's a 2 weapon system, with a pistol and 1 other weapon, plus grenades. The weapons are also quite balanced, with 4 pistols total, 2 regular pistols while the other 2 are high calibre pistols like the Desert Eagle. You also have 2 rifles, and 2 shotguns, with a sniper rifle and a grenade launcher to round it off, with the rifle and grenade launchers being scarce are shown for use when needed. There are few sections of the game which require you to drive a sea doo while Elena shoots the enemies with a grenade launcher or pistol. You control both Elena and Drake at these times making, forcing you to stop to aim and shoot at your enemies. Another scene has Drake on a MG turret while Elena drives, but you only focus on shooting.
One issue that I did not like in matters of gameplay is that the partner A.I. is never a help to you. You can be fighting for dear life during a firefight and your partner will just stand there, might take a shot or 2 but usually just takes cover. The only time where this is not the case is when your fighting with Eddy Raja, a fellow treasure hunter. But, most times, you should be able to handle the fight by yourself, or you will learn to handle it.
Since this is a game where you play as a treasure hunter it's most appropriate that you can find treasures throughout the game. There are 60 in total. Along with the treasures is a reward system. The reward system is almost like achievements on the 360 but for this game only. You get it for collecting treasures, or doing something while in combat such as score 5 headshot kills in a row, or get 50 kills with a certain weapon. You can simply pause the game and enter bonuses to see the rewards. Rewards range from concept art to videos, to unlockables for use in another play through of the game.
One thing that really stands out in this game is the graphics. Now I'm not one usually for graphics, but the graphics in this game are just beautiful. All the backgrounds and level design of the game are so well done. One thing that tells you about the graphics of this game is that when Nate goes in water, his clothes will really be wet and will shine in light. The destructible items found in the settings such as jars, jumbled together rocks used for cover and boxes are well done and are appropriate.
In conclusion, my final rating for this game is a 9.0, with the repetitive fire fights and bad partner A.I. as its faults. So if you have a chance, you should get yourself lost in Uncharted.
Written by: Marksman2200
Date: June 10/2008