Like playing an Indiana Jones movie.
First of all the graphics are really fantastic. It's the best looking next gen game I've seen so far and though I only have 2 PS3 games, I have about 15 360 games, so I've seen quite a bit of the competition including Gears of War, Bioshock, and Oblivion, and graphically at least, Uncharted outclasses them all. Picture a next gen combination of Tomb Raider and Far Cry and that will give you some idea of the art style. It's not that they style is that original, but it's flawlessly executed. There is almost none of the texture pop-in common to many Unreal 3 Engine games. The framerate is rock solid and the animation is smooth and realistic.
But great graphics don't matter much if the gameplay isn't there. Fortunately, Drake's Fortune delivers in this department. The combat/cover system is basically lifted intact from Gears of War. That's not a criticism either. Gears has, in my opinion, the best combat system of any shooter I've ever played, so if you're going to steal, do if from the best. The only difference is that there is a small combo based melee system added in which isn't necessary to use, but which makes the combat more fun if you do use it.
I was suprised to hear the Gamespot reviewer say the combat was difficult and could be frustrating. I found the game to be a little on the easy side, combat-wise, on the normal difficulty setting anyway. The only tough parts come near the end of the game and it never gets so difficult that it becomes frustrating. Or at least the combat doesn't.
Which leads me to the other part of the gameplay - the puzzle and platform elements. The puzzles are mostly easy, but have enough of a challenge to make them interesting, though I think the game could have beneifitted from testing ythe player's puzzle skills a bit more thoroughly than was done. However, they are a nice change of pace and, if nothing else, gives the player ample opportunity to explore the stunning enviornments which one tends to miss during combat. The platorming parts of the game are well done, though sometimes suffers a bit from arbitrariness. There is usally one "right way" to go and if go try to make a jump that looks just as makable as the one you're suposed to make, you'll often find yourself dying. In fact, I would say that 80% or more of the deaths I had in this game were due to mistaken jumps/paths rather than combat.
The story is, as the developers discuss in some of the bonus "making of' footage, based on the type of 30's action films that the Indiana Jones movies were also based on. The story while being, as the Gamespot reviewer correctly points out, very derivative (nazis, an ancient cursed treasure, and characters right out of a summer action flick), is still fun and enjoyable mostly due to the great voice acting of all the major characters. All of the actors do a great job and make you care about characters and a story that you otherwise might not since the story isn't that compelling on it's own merits as it suffers from "been there, done that" syndrome.
The music is extremely well done. Certain parts seem very similar to the musis of Far Cry and anyone having played both games will immediately recognize one particular hauning wailing vocal that appears in both games. Native instuments mixed with traditional movie scoring make a combination that will raise your heart rate without being too intrusive ,as is frequently a problem in action games.
All in all, this is a game well worth playing if you're a fan of the action gerne. The 8.0 given by the Gamespot reviewer was a bit low in my opinoin. While perhaps borrowing a bit too freely from other games and movies to rate in the 9's, it certainly belongs in the high 8's (which I would give it had
Gamespot not recently gone from their former 100 point scale to their current, much less useful, 20 point scale;' consider my "real" score an 8.8) because, after all, fun is the standard by which we should judge games, not originality.