Gamespot got it very wrong with this one. It is a great game on many levels- with added wife appeal!
Now while 8 is a good score, and did not put me off buying Uncharted, it is clearly out of sync with some of the mediocre games that score higher. In fact while I was playing the game I kept wondering to myself- Is Ryan Davis on crack? This game is great!
So why do I like Uncharted? It is definitely a case of story complementing action. The story is interesting and the voice acting/mocap is great. It is one of the few games I remember playing where you look forward to the story cut scenes and want to play on to find out what is going to happen next. Lets be honest, most of time when a cut scene pops up we groan to ourselves and just endure the crappyness of it. Story can be a fantastic element in games, and most of my favourite games have also been great stories (for example Ultima 7, Starcraft, Half-life, etc.)
Uncharted is also what I thought Tomb Raider should have been. In Tomb Raider I remember being endlessly frustrated by the controls. Turn, step, jump, fall, die, restart, punch TV... In Uncharted you actually fell like you can get to where you want to go. It is challenging, and you can fall, but it isn't face punchingly difficult to jump around and explore. Some people say its too forgiving- thats fine with me. The last thing I want to do is keep restarting because of the same jump a million times.
The gunplay in Uncharted is very well done. It has an excellent cover mechanic, and if you play on hard is satisfyingly challenging. The weapons are fairly similar, but they do improve gradually. The enemy that opposes you, the pirates, are numerous and aggressive, and satisfying to shoot in the face. I also liked the close combat- it was a nice touch. Uncharted uses a simple combo mechanic that is a nice change from most shoots that have a simple punch/butt attack.
Graphically Uncharted is fantastic. In my opinion the best I have yet seen. Yes, I have not seen Crysis. In fact, my sad old PC would probably explode from overexertion if the Crysis disk was even in that same room as it. Graphics are not all that important to me, but Uncharted's are amazing.The water is great, the trees saw, the grass reacts to the wind, the animation is fluid, and the framerate never dips. Music is not really my thing, but it is atmospheric and unobtrusive.
The most unexpected thing that I found about Uncharted was its wife appeal. Yes, my wife does play games, but they are usually of the puzzle or light strategy variety. She detests shooters and violent games, but the treasure collecting aspect of Uncharted drew her in. Before I knew it she was on the PS3 all day, and giving me tips on how to complete the levels. She found the shooting a bit difficult to get used to at first, but got the hang of it when she inverted both the X and Y axis!?! Apparently its like tilting a video camera on a tripod that way. Perhaps more games should allow X axis inversion? She played through the entire game on easy and normal.
So is Uncharted perfect? No, it has its fair share of minor flaws. The car chase scenes are tacked on and unrealistic. I liked the boat scenes, but my wife found them a bit difficult and frustrating (lots of restarts). The sheer number of pirates you gun down is a little unrealistic. I think will take thousands of years for the native population of pirates to recover after the hunting spree you go on. Finally there is no online of any kind. I think it would have been cool- Drake V Pirates but whatever.
When its all said and done, Uncharted is terrific value and lots of fun. It is a fairly long game with plenty of replay opportunity; it does not follow the recent trend of ultra-short games (e.g. COD4). The best game in my PS3 collection thus far by far.