Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Review

                           

                                     A Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot

                                           *Warning: May Contain Spoilers*

                                              Originally Written: 11/01/2019

I was excited to finally try this

                                                                                              

Developer: Naughty Dog

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Platform: Playstation 3

Genre: Action-Adventure

Release: November 20, 2007

So now we return to my mission to play some of the PS3 exclusives I missed out on while growing up an Xbox Bird... an XBird if you will.

And this one I decided to do after a friend of mine on Twitter reacted in surprise when I mentioned I'd never played any of this series. So Telise, this one's for you... and I'm not sure if I'll forgive you anytime soon.

So this game was brought to us by Naughty Dog, my Jak and Daxter people! I'm a big fan of these guys and instead of making a new Jak and Daxter, they decided to create an all new IP for the new Playstation 3.

Inspired by action scenes from such movies as Indiana Jones and National Treasure they brought us a game that, for the longest time I heard many people refer to as Dude Raider.

But of course this game turned 12 years old last year, so how does it hold up? Do I like it? Is Nolan North a goddamn treasure? Well that last one is obviously true but, here's my thoughts on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

So the plot here involves the titular Nathan Drake on the trail of the lost city of El Dorado, following in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake. 

The selection of weapons is lacking in my opinion

Accompanied by lovable grandpa Victor Sullivan and spunky newswoman Elena Fisher, Nate's adventures will require him to run, jump, roll, punch, and shoot his way through many obstacles.

The game opens with Nate and Elena on a boat in the waters of Panama unearthing Francis Drake's supposed coffin, and this sets up many things very well. 

The story of course, the wild goose chase that every archaeological search in media seems to always do.

The game looks great for its age

For the time and even now the game still looks pretty good, there was some definite issues with things like texture pop-in later, but aside from some technical annoyances the game still looks decent.

The banter between characters is often funny and just really enjoyable to hear. As stated before Nolan North is brilliant and Emily Rose does a great job as the adorable Elena, and when Victor comes in later voiced by Richard McGonagle just mwah! Fantastic and it helped me to fall in love with these characters damn near immediately.

But I fear you're not going to hear me praise much in this game, because I have quite a few issues that got me irritated enough to want to punch Drake in his perfect fucking jawline.

Let's start with the biggest issues the controls and the camera, dear fucking god.

I can't exactly put my finger on it, but something about this games controls feel finicky. Whether I'm trying to aim a shot or jump to a certain platform, there were times I could actively feel Nate fighting against me, and no going into the options to mess with the sensitivity never really solved my problem.

Now by say the 16th chapter in this 22 chapter game, I had somewhat adapted and could competently defeat enemies at a comfortable pace and continue on without seeing the death screen at least three times, but I never felt completely in control and that drives me up a fucking wall.

This is Elena. Hi Elena.

If I die in a game, I want it to be because I screwed up, I wasn't paying attention or hit the wrong button, but when I feel I'm not in 100 percent control then every death seems so cheap or infuriating.

Of course the camera didn't help here either, this motherfucker sometimes does whatever the hell it wants, some of those missplaced jumps has to be blamed on this goddamn thing.

Especially whenever the camera pans to the side and you almost have a 2D platformer thing going on, judging the proper distance between platforms can be damn near impossible.

As mentioned earlier aiming can be annoying at times, particularly if you have one of the weaker pistols enemies soak up the goddamn damage and whenever you're constantly running into wave after wave of enemies it gets tiring and annoying.

I wouldn't be so hard on this if these sections were fun to play but alas, each one comes with its own annoyances.

This game could have also done away with the fucking QTE's, 6 chapters in and this game introduces these during certain cutscenes and I obviously wasn't prepared for them initially and Nate plummeted to his watery grave.

This fake out was also obvious and pitiful

But again these happen so infrequent I wonder why they bothered.

And the fucking Six-Axis! Okay this is just stupid, the PS3's Six-Axis controls work whenever the hell they want to. And tell me who's idea was it for the Six-Axis to be the only way to throw grenades, who do I have to slap the Naughty Dog Shit out of?

I mean I'm not trying to say all of these are no fun, even in these annoying moments there is fun to be had.

I actually really liked the melee, running up to an enemy  and mashing square and triangle to take them down was always cool, and seeing Nate do a running dropkick or a superman punch to an enemy never got old.

Give 'em the ol' one two!

I also really, really liked the music here, may just be the best thing about this game. The audio in this game itself is fantastic, but man I do love me a good soundtrack.

But let's go from a few positives to another negative, why the fuck can I not aim and shoot while driving the jet ski? Why do I have to stop to shoot back at enemies? This just makes no sense.

And there's some missed opportunities here too, when the cursed monsters start showing up (spoilers people hello!) there were a few moments where I had to deal with the gun toting assholes and the chompy chomp mossters at the same time, but these moments are too damn few.

It could've been really interesting having to deal with both sets of enemies on several occasions.

Fuck. This. With. A. Rusty. Knife.

Now I've mentioned before I'm not the biggest fan of puzzles, and I'm not bitching about the ones this game has. I thought they were absolutely fine. But, man there's really not many of these. 

This game is mostly platforming and shooting gallerys which, I mean fine, but I could see some getting irritated here.

I know I'm not a fan of them but people who play things like Tomb Raider do enjoy puzzles to break up the monotony of the constant combat and finicky controls. More of them would have been welcomed is what I'm saying.

And the final boss is a QTE... because of course it is. Fuck it final verdict time I'm getting annoyed all over again!

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune gets No Seal. Nothing.

This game is nothing and deserves to be nothing. 

Maybe that map will lead you to a better game Nate

Listen folks I'm sorry there are nuggets of good things in here but they were vastly outweighed by how goddamn annoyed I was getting.

The game's not awful or anything but.... god did I expect more. I hear the sequels are far better and I have no doubt of that, but don't expect me to join in on those quests anytime soon.