Uncharted is an easy game to describe...

You take the combat mechanics from Gears of War, the platforming parts of the Tomb Raider and 3D Prince of Persia series and the character, humour and storylines from the Indiana Jones and Mummy films (the 2 starring Brendan Fraser)

I had reservations about how the game would turn out when it was first announced. Naughty Dog had only ever really done the Crash Bandicoot and Jak games and their last two - Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing had been disappointments. I wasn' t sure whether they could pull off what appeared to be a " realistic" 3rd person shooter intended to fill the same gap on PS3 that Gears had on 360.

Heavenly Sword, Lair and to lesser extents MotorStorm and Resistance: Fall of Man had already proved lactluster. They were Sony' s unfulfilled promises. A handful of big name games with stellar budgets and production values that not only failed to set the world on fire but also failed to show what the console was really capable of.

Heavenly Sword has fantastic production values - the cutscenes were mostly fantastic and unmatched for non-CG quality. The voice work in particular was astounding. The gameplay was another story though and can be summed up in one four letter word...


...weak...


Uncharted matches those production values, it matches those beautiful cutscenes and it matches that superb voice work... and it stomps all over it... twice.

The characters have character, their expressions are flawless and the game both looks as feels solid. It runs at a steady 30fps with very very minor (and i mean VERY minor) texture pop in and some noticible but not game effecting screen tearing. The animations are some of the best i' ve seen, challenged only really by Assassins Creed, ...and the only technical negative i can really thing of is that the over the shoulder camera and weapon aiming alignment is off. It' s how they' ve made Drake hold the weapons that' s wrong not the camera. It kinda annoyed me at first but i soon forgot about it. It' s far from realistic but its not a big issue and it doesn' t have any impact on the gameplay.

Graphically it' s a contender for best looking console game. The textures are almost as detailed as those in Gears of War but is more realistc and the lighting, physics and polycount are far superior. It' s definitely more impressive from a purely technical standpoint.

The art direction is pretty cool too. There' s nothing you haven' t seen before in movies or other games, but you' d have to take things from several different sources to get everything Uncharted has. I' d wondered how much of the game was set in the jungle sown in the early concept art and figured they' d do several temples... with different lighting... Not so. Naughty Dog have crafted a geometrically diverse game world with each area having it' s own unique atmospehere and " feel" .

The lighting model has no peers on consoles, perhaps even on PC' s. Everything casts realistic shadows, taking the distance between the lit object and the wall (or whatever) behind it into consideration. It looks amazing. It also used well in the different locations. The electricity lacking Nazi submarine base pushes this point. Your initial aim is to find the generator room, and so off you trundle with your trusty flashlight... power it on and the (red) emergency lighting kicks in (it' s a military base remember) and you have to go flip the switches in what are essentially 2 breaker boxes. The red glow from the emergency lighting, coupled with the light from your flashlight, sparks from short circuiting electrical equipment and the shadows cast by both the environment and high poly enemies is... uh... really nice?

The other thing that really impressed me was the water effects (and physics). Until halfway through the game everything was what you usually expect from water in videogames. It looks nice, it reacts to your runcycle and bullets and the flowing water looks and sounds like flowing water. There' s a short section whare you move through a sunken city using a jet ski... the water is still and although the craft controls well, it' s nothing out of the ordinary. So when it came to use the jet ski again, i figured it' d be much the same - but it wasn' t. You have to take the thing upstream and against the current. The fast flowing water acts like fast flowing water and taking the thing up the river is actually more fun than you' d expect. It was a genuine and pleasant surprise that the developers had gone to the effort to create this over-all-too-soon section of the game.

The rest of the gameplay is just as solid. The combat mechanics are ripped straight from Gears of War, minus the wall slamming and chainsawing. The cover system, blindfiring and even grenade tossing all work exactly the same way (though the grenade arc is controled by tilting the controller). Like Gears you can carry a main weapon (2 in Gears), a sidearm and a handful of grenades, and like Gears you switch between the weapons with the d-pad. It all works exactly the same way. That' s obviously a good thing as many (rightly) believe Gears to be the peak of the 3rd person shooter genre. Uncharted falls down against Gears in this area, mainly because of the AI but also because of the cool little touches Epic gave their game; the roadie run, grenade tagging, the chainsaw, curb stomping and the active reload system etc...

The platforming, which makes up as much of the gameplay as the combat, is excellent. In most other games you' re limited to jumping forwards, backwards or (in the Prince of Persia games) at 90 degrees. In Uncharted, you jump every way concievable... even, ...diagonally!

The platforming is pretty forgiving and the " tricky" part is figuring out how to get to where you' re going as it' s never made all that clear. It' s not hard though, you just look for the ledges, vines, ropes, chains, handholds or whatever...

Naughty Dog have excelled themselves in terms of level design and architecture. Everything looks like it could have been used for something and nothing feels like it was put there just so you had something to jump to. It' s all very natural and it' s all very cool. I like platform games in general, but i haven' t had this much fun since the original PS2 version of Prince of Persia.

The music fits well and adds a lot to the atmosphere. No complaints there.

I can' t think of anything bad to say about the game really. The AI is weak, mostly just popping in and out of cover and occasionally moving positions. They don' t rush you like the enemies to in Gears, but the gunfights are still challenging on the higher difficulties. Apparently laser sights on Desert Eagles enhance you' re marksmenship ten fold... There' s some tearing, but not as much as most other games and one or two other minor quirks, but the game feels very polished.

It' s long enough too. 22 chapters making up 10-12 hours of gamplay depending on difficulty and skill level. I' d say it has replay value from the ' this is a game i' d play more than once because it' s cool' perspective - kinda like Resident Evil 4, and apparently there are multiple costumes and unlockables along with an extensive medal list (kill x amount of enemies with x weapon, or complete the game on x difficulty etc) which could be likened to achievements in 360 games. But there;s no multiplayer (thank god) and no Mercenaries mode (like in RE4) - and that could have worked quite well in this game with these environments and enemies.

All in all i would say Uncharted is one of the best games i' ve played this generation. It' s certainly the best game on PS3, and as a whole is probably better than anything on 360 (although that' s a matter of taste and opinion). It' s not as good a shooter as Gears, and it' s not as epic as Mass Effect... but it' s up there with them and it' s superior in many areas. I' d say it was more entertaining.

Drakes Fortune is supposed to be the first in a series... and that makes me feel all warm inside