Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Never let it be said that I’m a closed-minded and prejudice rookie of the gaming world; for a number of reasons. Firstly, I’ve been gaming since those Amega glory days when you had a box full of floppy discs and had to swap between about 5 every 20 seconds in order to get anywhere – although I’ll admit I was rather young then, but at least I remember that Cannonfodder/Sensible Soccer crossover and the first F-Zero game (and how frigging awesome they were). Anyway, I hereby shrug off the title of Sonyaphobe for this generation of the format wars by recently financially crippling myself once again for the month by buying myself a PS3. I’ll also admit that as a piece of hardware, it’s very impressive. It’s just a shame there are no games for the poor thing, aside from one or two, and seeing as Motorstorm is basically a racing game with only one track and Resistance: Fall of Man is nothing particularly special, but instead just another twitchy shooter that looks like original Xbox territory next to the likes of Call of Duty 4, the only game currently out I consider worth my attention are Gran Tourismo 5, but then again it’s just the bloody prologue so that’s out.

I guess with all that in mind, the only PS3 game out worth my attention is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and now we’ve established that I bring you this week’s review of Uncharted. I suppose it’s about time I gave this one a whack, seeing as everyone at work who asks me what games to get when they buy a PS3 gets the answer “Uncharted” without any real thought.

As Indiana Croft – uh – Nathan Drake, sorry, you start out on a boat in the middle of somewhere preparing for an appearance on the BBC’s “Who do you think you are?” by digging up your ancestor’s coffin, then decide to be a right smart arse and find a treasure he spent his entire life looking for and somehow by the end of the game only a day has passed and you’ve done more than found the bloody thing. Unfortunately, along the way you’re attacked by pirates, mercenaries, some mercenary pirates, an upper class British treasure hunter (who isn’t Lara Croft) and his dickhead Spanish lackie/’recruitment operative’.

That all sounds like pretty standard, if not at all original, treasure hunting adventuring goodness, but I do have my own personal bone to pick with it. If you, Nathan Drake, are the only smart arse who knows where your ancestor, Francis Drake, buried all the clues to a secret treasure, and you’re the first one to find said clues, then consequently the first one to get to the location of said secret treasure, then how the bloody hell did all those mercenary pirate fellows not only follow you but beat you to every single secret room/library/gallery/jungle opening when you’re undoubtedly the first person to set foot there in 500 years?

Surely if all these mercenary pirates can stay a few steps ahead of you while in search of some big ass treasure, they should logically show up somewhere, spot you, then instead of insisting on risking everyone’s lives in a very one-sided battle, they should just fuck off, following their gut instinct until you show up again, then repeat. They seem pretty good at it anyway. Aside from the fact that you’re constantly following the mercenary pirates even though you’re the only one who knows where they treasure is, even though it’d make perfect sense for them to follow you, occasionally catching up a trying to beat the shit out of you; there’s also the fact that there an awful lot of the bastards showing up, even though there’s actually only about 4 of them but they all seem to keep springing back to life whenever you find somewhere new.

Right, I think that’s enough of that continuity error before I spend the next three weeks rambling on and on, no doubt repeating myself more times that you dare count.

In all fairness, Uncharted starts on a fairly high note on the basis that it’s a proper “next gen” title, but at least it refuses to conform to the irritating formula that ‘brown + dark = real’, and as such is an incredibly vibrant and colourful world crammed with the same level of plant life that gives Far Cry a run for it’s money. Actually. If we’re using the “next gen” buzzword, I suppose I should say that it gives Crysis a run for it’s money, rather than the relatively old, mouldy toast that was Far Cry and its exact duplicates with slightly different names. Never mind though, my point is, it’s bright and green, and having spent a worrying amount of time living in a city environment, much like the rest of you, no doubt.

The first hour or so of Uncharted was really enjoyable, actually, partly because it left Nathan uncharacteristically quiet, but mostly because it involved little more than climbing around, admiring the scenery, which is what I loved about Assassin’s Creed. That, however, planted a worry in my mind. With Assassin’s Creed, I enjoyed climbing around slitting throats for a few hours, and even the bits between them when I was causing all sorts of reconnaissance-related havoc, right up to the point when I realised I’d been playing it for about 10 hours and hadn’t done anything else at all.

Uncharted, however, decided to stay clear of this, because after the first hour, right up to the end credits, the words “cinematic gaming” kept popping into my head, for a number of reasons. First off is the bonus that it all looks very good, then unfortunately, things start going wrong. Unlike the glory days of Tomb Raider, when you’d spend a lot of time climbing around solving puzzles, occasionally stopping for a very acrobatic fire fight, Uncharted decides to follow the path of frankly every smegging game involving anyone with brown hair (sans moustache), which is to have you shoot your way to the end credits from cover, occasionally stopping to solve a small puzzle, which opens up another duck-and-cover fire fight.

There’s also the fact that Nathan is in my eyes, a very unlikeable character, who by the look of his shirt can’t eat a shepherd’s pie without a bib, and will not shut the fuck up. He’s a cross between Flick from A Bug’s Life, and a jar of blackcurrant jam – which as you surely know is cockiness in a jar (bastard stuff stains like a motherfucker, but it tastes great and it sure as hell knows it). Said cockiness surely isn’t helped by the fact that he single-handedly manages to wipe out an entire regiment or mercenary pirates (or fleet, or whatever the hell you call a group of mercenary pirates). The bit that really made me void the warranty for my lovely TV was the fact he had about 3 one-liners he’d use in each of the many fire fights, and the generic problem is that they’re a) repetitive and b) not even remotely entertaining. There’s also the fact that he did a scoff-worthy impression of Sam Beckett whenever someone dropped a grenade near him – which as it turns out is incredibly frigging often.

Which leads me nicely to something else that annoyed my about Uncharted. During the completely unavoidable fire fights you naturally have to take cover or die, only after about 30 seconds of which, that stone pillar you were soiling yourself behind crumbles is if it was in fact made of Lego, which I assume in practise wouldn’t hold up for more than 30 seconds in a fire fight. Inevitably, that frequently leaves you with the choice of stay in cover and die or die when shooting, or die when trying to run away. And in the final boss battle this is only amplified to the point where I was just glad Sony had decided to sell PS3 pads in twin packs for a similar price to single pads. It was this point when “cinematic gaming” came into my head once more. Only this time it was because the linearity of Uncharted was so evident it felt like I was following a script. Every time I tried deviating from the script I was greeted by the world’s best shotgun in the hands of an award winning marksman.

As such the exploring that I liked so much drained away like a cup of tea that’d been left alone for so long that it’d not only gone cold but the sugar had been reconstituted as a horrible brown goo at the bottom of the cup. Interestingly, that metaphor’s even more suitable than I initially thought.

If you were to look at Uncharted with that in mind, you’d assume it’s not really a good game at all, but at least it all looks very nice and the exploration bits are very good until the times when Nathan is feeling suicidal and decides to occasionally leap blindly to his death if you don’t hold the analogue stick in exactly the right position when the camera angle suddenly changes . But yeah, it’s pretty good, but by following everyone else by introduces a big dollop of action-heavy mayonnaise to the fruit salad that is the rest of the game, it’s once more nothing particularly special.

If, on the other hand, you’re one of those people with a crap goatee, a cheap burette and insists on constantly wearing an open shirt with a t-shirt underneath, who gets a little too excited by the term “cinematic gaming”, then you’ll love the consistent prettiness of Uncharted so much that you’ll overlook the obvious rip off of numerous big blockbusters and Tomb Raider games, and I guess it’s probably just me who hates being condemned to play the game exactly how it wants you to. At least it feels that way judging by how many people I’ve heard complaining that San Andreas was better than GTA IV, despite my objections that pretty much everything that was cut out of San Andreas wasn’t only pointless, but pretty shit in the first place and that… you know what, screw it, I’ve had enough of saying how much better the freedom and realism is in GTA IV.

Drop me some abuse at:

phill_j@hotmail.co.uk

(I'll start putting pictures back up when I get my internet sorted. And a mouse).