It's easy to hear about "Uncharted" and pass it off as a clichéd, unoriginal bastard child. You'd be missing out.
Remember all the great acrobatic segments of (the good, first) "Prince of Persia"? Remember all the heart-pounding battles, shooting wildly from unstable cover in "Gears of War"? How about the lush locales and adventuring of "Tomb Raider"? The humor and personality of "Indiana Jones" or "Romancing the Stone"? This game has all of that. On the surface tho' scoffers have a lot of ammunition. The game features nearly all adventure story clichés. Our heroes: an affable, everyman hero; a spunky, fish-out-of-water love interest; a gruff, world-worn confidant with a checkered past. Our Villains: the lowlife wannabe with the army of scum; the overly cosmopolitan, snobbish but oh so evil kingpin; the lackey with dark aspirations. And the game mechanics really offer nothing new. Combat is more strategic than bombastic. A well-implemented cover system similar to "Gears of War" (but a bit more forgiving) is the centerpiece but a less-used melee system and quick "from the hip" shooting are central to some areas. Our hero, Nathan Drake, has access to a single handgun or rifle and up to four grenades at the same time. While there are many types of weapons most don't vary much (there are several pistols, several machine guns, a sniper rifle and a grenade launcher) and you'll almost always carry the available choice with the most ammo. During the larger multi-pronged battles other weapons, mostly picked from corpses, do see their fair share of use. There's definitely a great feeling to slowly flanking a pirate with a rocket launcher, dropping him with a well-placed headshot and appropriating his weapon to wreak havoc on his buddies. While you're never really starved for ammo you definitely can't sit tight: you have to pop out to collect resources. Enemies are generally intelligent but "movie" intelligent: they'll find cover as well but nearly always leave a chance for a satisfying head-shot or shoulder clip. They'll move from cover to cover realistically although some simply storm your position. The varied responses (from suicide attacks to cowardly hiding) and the excellent, multi-leveled arenas work very well to make each battle seem fresh. The acrobatics are simpler, but not by much, than "Price of Persia" but very satisfactory. There's none of the heated "die 100 times" perfection of action sequences that you sometimes saw in that game although some areas are definitely a challenge. Although billed as an "ordinary man" Drake would put any circus performer to shame as he spends huge amounts of time clinging to crumbling ledges, flinging his body from rusty pipe to rusty chain and leaping from pillar to pillar. Relating the story elements would bring chortles from some. There isn't much new here: Cursed Spanish gold, secret Nazi experiments and modern-day pirates. A hero against impossible odds helped by dubious allies. Really, any way you describe this it sounds trite, derivative and dull. In reality this game takes all of the clichés and exposes them as archetypes and the derivative is shown as classic. The game lovingly takes all of this and does it so well. You'll feel like you're playing through a classic adventure serial (with a little more profanity). The look of the game has a lot to do with this: it's beautiful. While the gunplay and strategy will remind you of "Gears of War" that game presented a depressing, dystopian landscape that seemed to suck joy from your bones. "Uncharted" environments are lush, alive and a joy to explore. The sound design adds tremendously to this. The score (done by the same composer who scored "Firefly") is filled with unusual instruments and sounds perfectly inserted into the whole. Like every other game ever made footsteps sound stupid (what is it with that?) but other than the entire audio presentation is a thing of beauty. The story is engrossing and while the situations might not be the most original the writing and staging is spot-on. The completely motion-captured cut scenes, done by the excellent voice actors, look great and don't outlive their welcome. There are truly inspired moments that are laugh-out loud funny. There are few vehicle segments (the incredibly fun jeep sequence and some less successful jet ski areas) that break things up nicely and enemies evolve nicely which also tends to break up gameplay. The character animation is sublime (remember this is a Naughty Dog game... the same studio that did the "Jak and Daxter" games). Actions clearly have multiple animations and animation blend seamlessly into each other. While I would agree with other reviewers that say things look "real" they do look better than any other game I can remember. Also a Naughty Dog trademark is the fact that you'll see many of the large set-pieces used multiple times. Despite this there's very little back-tracking in the game and all of the familiarity serves ultimately to better engage you with the world being presented. There's no lazy reuse here. The overall story ends somewhat weakly and with a "match the button" sequence which was only somewhat frustrating (but did cause flashbacks to the amazing frustrating end sequences of the "God of War" games). The "normal" difficultly took me about eight hours to beat and I was never truly frustrated (although I did die enough). There are still hidden treasures to find, more difficultly settings and rewards to unlock. Like "Heavenly Sword" (another great PS3 game) those only interesting in the story might want to rent this game: not because it's not worth the cost of ownership but simply because it can easily be "beat" in a weekend. The PS3 is fast becoming the home of the most cinematically engaging games available. "Uncharted" doesn't blur the line as much as "Heavenly Sword" did but it's miles (or kilometers) ahead of most other games. And (sorry, unlike "Heavenly Sword") it's nearly always insanely, totally FUN to play. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Enterprise web applications, build robust, secure scalable apps today - Try it now ColdFusion Today ColdFusion 8 beta - Build next generation apps Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:246987 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
