This game first released on PS3 in 2007 and was very recently released on PS4 as part of the Nathan Drake Collection, so now let's review Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
First off, how is this game's story, the game's story is really cool. I'll start with the characters, Nathan Drake is completely awesome, he's a very likable hero, as well as a deadly fighter and master tomb raider, pun intended. he's a very light hearted character as well, and has absolutely brilliant banter with his friends, Sully and Elena, who are also both completely badass, the 3 bounce off one another in a way that's both gripping and often hilarious, and there's a real sense of friendship between them. The other treasure hunters are less interesting however, while Eddy Raja is somewhat interesting in his clearly rough history with Nathan Drake, Roman, the game's main bad guy is not even close, he's just the bad guy, and his presence in the game is also very minimal, which is either good or bad depending on your point of view, either the game's primary focus is Nate and his friends, or the game has a very underwhelming villain that doesn't really do much. For an adventure game about a treasure hunter, I expected the game to take Nate and his friends to a wider variety of locations, that said the tropical jungles that Nate visits in this game are really fun to explore, as are the ancient tribal ruins and abandoned Spanish colonies, which are all really good to look at, even if you can clearly tell this game isn't a new game, I can't say the graphics have aged badly because they really haven't. What has aged really well however is the animation, the writing and particularly the voice acting, which are all top notch all round, and it makes the cutscenes and even just the quieter moments of gameplay really fun to watch. Unfortunately the game does become less enjoyable towards the end in my opinion, when the adventure aspect of the game takes a back seat to the shooting, and the final few levels of the game are just wave after wave of enemies, which is a far cry, pun intended, from the adventure aspect that is much stronger throughout the rest of the game.
The gameplay in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune can be broken up into 3 elements; platforming and wall climbing, puzzle solving, and third person shooting. I'll start with the simplest to talk about, the shooting, the game is a pretty standard third person shooter, Nate can carry 2 weapons, a 1 handed gun and a 2 handed gun, as well as grenades. He also has a very basic melee system with a surprisingly hard to pull off combo system, and by hard to pull off I mean you have a lesser chance of dying by just mashing the weak attack, it's pretty useless. the shooting is straightforward, though it does have an unusually floaty feel to it that is a put off at first, but that you quickly get used to, and that ends up being really fun when you get really good at it. The guns are unremarkable, Nate has a pretty standard selection of rifles, pistols and shotguns, as well as a grenade launcher, but really all the different weapon types do the same thing, there's no one gun that you'll gravitate to here, which isn't bad, it's just not good. overall though the shooting is functional, and does become more fun the better you get at it, so I can't really complain. The puzzle solving and platforming and wall climbing are much more interesting, the puzzles are challenging, but I never got really annoyed by them, they're fun little puzzles to break up the shooting, and some of them are pretty intelligently designed. A big part of the puzzle solving is the platforming, which is a tad more frustrating, for the most part jumping to ledges and climbing walls is a pretty simple thing to do, but there are times when Nate misses ledges or just randomly jumps off a wall to his death at a botched button press, on the flip side I've had a few instances when I press jump and Nate didn't jump, instead just walking to his death. These problems are infrequent enough to not detract from the overall fun platforming, but when they happen, it's annoying. Finally, as you'd expect in a treasure hunting game, scattered throughout the levels is hidden treasure to find and collect, some are not terribly well hidden, others are, and it's pretty cool when you either stumble across one randomly, or finally get one that you've been trying to reach, but ultimately I personally wasn't bothered much by the hidden treasures, not a problem with the game, I just don't usually get bothered much by hidden collectables.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a very fun game to play, even with the occasional hiccup in the platforming and the uninteresting collection of weapons, while the gameplay hasn't aged perfectly, it still works well for the most part, and is still fun to play. But what really makes this game is the sense of adventure and it's awesome heroes. this is a very fun game all round, and it's definitely worth playing.
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