 |
Rating : 8.2 / 10 Developer: Naughty Dog Availability : PlayStation 3 |
You may remember the classic Pitfall game series; it only makes you wonder when the next step up will take place.
Well, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is just that.
Although Pitfall has had its revisions, Uncharted takes it to the next level, and that’s how I would categories Uncharted.
You play as Nathan Drake who follows some clues he inherited which later takes him on the journey to find El Dorado. Constantly running into dead ends and getting himself into trouble, at the same time it continually opens new clues to him where El Dorado is. He travels across large islands surrounded by lush jungles and filled with ruins.
Running through this adventure, you will constantly be taking cover behind rocks, walls, or even pillars. At times, you will be out in the open and it becomes a game of wits and quick, accurate shots.
The cover system plays very nicely as you can hide behind almost everything and with the option to aim with a left or right view when in or out of cover, you can avoid object corners blocking your view to continue the fight. This makes the game easier and less hassling when dealing with camera angles.
Combining this with the ability to quickly duck in and out of cover, jump or roll over to your next cover point, you can quickly get around the pirates and take them out from almost anywhere. If ducking out for a quick shot is too dangerous, you can fire blindly trying to centre your screen onto the enemy without the help of any aim cursor.
Blind firing works well when you’re up close and personal with the enemy though as Nate will automatically lock onto the enemies most of the time.
If you really want to get in their face, you can throw some punches where delivering a heavy combo will enable you to pick up their weapon at twice the ammo loaded than you’d get from a normal kill.
With the constant running around and fighting, you won’t notice some of the poorer texture qualities until the area is clear of pirates and you have some time to look around.
That isn’t to say there’s anything bad because the pixel count is almost top notch. The combination of lighting and shadows with the detailed textures looks fabulous. The main issue is that sometimes the textures don’t blend well, or they don’t look as good compared to everything else, such as some foliages or the glossy inside brick walls of a building. At other times, you wonder why it a certain texture was used when they know they could have made it more differently without any problems at all.
But other than that, the world is very real yet artistic at the same time, and though the back drop environment may not contain the detailed textures, they are rendered in full 3D and still look great.
Having said that, regarding lack of textures, you may sometimes find that in the characters during cut scenes or movie sequences there is a slight lack of character details here and there.
What’s really missing is some anti-aliasing to smooth out some of the edges.
So when you have a beautifully rendered game, you need sound that will bring forth the beauty and even take it to the next level.
As you run through the world, you will hear different footsteps for various turfs, ranging from rocks to grass, water, dirt, and wood. Guns are distinctive, strong, and you can really feel the power in some of them, even though they do not sound like their real counterparts.
During battles, the music will amp up, drums pounding, boosting adrenaline, and when everything is quiet, the music tones down to a mild rhythmic sound as your explore your surroundings, and at times, silences, left only to the ambient sounds of the jungle, blowing of the wind, and running streams.
During your fights, your enemies will constantly look for cover, just like you are, moving from cover to cover to get better shots at you. They will pop out, take some shorts, or spray wildly to scare you. At times, they will slowly move around to try and get a better shot at you. When a grenade is thrown at them, they will try to step away whilst trying to still pick you clean, rather than running for cover. On most cases, your grenade will at least kill somebody and hurt everyone else.
Most of the time you’re alone, but at other times, you will have help from Elena. She will take cover, move from cover to cover, and take shots at the pirates when safe. She knows that she is doing so you don’t ever need to worry about how she’s doing, but concentrating on picking off the pirates around you. Hopefully you have good aim because she doesn’t have good aim but will manage a kill every now and again.
Though it looks great, sounds great, and plays great, what makes it different is its story. Taking a classic story and turning it around. What I will say is that El Dorado was not the City of Gold, but El Dorado, was a Golden Man, and there’s a lot more to him than we all think.
What pushes the story forward is the great voice acting as they portray how the characters feel. Sometimes there will be something a little out of cue or sound almost like so, but you won’t really notice it.
Other than good voices, Uncharted is littered with cut scenes. These scenes come on and off seamlessly and blends naturally into the action, moving from one action point to another. There will be times when a movie sequence is played instead to tell you the story and generally these load instantly. Some will take a second or so before the movie comes on.
All of this blends together into almost an action movie which you play actively in. The game goes through the chapters and scenarios without having to load whole sections but what happens at the same time is that sometimes textures don’t load straight away and what you will get is an object with blurry details. Everything will eventually load after a few seconds, and these generally only happen after a movie sequence.
This isn’t to say that Uncharted doesn’t have its share of real problems.
At times, when you knock out an enemy, you may find yourself snagged onto their body and though movements are full of animation such as ducking, running, and jumping, this causes some collisions and detection issues where he doesn’t jump properly or doesn’t grab hold of things properly, causing you to mis-jump and fall to your doom.
But at least there are checkpoints every few moments so if this ever happens, you don’t need to repeat large portions of the trail.
Overall, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune provides an immersive adventure, especially if you like stories, but also beautiful action which can be intense sometimes. You can easily run through the game within a day on any of the difficulty levels and there are bonus features where you can mirror the world or play in fast or slow motion to add a bit of oomph to your game.
Comments