I just finished Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune a little bit ago. I had rented it from GameFly and very quickly got caught up in the story and the gameplay. It is basically an action platformer, but the style, attention to detail, characters and story make it a hell of a lot of fun. That is to say until you’re in the final act where it dips for me, but I’ll comment on that in a bit…
Basically, take Tombraider and in some of the combat controls of Gears of War and spice the plot and special effects and you’ve got Uncharted. The game is a mix of platformer, duck and shoot, puzzles, and some of the box graphics I have seen yet in a game. Plants brush out of your way while walking/running. You’ll look wet after getting in water. The scenes (and there are many) where you’re directing the main character to climb or swing from ledge to vine or ledge to ledge look so incredibly natural. The developers also make some nice use of the SIXAXIS controllers on the PS3 by letting you balance while crossing a log or some such or by setting the trajectory for grenade tosses.
All in all, it is a hell of a lot of fun, but as I mentioned the last act takes away from the duck & shoot mechanic and makes the game more of a twitch shooter due to a change in opponents. I don’t want to give much away here as it could spoil the plot for others. This change made it very hard for me to beat, but I did finish it on “Normal” in about 10.5 hours. I only got about a small portion of the treasures & medals (think achievements on the Xbox 360), but I thoroughly enjoyed this rental and look forward to Nathan Drake returning in a sequel.
Metacritic scored the game 88 out of 100.