I picked up a Playstation 3 at Fry's a couple days ago and I can say now that anyone who still chants the xbot mantra, "The PS3 has no (good) games" evidently hasn't played any of them. I haven't built up much of a collection, yet, but the games I've played so far are more than satisfying.

The first game was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The cover system is similar to Gears of War, but the ability to fire from hard cover and dive between cover positions is where the likeness ends. One of my chief complaints about Gears was how frustrating they made the simple process of dismounting from cover. It might seem like nit-picking to some people, but the fact that I had to leave the analog stick idle in order to dismount seemed extremely irritating to me. In Uncharted, it's a simple matter of pulling back on the analog stick. Moving around corners requires the player to hold the stick forward and press O (or X, but I prefer O). Vaulting over low cover is done by holding forward and pressing X. No hassle here.

Aiming feels nice and smooth. I haven't had any incidents so far where I missed an enemy because of the "cross-hairs" overshooting my target. It's no KB&M, but as far as console shooters go, I can't complain.

The physics are pretty good, though I don't think I'd say their anything revolutionary. Walking over most foliage causes it to bend over and enemies recoil back when they get hit by gunfire. Death animations also appear to combine scripted animation with ragdoll physics, so you won't see dead enemies flying back fifty feet and flipping backwards three times after taking a head-shot from a 9mm nor will you see them keel over and bring their upper body to rest on a seemingly invisible platform over a bottomless chasm. On the other hand, environmental destructibility seems to be nearly non-existent with only a few exceptions. On a few occasions, players will find crates being shredded by gunfire, but not in a way that looks terribly realistic. Then again, I can't name very many games that get that part right, anyway.

The enemy AI is another strong point. In many games I've played, the enemy tends to show no indication of seeing or hearing a threat other than shooting in it's general direction. That is not the case with Uncharted. Enemies will use suppressing fire to keep your head down, try to flank you, throw out grenades to flush you out, and when fired at will try to dodge gunfire using lateral movement and go for cover or duck back behind cover if they're already mounted. Bad AI is a common problem in most shooters (both PC and console), so it's refreshing that this game doesn't follow that trend.

The graphics are undoubted Uncharted's crowning achievement. Almost everything looks nearly life-like, but the water effects and the lighting are what stand out the most for me. It's probably not all that difficult to render a character to appear wet after being completely submerged underwater, but creating a realistic appearance of being wet after walking through a knee-deep river strikes me as a much more impressive feat. Mind you, I'm not an expert on graphics design, so take that for what it's worth.

As for the lighting, whether it's sunlight beaming through an open hole in the ceiling or a flashlight casting shadows across the pitch-black depths of a long abandoned tomb, this game offers lighting about as close to realism as it gets. I can't think of any game I've played with better lighting.

Sound is the next important factor in a game's presentation. If the sound of gunfire and explosions or the voice acting are not convincing, the presentation won't hold up. Between this game and Heavenly Sword, I can't make up my mind which offers better presentation overall. It's that good.

Normally, plot is not a hugely important element in any game (except maybe Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy), but Uncharted's story offered enough intrigue to keep me trudging through even the most frustrating firefights despite being repeatedly (*CENSORED* taken advantage of in an anal fashion *CENSORED*) by the ruthless AI. That said, I'd say it got the job done.

Uncharted excels in it's strongest points and is above average at worst everywhere else and it shows just what the PS3 is truly capable of. I don't think any objective gamer will look at this and say, "This game is ass!". Now all the PS3 needs is some better PR and more games like this one in the future (as well as a few improvements to PSN) and it will be set to be a truly formidable competitor in the console war.

Now that I'm done gushing over my first PS3 game, I'll throw in a few words about the system. My first impression when I unpacked my PS3 was a slight bit of confusion. I was well familiar with most of the parts that came with my system; AV cables, USB cable, power cord, mostly the usual equipment, though the technology of touching panels (a novel albiet useless concept) to start it up and eject disks rather than pushing buttons might have caught me a little off guard had I not seen it in a YouTube video beforehand.

So, what was the confusing part? Well, getting it connected to the Internet. What I missed was that I had to select an option on the system menu to turn on the wireless router. Aside from that, getting everything set up was a fairly easy process with only a few minor annoyances.

After a few failed attempts to register my PSP with my PS3 console due to my failure to read simple instructions that would've informed me that my PSP had to be in USB mode (I know, stupid me. Duh!), I set up an account with PSN and got started downloading what was most important to me: game demos.

PSN offers a variety of game demos for just about every game genre as well as a few PSN exclusives. The exclusives look like mostly rubbish (For 5-10 bucks, what did you expect?), but Blast Factor looked pretty enjoyable in an arcade-ish sort of way and even implemented a few interesting uses of the SIXAXIS's motion sensors.

As for the other demos, the games that caught my interest were Heavenly Sword, Folklore, Resistance: Fall of Man, Ratchet and Clank Future: ToD, and The Simpsons Game. I was expecting to get a kick out of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, but when I played the demo, it didn't feel much more inspired than your average repetitive, button-mashing hack-and-slasher. Not that that rules it out of being an enjoyable game, but with the universal acclaim it received, I was expecting more.

After playing the Genji: Days of the Blade demo, I got a pretty good idea why this game was rated poorly. Less than impressive graphics (even for a game released near the PS3's launch date) are one thing, but did they have to position the camera so freaking close that I couldn't see most of the action around me?!

The Ridge Racer 7 demo proved to be an interesting experience in that true to the original Ridge Racer formula, I spent more time moving sideways rather than forward. LOL!!! BTW, in case anyone's wondering, Reiko Nagase still looks hot (at least from what I saw of her in the RR7 icon on the system menu). Though, I guess anyone who cares already knows that.

That's enough for today. It's past 10:00 and I've already drawn this out longer than any of my previous blog posts. I just wanted to share my first experience with a next-gen console with my friends and for that matter, anyone here at GS that gives a damn. BTW, to anyone here that takes exception to my comments about Gears of War; don't take what I said personally. I probably don't need to say this, but I've seen some pretty nasty flame wars start up over comments like that. I'm not saying Gears sucked, although I have in the past. I just didn't like it.

Edit - And to any of my friends who have been wondering about my extended absence; it's all Blizzard's fault.