Like Heidi Klum with a stutter… beautiful but repetitive.
I feel I have mirrored the development of this game with my opening ramblings. Sadly this games one redeeming feature is its unbelievable visage. Sadly there is a fairly simple but pleasant young girl behind the supermodel good looks, and that's not what I was looking for. I feel the developers have relied too much on gamepaly modes that are very much of the now as opposed to those of the future. The two fundamental aspects of play rely on exploration and fire fights. Unfortunately the exploration is limited as there only ever seems to be one rout and the firefights are crushingly uninspired due to their lack of creativity in the set pieces and their elementary cover system. The action never seems to flow from one section to the next. This gives you time to catch your breath and collect ammunition until you walk through to the next section which leads onto a very similar situation, but their might be three pirates with shotguns as opposed to two like in the previous room. You lack the urgency to push on towards your goal during these shooting sections as the story simply lacks the drive push you forward.
Narrative and accuracy of character was important in this game. Cut scenes are punctuated though-out the action and provide you with base details of why your stuck in the middle of nowhere. It sits at an average Hollywood adventure film and all the stereotypical characters are in there. The voice acting and script is generally above par for a video game and on more than one occasion I found myself in stitches at some of the banter. It sits on the same fence as the gameplay mechanics, it's all very well put together but lacks any form of spark of genius that makes a good game great. Does this make it a bad game? No, but it does stop it from becoming a classic. The game play isn't varied enough to stay fresh and the one off sections (jeep chase and Jet Ski ride) are fairly annoying (the Jet Ski in particular) but do break up the monotonous gunfights.
Uncharted will stand as a trophy wife for Sony until something with a bit more bite comes along that dazzles the eyes as well as tickles the brain cells.