A beautiful game with an engrossing story to tell grace's the PS3 on a fun yet rather short treasure hunt
As the game begins you are just finding the "Coffin" of Sir Francis Drank only finding a book instead of a body, this book leads you on a treasure hunt that'll lead you across an island and into a lot of action.
Firstly you'll be dropped into an action sequence on a boat involving fighting off pirates that have been tracking you, so you take to your gun and defend yourself.
After which your picked up by a companion named Sullivan you'll find yourself in the lush jungle in search for "El Dorado" and the lost treasure of Sir Francis Drake.
Thankfully he left a lot of clues in that book from the coffin and you'll be greeted by a few fairly simple puzzles and a lot of fights.
And you'll be fighting a lot (I mean...A LOT) of baddies which comprise of men with various weapons in various locations and these encounters can prove quite challenging in certain situations as the amount of ammo you can carry is rather limited and you can only hold a handgun, a rifle and four grenades.
After all you play a simple treasure hunter not an elite commando, plus it proves a deeper challenge and thats what makes the game so fun.
As for weapons you'll meet the simple 9mm pistol followed by an AK47 and later in the game you'll be able to grip the M9 pistol, M4 Assault Rifle, grenade launchers, sniper rifles and my favorite...The .44 Magnum (Dirty Harry moments ahoy!) and quite a few more. All these weapons somehow made me feel rather inadequate for this adventure though again due to feeling like I was never carrying enough ammo, at some points I was left with no ammo but a grenade!, however the fist fighting and melee can be very fun.
There is nothing better than charging at an enemy with no ammo and cracking him a few times round the jaw then taking his weapon, and the fist fighting is quite easy as long as you time it right.
It's basically a QTE (Quick Time Event) by pressing buttons as the punch lands to make a combo. These are backed up by some fantastic animations as well making them always fun to watch.
The action sequences are broken up by some light platforming action and cut scenes that grips you into the story, and the story really adds to the gameplay with a few twists that it provides at just the right moments.
Also it has to be said that this is a truly beautiful game to look at, there isn't much to fault over the graphics, the fps never really drops and it always manages to look "Next-Gen" down to the shadows from the trees on Nates shirt or when you get submerged in water your clothes look soaked.
Also the voice acting is perfect, it perfectly reflects each characters feelings at the time along with the facial animations it really does bring the characters alive.
Also the game has an achievements system of sorts.
The more achievements you complete the more rewards that unlock.
These rewards vary from weapon unlock cheats, unlocking "The Making Of" movies or even mirroring the game world so left becomes right visa versa which can be like playing a totally different game!
There are 1000 reward points to earn by ways of collecting hidden treasures or getting 20 to 50 kills with various weapons and the like, and this was a nice feature which adds to replayability.
Sadly the AI does leave something to be desired but overall you are looking at a solid game with seven hours of interesting gameplay and with games lacking on the PlayStation 3 at the moment this is a must buy.