Drake's Fortune is a fun, cinematic adventure about treasure hunting and all the typical things that come with it.
I will begin by saying that this game was just fun. Yes, it was well balanced, the combat was very good for an adventure game, all the mechanics were well developed, and it was beautiful, but most of all it was very fun. Almost everything simply felt right, and nothing was in it that wasn't used. I do not remember any voiced line, named character, or major item that was mentioned and then forgotten.
Drake's Fortune is an adventure game and not primarily a shooter, so frantic FPS mechanics should not be expected. Even so, this adventure game used fairly simple combat mechanics to deliver fun, although sometimes frustrating combat. Unlike many adventure games, the player cannot customize or improve the lead character, so do not expect a leveling or equipment system; don't even look for anything with numbers aside from your ammo count. The controls were generally responsive and smooth, but looking around was a bit slow, even on the highest sensitivity. The cover system was a bit too sticky, but climbing was always fun. Everything looked beautiful, both characters and environment, both modeling and textures, both shading and lighting. An unconventional musical score that reminded me of National Treasure breathed life and emotion into the story, and a wide variety of jungle, weapon, and other sound effects provided the finishing touches in the creation of a living, breathing world with believable characters. I enjoyed seeing a cast that sounded like real people, not extraordinary or very heroic, but just real people. Finally, an adventurous story drives the player forward. I was driven mostly by not knowing if a treasure would be found at all and by not knowing if certain people would survive. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything :).
The Combat System – Simple, but Fun
The combat is not complicated and can be picked up and mastered quickly with the exception of grenades, which takes a little getting used to. You can either aim and move more slowly or shoot from the hip and not loose mobility. At any given time, the lead character can carry a pistol, a two-handed weapon, and grenades, and only one of them can be equipped at a time. Maximum ammunition is different for each weapon: 40 9mm rounds, 96 M4 rounds, 10 Desert Eagle rounds, 4 grenades, etc. Ammunition is not extremely plentiful for any given weapon, so you can't simply pick a favorite weapon and go through most of the game with it. As the game progresses, you fight better equipped enemies, so you will eventually run out of ammunition for your old weapon and need to pick up a new one. For example, you might drop your AK in favor of an M4, or you may be willing to drop your M4 for a SPAS12 or a grenade launcher, which are very powerful but have very limited ammunition.
The cover system is pretty good, although not as finely tuned as Gears of War. Available cover isn't always clear, and the lead character tends to stick to a particular side of cover, making flanking moves by the enemy particularly frustrating. Aside from this, the cover system works well. You can pop up from cover if you want to aim, or you can fire and throw grenades blindly without exposing yourself. Grenades are interesting. In addition to the usual control scheme of aiming with one joystick, the arc of the grenade throw can be adjusted using the PS3 six-axis controller's tilt sensing feature. I was unfamiliar with the tilt sensing feature, and since I used grenades sparingly, it took me most of the game to get used to it.
Overall, the combat was fun. It wasn't complicated, and although adjusting the grenade arc was a little awkward at first and cover was sometimes tough to work with, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Controls/Reactions with Environment – Usually Sharp, but Not Always Forgiving
Is it a good thing if a game helps you at every point so you can't mess up? I say no, and so did Naughty Dog. I got impatient a few times when I couldn't figure out what to do and either wandered around until I found my goal or kept falling and dying until I stopped, slowed down, and cautiously proceeded. Fortunately, the checkpoints are very forgiving and thoughtfully placed. Patience, caution, and looking carefully will get you through the game, and if you need to learn some patience, I say that is good thing. Kudos to Naughty Dog for not holding the player's hand and giving them many, many chances to fail. The one thing that I didn't like was the aiming joystick's low maximum sensitivity. Perhaps Naughty Dog didn't want the lead character from turning so fast that it didn't feel right or look realistic, but it was a little irritating in close quarters combat.
If you are observant or read this first, one of the first things that you will notice about the game is that there is almost no heads-up display. There is no minimap, no compass, no icon showing what weapon is equipped unless you have drawn the weapon, and no health bar (health recovers automatically as long as it doesn't drop below a certain threshold). There is nothing to get in the way of you looking around except for a camera that won't quite look straight up or straight down. This almost non-existent heads-up system is new for me, and I like it. It allows the player to look for their way forward instead of 'driving' off a minimap and compass pointing to a waypoint, all of which were non-existent. As a matter of fact, the player does not have a map at all. They had to find their way forward by looking around, which, although not difficult, added a sense of immersion with the environment.
When not in combat, you will be exploring ruins of an ancient civilization that, according to the lead character, precede the Incan Empire by about 2000 years (I think it was Incan; I don't remember the line; it may have been Mayan; basically, the ruins are old). Exploring consists of a lot of platform-based puzzles. Think of Prince of Persia mechanics minus the wall running. Although repetitive, the platforming sequences are spaced sufficiently far apart so that they don't feel like a gimmick, but rather a fun and realistic way to interact with an ancient ruin that was cleverly built with bricks sticking out the wall every meter of so.
The Visuals – Gorgeous
I played Final Fantasy XIII not too long before I played Drake's Fortune. I know, I am little behind, but being a poor college student with limited time distorts game purchasing priorities. I mention FFXIII because it was undeniably gorgeous, but it had a particular art style. FFXIII rendered large, shiny, and expertly textured, shaded, and lighted environments with a number of creatures running around, but the environments didn't have many floral embellishments, and there wasn't much water outside of the pre-rendered cutscenes in order to spare processing power. Drake's Fortune, on the other hand, is a treasure hunting game in jungle environments, which means medium to small rendered environments embellished with lots of plants and water. A lot of water. Water everywhere. Because, as a senior artist from Naughty Dog said in a Behind the Scenes video (yes, I watched them, because watching design and development makes me happy), they were freakin' crazy. Good water is difficult to pull off and still have enough processing power left over for everything else, but the artists still made pools, streams, rivers, rapids, waterfalls, and other water sources that made the jungles more than just a collection of plants. One touch that I liked was disguising the interface between the water and the shore, which is typically very sharp as the edge of a fluid interacts with the sharp edge of the shore's geometry, with a lot of small rocks whose geometries the water could pass though, thus making the sharp edge nearly disappear.
In addition to water, many trees, shrubberies (!!), ferns, mosses, and other plants covered the ground and walls of ancient structures. Different plants used different shaders, and for that extra effort to not make every plant surface look like a copy of another, I tip my hat to the artists at Naughty Dog. A strong light for the sun shed light on every uncovered surface, casting shadows on things underneath. Light rays filtered through the land, plant, and structure models to anything below, be that static ground or other parts of the environment, or moving things like people, vehicles, and water. The fact that I didn't notice these things at first makes me happy, since that means that they were done in a way that looked natural.
Overall, the game looked wonderful. In a stark contrast from most games that I have played, in which a lot of war gives a dark and dreary look to the game world, the people at Naughty Dog decided to make a lush, green world that almost felt alive.
The Music/Sound – Adventurous and Fitting
When I played this game, I sometimes used my Logitech Z-5500 speakers, and sometimes I used a pair of Equation Audio RP-21 headphones, which I just got a few days before the writing of this review.
The emotional tone for the game was set by an unconventional, but perfectly fitting, score by Greg Edmonson, the same composer who made the music for the TV show Firefly. In a Behind the Scenes video, I learned that he was asked to make use of a variety of instruments in an unusual fashion. No detail was given as to what was meant by 'unusual', but I gathered that subtle disruptions in a normally smooth score made by using a common instrument in an unusual way created noticeable emotional disruptions that could be used to the music director's advantage in helping to tell the story. The main theme used a lot of lighter string and brass instruments, accompanied by a large drum in the background, and in general resembled the score of the Disney film National Treasure, which I very much enjoyed. In contrast, most of the background music used wind instruments. The different styles complement each other nicely and kept the music from getting old or losing its emotional appeal.
I am having difficulty thinking of anything to say about the sound because, aside from echoes in caverns and stone ruins sounding shallow, everything sounded right, from footsteps on soil, water, or rock to gunshots to various background jungle sounds. No sound effect stood out as out of place or particularly cool. Okay, aside from the grenade launcher, which sounded approximately as follows: *click* *pew*…*BOOM*. A grenade round doesn't have a lot of powder behind it because it doesn't need to go very fast, it just needs to get to its target and go boom, so there was no BANG as the charge left the barrel, but there was a very satisfying boom at the end. Also, the shotguns gave off a loud and fantastic report.
Overall, the sound generally felt right aside from the shallow echoes in caverns and ruins. The music, however, was pleasing to my ears and did a wonderful job of setting the tone for the game. It felt good to hear an adventurous score that didn't adopt the style of what I like to call 'sensory overload' to create an epic feel, instead using musical genius to create a score that complemented the story.
The Voice Acting/Scripting – Superb
The cast in Drake's Fortune sounded like real people. People that happened to be hunting for a treasure that had been lost for hundreds of years, but still real. In particular, I liked that no conflict in the story came from a confrontation with personal issues, which they had to overcome in order to be fulfilled as person and succeed in the world and blah blah blah. The lead character, Nathan Drake, has more or less the personality of Indiana Jones, but less Harrison Fordish. That last sentence won't make sense unless you play the game. His partner is an older man who has been in a lot of shady situations but still maintains a pretty positive outlook on life. Think of the disposition of Santa as a dirty, salty old sailor. The antagonists are a mix of mercenaries and a cold British businessman who (obviously) is also after the treasure. Finally, the girl is a lovely, headstrong, and capable journalist, much like Indiana Jones' first girl. I liked her because she wasn't always getting caught, wasn't ditsy, wasn't flirty, eschewed sex appeal in favor of a confident prettiness, and overall felt real.
The cast was very well scripted too. Again, the feel of the scripting was that of an Indiana Jones film, sort-of-minus the Nazi quest for world domination. No character took themselves too seriously, and the bad guys actions were just the result of business. They wanted treasure, and you were in the way. Nothing personal.
Overall, the voice acting and scripting were superb. The characters were not deeply disturbed or weighed down by personal issues, which allowed for interactions that, to me, felt normal and entertaining.
The Story – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in the Jungle
I won't go into any detail, which means that you won't know what I mean by the Indiana Jones reference until you finish the game, but basically the lead character, Nathan Drake, finds the lost journal of Sir Francis Drake and sets out to find the same treasure that Sir Drake was seeking when he disappeared. In one of the Behind the Scenes videos, one of the design leads said that, when they set out to make the game's story, they focused on Sir Francis Drake, which everyone knows from grade school history, and focused on the blurry parts of history, in particular Sir Drake's disappearance. They decided that he disappeared looking for a great treasure that the Spanish looted from natives that lived in the region of the Incan Empire (again, I think that it was Incan; it may have Mayan). Shortly after finding the journal, it becomes clear that Nathan and his ancestor Sir Drake were not, and are still not, the only ones looking for it. As the story progressed, I started getting really anxious to see who was going to live or die.
Overall, the story was excellent. Just like the music, it was refreshing to play a game that wasn't about protecting the world from a great evil or fighting aliens, but was instead a treasure-hunting adventure, which I think everyone with a pulse desires to set out upon. That statement necessitates that anyone who does not desire to set out on a treasure-hunting adventure does not have pulse.
Overall – Excellent
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a beautiful, adventurous, and most of all fun game. In today's gaming society, I feel that many attempts to make a great game fall prey to someone, or a group of someones not having a good sense of what feels right in a game and/or not being willing to go back and change the existing system until it feels right. In a Behind the Scenes video, I learned that the people at Naughty Dog went back to the drawing board many times for many parts of the game until they agreed that everything felt right. I applaud them for being willing to make the extra effort and take the monetary risk to spend a lot of time in development in their quest to make not just a cool videogame, but a masterpiece.
In reality, it is not a perfect masterpiece. To be perfect would require that all players' expectations be known and static, but I feel that Drake's Fortune comes close to being a perfect masterpiece. Since it is an adventure game, the combat is relatively simple, and despite the cover system being too sticky at times and the grenades taking some getting used to, it is fun and does not feel cheap in its simplicity. The controls were usually sharp, and the platform sequence felt reminiscent of Prince of Persia minus the wall running. The almost complete lack of a heads-up display added a sense of immersion since nothing jumped out to say, "Hey, in case you forgot, this a game, and here is your map, your health, your equipment, and everything else you need to drive blind." Visually, the game was outstanding. Instead of using the PS3's processing power to render large, open environments, Naughty Dog chose to render medium to small environments with a lot of flora and water. I give kudos to them for the water in particular.
The musical score was unconventional, by which I mean it didn't try to sound so completely epic that it blew your mind but left you with no memory of it, and neither did it settle into the background for the entire game. The score rose and fell throughout the story, staying quiet most of the time and adding that necessary subtle touch, thus allowing a climax to rise far above the normal pace. The sound effects were mostly not spectacular, which is good thing because they all felt right enough to sound natural. The exceptions were the grenade launcher and the shotguns, which had very noticeable and satisfying reports. The voice acting and scripting entertained me and drew me in so that I started caring for the main characters and wanting the bad guy to meet an end appropriate for his greed. Finally, the story was a refreshing adventure about treasure hunting and classic good and bad guys that didn't focus on characters' faults, but instead on the situations in which they found themselves.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune should be in every gamers' library. I like it enough that I will not sell it, but keep it to show a shining example of a fun game to the next generation. If you haven't played it, go out and buy it as soon as you reasonably can without going broke, or at least rent it.