Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

This game arrived yesterday and I played solid, consecutive hours last night.  Progress has been varied.

My early impressions are mostly positive.  It is a pleasant change to play a game with a good cover and shoot system as well as fairly consistent climbing and jumping mechanics.  I do have some reservation about the latter and was sometimes frustrated by Nathan Drake's refusal to climb things which even I could get over when at other times he was mildly superhuman.  More annoying was his inconsistency of action when hanging from ledges.  He is a bit inclined to reach for the ledge he is supposed to be going to in response to a sideways push of the left stick, whether it is behind him or off to his right.

Wow!  The colours, man!

The game looks great.  It is from 2008 and the graphics are not really ahead of their time but the use of colour and scale is very effective and makes the player feel they are truly on an adventure and made me seriously wonder if it was possible to become an treasure hunter and explore the world for profit.  An idiotic thing to think but a good indicator of how the game took me somewhere.

I have to gripe slightly about one section where Drake had to pass along a wooden walkway.  The game was slowed initially so that I could only move him at a walking pace.  When he reached a certain wooden slat it became unstable and the game did the obvious thing; it took control away from me and made Nate stand knock kneed and stupid on the wonky beam.  It then passed control back unannounced and started to swing the camera angle round rapidly.  Drake could now run again but having to compensate for the constantly changing angle of vision was very awkward.

When the Camera settled I was looking at Drake front on, the opposite of the normal angle, and our hero had to run along the walkway as it turned right then left, from the viewers point of view, then at the end there was a jump which was close to the limit of Drakes capabilities.  The fact that this was done at speed and under pressure made hard enough but making the camera angle first changing then settling on an unfamiliar view seemed to be victimising the player.

You might guess from my annoyed tone that I died several times trying this bit.

Killing people in the game works perfectly well.  Dying while climbing and running jumping is very possible but dying in a shoot out is normally embarrassing.

The plot seems acceptable so far.  It slightly gives the impression that a conscious effort has been made to cram in certain elements.  The same type of elements that make Assassins Creed or Indiana Jones a hit.  Legendary treasures, ruthless bad guys who are also after them.  As these are the elements That make for a successful Blockbuster one cannot be too harsh on the developers who put them in.  Sadly, the clean cut Nate cannot be any of the hero's of those series.  However many bad guys he pops off with casual comments he will never be as ruthless as Altiair or Ezio and he could only dream of treating his heroine with Indy's amusing off-handedness.  The guy is just too clean cut.

For all that, I will be putting in just as many hours tonight as last night, and will be just as delighted when I find a silver statue of an animal; and I'll have to admit that sometimes when I fall, it's my fault.