Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (Part 1 - Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune)

By: FRANCESCO LOMBARDO '17
PTS Falconer Assistant Editor  
SCORE: 8.8/10 

Halo, Gears of War, Forza, and Crackdown are a few of the most notable games that are exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. While Halo and Gears of War struck the hearts of many Xbox players, Sony’s Playstation had many more exclusives for its console. Game franchises such as Crash Bandicoot, Demon’s Souls, Spyro, Motor Storm, Gran Turismo, and Uncharted populated the Japanese company’s library of console exclusive games. Uncharted is one of the series that could be seen as the Playstation equivalent of Halo due to the following it gathered after the first game.

Recently, Blue Point Studios was tasked with re-mastering all three Uncharted games for the Playstation 4. Having only played Uncharted 3 on the Playstation 3, I was very excited to be able to buy all three games and enjoy them on my new hardware with updated graphics. This review will be in 3 parts for each game in the series starting with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Released in 2007, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune introduces our main hero for the series. Nathan Drake is a charismatic, young, bold, and brave treasure hunter and historian. We also meet his partner in crime Victor Sullivan and his soon to be love interest Elena Carter right at the beginning of the game. It’s a great adrenaline filled intro, quickly catching your attention. After this scene taking place on a boat out in the middle of the ocean, you are then headed to a tropical island where the rest of the game takes place. The characters are all wonderfully written and the story has many twists and turns to keep you entertained and on the edge of your seat throughout the whole game.

The gameplay in Uncharted consists of lots of climbing and shooting bad guys who are after Drake because they don’t want him messing with their plans of recovering an ancient Maya statue. I will say after having played Uncharted 3 on the PS3, Uncharted 1 felt like a step back. Now that’s not to say that I didn’t have a ton of fun, Blue Point Studios did a wonderful job of a port. The 60fps really makes a huge difference when compared to the 30fps on the original console. The only thing that I found was a step back was the hand-to-hand combat and the explosions. Whenever I shot a gas tank, it really didn’t feel satisfactory as it gave off a small explosion and the sound wasn’t that great. The hand-to-hand combat had some weird stiff animations compared to Uncharted 2 and 3, which had more fluent and natural looking combat. Again, this game was the first in the series, so there is always room to improve with in the sequels.

Another gripe of mine was how the combat was set up. You would continue a few steps and there would be a small area where you’d have to kill a bunch of enemies. 10 minutes later, it would be the same, eliminate all enemies in an area, climb a little, rinse and repeat. By the end of the game this was getting a tad bit repetitive, but luckily Uncharted isn’t terribly long and can be completed quite quickly. The puzzles were also quite simple, something that’s fixed in the later Uncharted games.

The re-mastered graphics look great compared to other games that I’ve seen re-mastered such as Gears of War for example. Sure there were a few textures that were a tad bit muddy, but the game is from 2007 and I can’t expect a Last of Us level re-master. 

All in all Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was a very fun experience. It got repetitive at times but the story kept me playing and wanting more. Luckily I have Uncharted 2 and 3 waiting ahead of me.