Gameover: Pirates With Fricken Laser Beams.
I spent a lot of time on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune this weekend and finished it off in the wee hours of Sunday morning. The reviewers were absolutely right when they said the game is a lot heavier on the shooting than you’d think from the outset, but nothing else seemed to suffer for it. After each burst of activity where you were gunning down mercenaries and struggling mightily to dispatch them quickly enough to avoid being flanked by their pals it was a real pleasure to work through the gorgeous environments by climbing, swinging, or hanging on to ledges. The puzzles and game world never felt cheap and it wasn’t hard to tell how far you could or couldn’t jump. Late in the game, however, the bad guys got something really nasty. They got laser sights.
It’s a testament to the artists and designers that the moment I saw a laser sight’s beam sweep across the screen I immediately knew Drake was going to get ventilated. The game gave you the helpful tip to dive and roll to evade the laser sights, and the reasonably plentiful checkpoints made getting tagged by the one-shot-kill snipers less than devastating. It didn’t make it feel any better, however, when two laser-aided snipers from higher vantage points were trying to get a bead on you while their platoon of conventionally-armed buddies crept around to flank you on the ground.
While the treasure-hunting aspect is fun and Naughty Dog has said that the awards and medals you get for various in-game accomplishments may get some Home integration, until I see it happen I’m not extraordinarily motivated to play through the game again. If you have a PS3, definitely put Uncharted on your list of games to rent or, if you were good this year, ask Santa nicely for. You won’t be sorry.
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