Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007)

TL;DR - "Greatness from small beginnings" is a great way to summarize this first entry. It may lack the polish and glamour that the future games have, but Uncharted: Drake's Fortune showed the potential this franchise had: A Tomb Raider-like game that puts less emphasis on puzzles and platforming, and more on action and cinematics.

ACTION-ADVENTURE - Nathan Drake embarks on a perilous journey through jungles and ancient ruins to uncover the legendary El Dorado.

PROS:

++ Engaging storytelling. Although it doesn't tell an original story, the way they told it was engaging. A trend that will continue with the sequels. It was exciting and at times, even emotional.

++ Wonderful cast. Nathan Drake, Sully, and Elena are all fantastic characters. They're some of my favorites in all of gaming actually. And even in this initial outing, I enjoyed their characters and I think they left a great first impression on lots of people. Their quips with one another was funny and always entertaining. And they interacted with each other like real people. The voice acting and motion capture is to be commended too!

++ Fantastic presentation. The game looks brilliant! Not just the remastered, but I think the original holds up well too. The vibrant green jungle was a great setting, and I think it looks mighty impressive for a 2007 game. Also, the MUSIC! I absolutely love the soundtrack of this one and all the Uncharted games. chef's kiss

++ Bonuses. There's an an incentive to collect all the treasures. It unlocks new skins, weapons, render modes, and even some cheats!

++ Supernatural twist. Although everybody could see it coming, the "zombies" that take center stage in Chapters 18-19 was a great addition. The atmosphere in those two stages was phenomenal, and I wish there were more "horror" levels like that in Uncharted. But from my memory, this seems to be the only example in the series.

++ Simplified platforming. The platforming is made trivial which I appreciate. After having played some classic Tomb Raider games last year, I would rather have platforming sections be trivialized and made simple.

CONS:

-- Few puzzles. There were only like three or four puzzles, and none of them were memorable or creative. And they all took like less than 1 minute to solve.

-- Lack of setpieces. Cinematic set-pieces is what the franchise will eventually be known for. So in this first outing, the lack of any memorable set-pieces is quite noticeable.

-- Subpar gunplay & cover system. The major criticism leveled at this first entry is the weak combat. And although I don't dislike it as much as some do, it definitely is worth criticizing. Gunplay is very standard, and the guns only feel okay to shoot. Enemies are bullet sponges if you don't aim for the head. The reticles for guns can be inconsistent. There were too many standard encounters in the jungle so it became monotonous. In the original, there were infinite spawning enemies in some parts (I'm glad the remastered version eliminates this). And the cover system was mostly serviceable, though at times it can be inaccurate. One praise I can give is the enemy A.I. They duck, dodge, and weave your line of fire. They even go prone which surprised me. And they had a good habit of flanking the player, too! Also, I liked how the max ammo count for each gun is intentionally small so that the player is constantly forced to leave cover to scavenge for more.

-- Weak antagonists. Gabriel, Ataq, and Eddy are okay villains. Gabriel's your standard British villain, Ataq is the backstabbing villain, and Eddy is the comedic villain. I think out of all of them, Eddy had the most potential and it would have been interesting to see him in future entries if he hadn't gotten killed.

I don't feel that this game has aged particularly well. Or at least, the combat hasn't anyway. A few missions in I was having a great time. The characters were fun and the idea of a lighthearted adventure game with platforming puzzles where I'd uncover ancient treasure was very appealing to me. Unfortunately those first few missions are very misleading as to the primary content of the game.

Right around mission 4 or 5 the game cuts back on dialogue and puzzles significantly. Fair enough I say to the first-- Drake spends a good deal of time alone in this game after all-- but the shortage of puzzles hurt. Instead the game tosses out combat sequence after combat sequence. It's a real shame because the gunplay is really not good. It's not the worst I've played, but if I had a list ranking such a thing it'd be in the lower half easily.

Aiming down the sights feels sluggish and while there is a hip fire option (run n' gun mode) it's only really viable at short distances because of how it auto aims and sprays bullets all over. Grenades also feel totally useless because you can't really aim them beyond pointing your third person camera in a direction, hitting the button, and praying it lands near an enemy. Also, the enemy will run away from it, so even if your aim is decent, it's not particularly helpful if you wanna actually kill a guy.

There are also these terrible jet-ski missions where you're trying to speed through narrow water paths that are PACKED with explosive barrels for some reason while numerous enemies open fire on you. The jet-ski controls have awful handling so you're gonna be bumping into barrels and walls constantly. Checkpoints are simply not frequent enough in these missions to justify how roughly they play.

In a similar vein, the entire final mission feels designed to punish the player for not knowing exactly how it works beforehand. The final boss can one shot kill you but you aren't able to hurt him (even though you can shoot him) until you've chased him through waves of his goons. And even then he knocks your gun away so you have to use the clunky melee combat for the first time in the game (delivered via quicktime button presses with instant death fail states, yay!) to punch his gun away and beat on him. And then it's over all of a sudden. Totally unsatisfying. It took me so many tries to get it right and even then when it was over I went "That's it?"

I do intend to keep playing through the series but uh. Yikes. Not a great first entry. I really loved the beginning though, which makes it sting a little more. This could have been a great exploration/puzzler game but that's not what we got.

I like Uncharted as a series. There's something about the aesthetic, the multiple locations visited in the series, the snappy dialogue and charisma of the characters, and so on. It has a lot of strengths.

Drake's Fortune, the first entry in the series, seems not to be counted among them. Weirdly enough, it's my favorite in the series by far. Much of that has to do with sentimentality. I strongly associate periods of my life with what games I was playing at the time. UDF came out at a period of my life where it was substantially enjoyable. When PSN trophies became a thing which was also a nice period of life, UDF was one of the first games to have trophies added. I'm pretty sure my first ever PSN trophy was a trophy for UDF, all the way back in 2008. I left it incomplete until a few years ago. It's cool to see what trophies I earned at what point in time.

I had followed Uncharted for a while before its release. I remember the Game Informer issue that had UDF as its cover, and I also remember going onto the old ass PlayStation store to download the demo and play through that. It was fucking awesome. Lush, tropical island location with fun climbing and simple gameplay. Uncharted always gets shit for having bad gunplay but I love the stripped down minimalist nature of it. It certainly didn't bother me back then.

Complaints about the shooting seemed to decrease with the Nathan Drake collection of remasters that came out for PS4 in 2015(?). That was a merry time. I have about 400 hours in that game judging by my PSN statistics and most of it is replaying the first game. There's something comfortable about retreading familiar ground like that. I do the same thing with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (another early early demo and game that released before trophies were a thing, though this one sadly didn't get them added afterward).

I pre-ordered UDF through GameStop. I can't remember exactly how but I got my copy a day before it actually released. But that was a hell of a day. I had a really good friend at the time who would talk to me on the phone for hours. I'm sure she was in love with me and I was too clueless to know. So when that game came out, she called me on the house phone and we started talking as I booted up the game. We talked for literally 8 hours and I played UDF the entire time. She was on the other end of the line hearing my reactions to the game and being a good sport to hush during cutscenes. If I could go back, I'd smack my younger self over the head for doing that. Stupid behavior on my younger self's part but makes for an interesting memory.

All of us Uncharted players remember coming to the scene of a German U-boat at the foot of a waterfall, the wildly impressive view of the sunset at the top of that waterfall, Sully surviving being shot by Drake's journal, the dreaded jetski sequences (that I love, for some reason), the bewilderment at finding ourselves chased into a German bunker by equally bewildering grotesque creatures, the reveal of the mummified body within the golden sarcophagus, the very lackluster and inexcusably bad end boss fight with Novarro, and so on. I would not contest arguments that subsequent Uncharted games are better but Uncharted Drake's Fortune is so fucking precious and special to me. It's one of a small handful of games I return to, and that handful is growing smaller and smaller as time goes by and commitments and responsibilities take up more of my time. I don't have as much time to game these days but I'll probably always make time to revisit Drake's Fortune.

Continuing on in my game drought journey, I’ve decided to replay the Uncharted games. It has been many years and I’ve never fully reviewed them, so here goes entry 1.

The game starts out promising - fun puzzle solving, pretty great cut scenes with fun quips from the characters, and an interesting story.

But god the combat. Sooooo tedious, boring, frustrating, and worst of all - pervasive. 90% of the game is just shooting the same 4 npc enemies like an old school arcade shooter.

There are things I do like though… wayfinding is actually challenging. The game doesn’t make it obvious where to go, and the way forward is perfectly disguised in the environment.

And as I said, the cut scenes have actually aged quite nicely. They don’t feel corny and laughable, which surprised me.

I’m glad I got through this one, as I’ve heard it’s the only one that hasn’t held up.

Given this is my first uncharted game, I came in without much expectations. It’s a decent game. I enjoy the story and game play. The shooting could be better but it’s not bad. I was surprised that some reviews said this game is difficult. I certainly died many times but I could beat the game without too much frustrations. The version I played in the remastered collection so it’s possible that the difficulty has tuned down. Even with the remaster, this game looks very outdated. Camera control is weird at times.

Overall I’ll say it’s a decent game. A good start for the series. Now onto the highly acclaimed Uncharted 2! I hope it lives up to the reputation.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a great start to the Uncharted franchise. I kind of wish I had a PS3 when this game released.

This game is similar (in concept) to Indiana Jones but takes its own great spin on it with the lovable characters and protagonist, Nathan Drake.

It follows Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter looking for El Dorado, a treasure so mysterious, that if found... Could net him and his partner Sully millions. But things don't go the way he expected.

The game has wonderful writing, characters, villains, and moments which is pretty typical for a NaughtyDog game.

The gameplay, however, is a bit weird. It's great. It has great shooting, weapons, and an ok cover system. However, the game is obviously a bit dated as it came out 14 years ago in 2007. So this makes a lot of gameplay either annoying or frustrating.

I can forgive this as the game was probably amazing gameplay-wise when it released and I can't discredit a game because the gameplay is outdated because of course, it is

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a beautiful start to the franchise with wonderful characters, and an amazing story. As well as great (But a little dated) gameplay.

Would Recommend

3/5

Replaying this game 12 years (!) later was a strange experience. While I've replayed all the other titles in the Uncharted series at least once before, I have never felt the urge to return to the first one until now. The distant memory of my initial experience with Drake's Fortune told me that it had been a mixed bag. I distinctly remembered some janky driving sections (was there a boat or water scooter involved at some point?) and a weird, unwelcome horror twist that came out of nowhere.

My expectations returning to this game was therefore not very optimistic. "Whatever strengths the game may have once had," I thought, "have surely been diminished by time, whereas the flaws will only have grown more prominant". It turns out that this was not quite the case.

The story and performances hold up surprisingly well. I was amazed that, even after experiencing the brilliant acting in A Thief's End, the characters here didn't seem lifeless or dull at all. Furthermore, it turns out that the "horror twist" bothered me far less this time—probably because it appeared less frightening to my older self, and partly because these kind of late-game twists have become a staple of the series at this point.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the gameplay. Combat suffers from comparison with newer titles, although it still flows fairly well. Similarly, climbing is more basic than we are used to nowadays, but it's still mostly servicable. The truly awful parts of Drake's Fortune are the water scooter sections (yes, it was a water scooter and there were TWO of them). I swear, if it wasn't for these incredibly frustrating parts I could probably see myself replaying this game in the future. As it stands now however, I'd rather just watch someone else do it.

Sir Francis Drake's motto—greatness from small beginnings—certainly holds true here. This game is smaller than its sequels in almost every way, but the looming greatness is still palpable. For this reason, I certainly don't regret returning to this title after all this time. And who knows, maybe I will again someday—when the memory of my previous experiences are dulled once more.

I'm surprised at how much I didn't like this game, yet I have played through this whole game in one sitting. I wasn't expecting much, but man was this game bad.

Drake's Fortune is ND's first shooter in their catalog and it absolutely shows. Uncharted 1 is basically pop goes the fuckin weasel, but you and the enemies are both weasels and the enemies are whack a mole champions. Enemies are on the level of Far Cry 1's AI; they're basically supersoldiers with unlimited ammo that can kill you like how videogamedunkey kills enemies in Dark Souls; they can kill you in in one hit. Especially the final boss. Even on the easiest difficulty, this game is bullshit. There were more moments where I was frustrated with this game than fucking Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 combined (even though I barely get frustrated in single player games). Chapters are short in concept, but in execution, they are loooooooooooong drawn out with many repetitive shootouts that are not even fun because the shooting is atrocious, the cover system is abominable, and the shootouts are bloated as all hell. Puzzles don't make you feel smart because once you're done with a puzzle, the enemies are one step ahead of you. The jet ski parts blow like everyone says. The only language the characters talk in is Quipinese, a language where they only talk in quips and none of them land. There were times where there were 2 duplicate tracks of music or dialogue being played at the same time.

If there was one thing that I liked, I liked the silly death animations. Especially when you kill them with a revolver, Deagle, or a shotgun. They're just funny to look at. They're the only thing I actually laughed out loud at. I guess I could say that the story is servicable. The game looks fine, but the visuals don't hold up too well. The later half picks up a little bit. It's not good, but it is better than the first half.

There are many better shooters that came out before this game. The Call of Duty series, Halo, Resident Evil 4, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, heck the original Doom games hold up much better than Uncharted 1. What I'm saying is that you should skip out on this game and go to Uncharted 2. I know I'm going to 2 right after.

FINAL RATING: 2.5/10

I really don't like this game.

I have almost nothing good to say about it. The best thing about this entire, awful slog is the relief I felt when the end credits finally, blissfully began to roll.

And let's just get this out of the way first - I don't think "it's old tho" is a worthwhile defense of this game. (Though, to be fair, this game has aged terribly. Like, the exact opposite of how wine ages). There are tons of games from 2007 that are still actually fun and worthwhile to play, such as: Halo 3, Mass Effect, Crysis, Bioshock, Portal, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, The Witcher - I can really go on and on. The point is, age isn't the reason why I dislike this game so much, since there are plenty of games from the same year that it was released that I still genuinely enjoy. (Also, looking through the list of games released in 2007 - holy shit. Basically, of all the popular or influential or important games released in 2007, Uncharted is probably the worst. Funny, that).

The first point I want to make is that the story is bad. Yes, I know that the story is the reason why this game is so beloved, but I just don't think it's good. The only halfway clever thing that this story does is having Sully be saved by Drake's diary (which stops a bullet), which is still 1. exceedingly silly, and 2. right out of screenwriting 101. It's also the closest the game gets to a genuine moment of pathos, but that's really not saying much. Another moment of drama they try to build up is when Elena has to choose between saving her camera and saving herself, which might work if her character was at all well-developed or had a meaningful emotional connection to Nate at that point or if we had any sort of meaningful context to whatever show she's trying to film with Nathan Drake other than that she's, y'know, filming it, but it comes off as - well, duh, Elena, save yourself. Maybe she didn't insure her her fancy-lookin' camera? Who knows?

For the most part, though, this game is like an unfun National Treasure (I wouldn't even dare compare these games to the Indiana Jones films, because Steven Spielberg is one of the great storytellers of our time and Naughty Dog, y'know, aren't). The bulk of the plot of the game involves finding one weird, obscure clue, which Nathan Drake draws the most ludicrous conclusions from so that he can find the next weird, obscure clue.

Oh yeah, there are a couple of boring antagonists, and it turns out the more ethnic one is the really bad guy. Good job, guys.

And, there are quips. Nathan Drake quips and smarms a lot. Super fun, that. I honestly like Nolan North, but he wasn't really working with much here.

AND the game throws zombie Spaniards at you, as if you hadn't already been dealing with a bunch of weird, dumb bullshit.

The game also insists on slowing down the narrative to a grinding halt to do a bunch of boring shit, like shoot people or jump around or solve "puzzles," which I write in quotation marks because they mostly involve hitting a few switches and whatnot.

The gunplay is, honestly, really fucking boring, and it's made even worse by enemies spawning out of nowhere in order to pad out the game length, because the game would be, like, five hours otherwise and at that point it'd feel like Naughty Dog was just making fun of us all.

Also, during climbing the section, the camera oh-so-subtly swings about and points you exactly where you need to go, while also somehow making it impossible to judge distances. This means that, unfortunately, you might accidentally fall off of platforms and die and respawn in some ungodly location, making you play the game for even longer, which certainly isn't something that I wanted.

Uh, what else? The game looks fine and the art direction is solid in some sections, though there's a whole level where you're slogging through some awful, greyed out structure and, after a while, you will get sick of the jungle, I promise. But, c'mon, this game came out the same year as fucking Bioshock. Are we really going to excuse Uncharted for looking only okay for most of its runtime?

The jet ski segment is somehow even worse than everyone says it is. It's kind of amazing how thoroughly they managed to fuck up what could've been a really fun and memorable section by making the controls just terrible.

And, let's be real, none of the Uncharted games have good final boss fights (besides Lost Legacy, the best game in the series), but this one is especially awful. You have to move between breakable cover, avoid the insta-kill shotgun and all the other bad guys shooting at you for the chance to maybe pop up and shoot the big bad guy. I honestly wanted to just quit by this point, because I knew my life wouldn't be improved by seeing the final cutscene and then skipping through the credits (I was right), but I guess pride or something kept me going. I'm a fool.

Honestly, I had this game at two stars before writing this review, but I'm dropping it down to one. This game is a goddamn nightmare. Looking back at it, it's a miracle that anyone even bought a PS3 at all when you could be playing Mass Effect and Halo 3 and everything else on your XBOX 360. Thank fucking Christ that Sony has pulled itself together.

It's really a miracle that Uncharted 2 isn't, y'know, completely awful.

(Also, I just wanted to say that I played the remastered PS4 version of the game - I just wanted to review them all individually since my opinion varies so wildly between them all).

I'm a pretty easy gamer. If a game has a great story, I'm sold, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has fantastic narrative in spades.

Playing as Nathan Drake, a descendant of famous explorer and treasure hunter Sir Francis Drake, you set out on an adventure to find the legendary treasure of El Dorado. And, of course, nothing is ever as safe and as easy as it seems.

Naughty Dog is known for knocking it out of the park with their storytelling and stunning game design. And while not a homerun, this is definitely a game worth giving your attention to.

There are a few elements that could have been improved upon such as the monotony of constant gunfights with wave after wave of generic enemies, the occasionally non-sensical platforming, and, of course, the infamous jetski sections. But overall Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a solid title.

The graphics have continued to hold up well since 2007 and you can literally never go wrong with a game that touts Nolan North in the cast (the man is a voice legend for a reason!). Each level is beautifully rendered and feels realistic and well designed.

There are loads of comparisons to the Tomb Raider series. And while I can absolutely see the similarities, the Uncharted series is uniquely its own. I love Lara Croft, but I am happy to say that I love Nathan Drake, too.

If you love action adventure games and a well-crafted story, this is one game (and series) you don't want to miss.