Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Remastered (2015)

20 Games for 2020, #1 – Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS4, in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection)

A friend recommended skipping Drake's Fortune and beginning with the second game in the series, but it felt odd to do so when I'd be playing The Nathan Drake Collection rather than buying the games individually. I made my first attempts to play this back in late 2017/early 2018, but abandoned it about two-thirds in. Having finally replayed and completed it (in March 2020), I enjoyed it—but I think that it would've been more satisfying as a punchier six-hour experience, ending before I was losing interest in the run-of-the-mill story and repetitive gameplay.

For the most part, I enjoyed the combination of simple platforming and cover-based shooting—on Normal difficulty, it's a gentle challenge for someone, like me, who isn't very good at shooting games. I wasn't particularly taken with the narrative, but it's fun enough and I assume that the world and characters become more interesting in the sequels (which I haven't played yet). Some attempts to vary the gameplay are implemented rather ham-fistedly—for example, the (notorious) jet-skiing sections are bunched together too closely and outstay their welcome. I think I would've enjoyed it more if the developers had focused their efforts on interestingly-designed puzzles and shoot-outs instead—and the gameplay would've been more consistent with the story's themes if there were greater opportunities for exploration.

I think I agree that this is a skippable (or abandonable) game, but I had enough fun with it to be glad to have persevered. I'm hoping that Among Thieves lives up to the hype.

Attempting this again. I set it aside, about two-thirds through the story, on 3rd January 2018, and never came back to it—not quite due to deliberate abandonment, but I guess I wasn't so gripped that I couldn't put down the controller. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection having been a PS+ giveaway two months ago brought me back.

It looks a little more dated than I remember—perhaps due to the contrast of playing shortly after a session on Bluepoint's lush remastering of Shadow of the Colossus—but it's fine for its age, and even rather lovely in places. The platforming feels more like guiding a series of pre-made animations than having absolute control over the avatar, but at least it's more consistent in that regard (albeit not without the occasional frustrating moment) than SotC. (I'm just comparing these two games because I happened to play them on the same day—and they were remastered by the same company.) The gun battles are about the right level of complexity for me—I enjoy a bit of third-person shooting, but I'm not great at it—but I recall them getting a bit repetitive. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway—I've resolved to complete it, this time!

OK, so - I got through what I believe was the final jet ski section, upriver. Again, I didn't find it as bad as others stated, and I only died a couple of times (playing on Normal difficulty) - unlike the last big gun battle of the 'Trapped' chapter, for which I needed a controller-snapping number of retries. (But still, not too challenging even for someone, like me, who rarely plays shooting games.)

I'm still having fun, but I wish there were more puzzle sections (like the statues/compass in the library), or larger areas to explore for treasure (like the post-battle courtyard of the library), to break up the ceaseless gun battles. And I wish those puzzles and environments were a little more expansive and imaginative. Hopefully the balance of the gameplay is something that the developers addressed in the sequels.