Let me start this off by saying that I have owned my PS3 since Tuesday. Over the course of Tuesday night and Thursday night, I beat this game. that should tell you two things: First, the game is not very long. Second, and most importantly, it rocks face.I had a friend come over yesterday; we were supposed to play RE5 til the wee hours of the morning. He finished dinner before me, so I said, "You should try Drake's Fortune." He didn't put the controller down again until 4:30 in the morning when he beat the game.
I first heard about the game while reading Game Informer. They had a huge preview thing in it, and suffice it to say that I almost wanted to go out and get a PS3 just to play it. It looked that good.
Well, in this case, my expectations were met, and in some regards, even surpassed. Having done nothing with my PS3 yet other than play Drake's Fortune, I can safely say the game justifies my purchase all by itself.
Where do I begin? Graphics seem like an easy place to start. They're gorgeous. What else can I say? The vistas are jaw-dropping in many areas of the game, the water looks gorgeous, the art direction is spectacular. One of my fondest memories of the game is one part where Drake is on a jet ski riding up a jungle river. The river itself, put together with the surrounding areas is so beautiful, so realistic, it's impossible to describe. I felt like I was watching a movie.
Ooooh, purty
I believe that is the effect Naughty Dog was going for in this game. The game feels like a movie. I think that's probably the best way to describe it. From the way the gameplay unfolds to the camera angles to the music... it all screams Hollywood experience. I've never felt like I was playing a movie before in a video game, but that's exactly what this felt like, and it's a pretty darned cool feeling.
You play as Nathan Drake, direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake, the famed explorer from the 16th century. The game opens with Nate discovering the underwater coffin of his famous relative, only to find it empty. Inside is a journal that contains the clues he must follow to find the treasure of El Dorado. The hunt leads through dense jungles, dark caves, and ancient cities. Like I said before, the surroundings are breathtaking. The vistas will demand you stop and stare, the jungle feels claustrophobic as the foliage darkens everything around you. The abandoned ruins are at once majestic and derelict. Along the way, a very interesting story unfolds, one that feels much like an Indiana Jones movie. Don't let the bad taste of the last Indy flick color your opinion of this game though, I'm talking Raiders of the Lost Ark good, not Crystal Skull bad. You've got Nate hunting the treasure with sidekicks Sully and Elena, then you've got the murderous bastards who are hunting them. And then...
Oh wait, I don't want to give anything away if you haven't experienced it for yourself yet.
The characters, something you don't usually see developed too well in a game such as this (given only about 10 hours of play time), are great. Nate is witty and sarcastic, and he will keep you entertained from start to finish, either with his banter around others or as he talks himself through the various situations in which he finds himself. Elena is the awesome lady of the story, who is not afraid to stand up and do her own thing. Finally, Sully is the (also) sarcastic old man who is never short on hilarious things to say. Put the fantastic scripting together with their amazing-looking onscreen counterparts, and well, it's like movie magic.
This impression is certainly helped by the animations. This game is chock full of them, particularly where facial expressions are concerned. I have never seen a video game that took so much time and effort into showing you how a character's face looks. Usually, in video games, you have to rely on the voice acting or other broad gestures (like slumped shoulders) to tell you how a character is feeling. Here, you get the voice work, the animations, and you get a ridiculously large suite of facial expressions to match. Nate face can go from excited to surprised to terrified seamlessly and realistically. You can put the game on mute and have a general understanding of what Nate is feeling just by looking at his face. As far as I have seen, this has NEVER been done in a video game before, and it is (among a long list of great things this game does right) my favorite thing about the game. I am a sucker for great characters, and these facial animations bring Nathan and company to life like nothing I've ever seen in a video game.
Great facial expressions = great characters
In terms of gameplay, this feels a lot like a combination of Prince of Persia and Resident Evil 5, just harder. PoP, in my experience tends to have a lot of hand holding, which always drove me nuts. After the first mission, Drake's Fortune turns you loose to solve puzzles however you want. There is an option for the game to give you a hint if it feels that you are stuck, but I turned that off immediately. The platforming elements are challenging and fun. Even when I died trying to find the correct solution to a puzzle, I was never frustrated.
Whether you are platforming or doing combat, the gameplay is intense. Particularly on the platforming segments. The devs throw Nate into some pretty precarious situations. One part has you hopping boulders and the edge of a cliff to get to the other side of the waterfall. On your way across, the camera jumps to a point above you, looking straight down at you... and all the way down the fall. With graphics as good as Naughty Dog is squeezing out of the PS3, let me tell you about how much vertigo I felt. The sense of height was dizzying. And that's just one small part from a game full of moments such as these.
This is the side of a mighty big fortress
There is a wide variety of gameplay here, which is part of what made it feel like RE5 to me. You have platforming sections, action sections, vehicle sections... Yet the variety in gameplay really feels cohesive, because it feels like you are on an adventure!
This is probably the games second biggest success (behind bringing the characters to vivid life with facial animations). The game is immersing as hell, which is also part of the reason the game feels so movie-ish. There were many times when I thought I might be in a jungle, or in a cave, or an abandoned ruin. Between characters I cared about, impressive graphics, intense gameplay, great music (Greg Edmonson put together one heck of a score that I finally managed to track down. Snag this one if you get the chance) and camera choices, and great 5.1 support, this might be the most immersing video game I've ever experienced.
I'd like to point out the last boss "battle" for a moment here. The final battle in Drake's Fortune exemplifies a trend in certain really good video games lately, and that's the idea of the final boss battle not being just some hard ass fight, but rather the climax of a story. The "boss fight" here is no harder, per se, than the rest of the game, but it is the climax to an edge-of-your-seat story, and so the intensity is ratcheted up. This feels better than a more traditional last boss where you battle some overpowered, steroid addicted, hulking thing. It makes the experience of the game as a whole more fulfilling, and I wish more games would use this method. Other great games that have gone this route are Mass Effect, Halo: Combat Evolved, and Halo 3.
Punch in the gut! Check out the water effects.... gorgeous!
That's not to say the game is perfect or anything. No, not quite. My complaints are, however, really small. More like quibbles really. First, there were some small oversights on certain things. In one part, for example, Nate is in a room with a window. There is a desk between Nate and the window, yet when we see Nate from the outside looking into his room, it appears as though he is right against the window. These types of occurrences are relatively minor and rare, but they were certainly head-scratching moments when they appeared. A far larger problem is the aiming. It's a bit jittery, and there were many shots I took throughout the game that missed but in any other game, would have hit. One of the most common examples of this, and this happened rather often, would happen when an enemy was shooting me from behind cover. I would shoot them clearly in the head, with say, a sniper rifle, but instead of hitting the enemy in the head, I'd see a little spark in front of their face, like I'd hit their cover instead of their head. Given the scarcity of ammo on the higher difficulties, this was immensely frustrating, and I look forward to this being resolved in the sequel.
Anyway, this review comes very late, as this game's been out for almost 2 years now, but it also gets to be my first PS3 review, and what a way to kick things off. I think this game by itself justifies the fact that I own a PS3 now, and there's a sequel coming soon to boot! I can't wait for that one; it's at the top of my PS3 must play games list right now. You can check out the trailer, which I posted to this here blog a few days ago.
Anyway, time for the score. 9.8/10.0
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