Uncharted: Drakes Fortune: Concluded

The biggest problem with growing up with the Indiana Jones movies is that every experience that presents itself as ‘Indiana Jones-like’ is bound to be a letdown. Movies and games that try to reproduce the Indy experience very rarely hit the highs of the movies, so Uncharted was a pleasant surprise.

Everything feels right in Uncharted, there are very few times that the game experience is ruined by a bug or poorly coded AI behaviour. I’ve done a bit of research into Naughty Dog’s impressive production techniques, well worth a read if you can dig them out – the proof is in the pudding and when such good production techniques yield such a good game, you know they’re doing things right.

If I was being overly critical I’d say the game is around a third too long; Naughty Dog could have ended the game before introducing the cave-dwelling monsters and I’d have been happy. Oh, and the very end of the game is amazingly frustrating – without spoiling it for the few that might not yet have played it, the end sequence takes the mechanics you’ve been using throughout the last 8 or 9 hours and pops them straight in the bin, to introduce a new way of doing things right before the game ends.

Uncharted is a real boys-own adventure game, it’s polished to a high standard and a great introduction to the franchise. Roll on Uncharted 2!