Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Review [Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection] (PS4)

  I never owned a Playstation 3 because there simply were never enough exclusive games on the system that interested me. I'm not a huge JRPG fan, I like baseball but the MLB 2K series was good enough for me, and although I'm a massive consumer of both video games and movies the scripted, gameplay-sparse “movie game” genre never held much appeal. There were less than a handful of PS3 exclusives I ever felt I was missing out on. One series that seemed to get tons of buzz and looked somewhat up my alley was the Uncharted series; a trilogy of games that took inspiration from the Indiana Jones franchise and bore more than a passing resemblance to Tomb Raider. I still stand by my decision to skip the PS3 altogether because that flagship series (along with most of the other exclusives) has been remastered for Playstation 4 so I can experience them for the first time in a definitive (?), upgraded state.

  The first Uncharted title, Drake's Fortune, is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. That's both a positive and a negative assertion. It's a lighthearted, summer popcorn movie in video game form, and the Indiana Jones “inspirations” are heavier than I could have ever imagined possible without someone getting sued. Nathan Drake is snarky and smirky to the point I kind of don't like him, and he's joined by a fairly generic love interest and an older mentor/partner of sorts (though I wish Sully had a bit more Sean Connery in him). There's snappy one-liners that illicit sighs more often than laughs, and they even manage to shoehorn in some Nazis and the paranormal just in case you don't get the reference they've been beating you over the head with. The climax even involves the opening of a historic relic which unleashes a curse to punish the greedy main villain. Now I want to go watch Raiders of the Lost Ark...

  Nothing comes out of the story that is surprising in the least. Drake and Co. are looking for El Dorado, the bad guys are tailing them and intercepting them along the way, the good guys win in the end. The dialogue and characters are copy and paste to the point I just felt like I could turn my brain off completely because I'd already seen this before in multiple incarnations. That's not necessarily damning; I can live with half assed, trope ridden stories in my games, it was just perplexing that such a highly praised game could get away with such plagiarism.

  My main priority when it comes to video games is the meat and potatoes gameplay; Yes, I'm a dying breed. Just like the story elements of Drake's Fortune, I had the nagging feeling I'd gone through the motions of playing the game multiple times before. Granted I was playing a product that released in 2007 for the first time in 2015 so I don't even own a pair of those nostalgia glasses, but even trying my damndest to put myself in that time period I couldn't help but just shrug and wonder why it got the reception it did. The clear “homage” to Tomb Raider doesn't do it any favors, as that same year the excellent Tomb Raider: Anniversary had been released and I had played it contemporaneously and loved it. Even thinking back to the traversal and puzzle platforming of the Prince of Persia series of the PS2/OG Xbox generation leaves Uncharted in the dust. Shooting dudes is a big part of the game, but all the weapons have zero weight to them and lack any feeling of impact, and the stop-and-pop cover mechanics are clunky. It clearly tried to take as many pages from Gears of War's book as it could (as did many games of the era), but compare the two and... yikes. Gears also came out a year prior...

  Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is not a bad game, it's just underwhelming. It doesn't do anything particularly well and comes off as a sort of “baby's first Tomb Raider” with it's infant logic puzzles and next to automatic, straightforward traversal. It's also incredibly short and not something I would play multiple times, leaving me to believe I'd feel pretty ripped off if I bought it for $60 when it originally released. I honestly don't know how this game led to multiple sequels or was looked at as anything other than a fairly mediocre and forgettable linear experience. Maybe the graphics were impressive back in the day, but what we're left with now that the sheen has started to tarnish is a skippable, predictable curiosity.