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The Uncharted 2 multiplayer demo sucked me in (before spitting me out). But before jumping into the sequel I felt compelled to try out Drake’s Fortune to get the full back story. And since it can be had as a “Greatest Hits” game for under thirty there’s not much to lose.

In Drake’s Fortune, you play Drake the treasure hunter and alleged descendent of the English seadog Sir Frances Drake. You’re joined by Sully your grizzled old cigar smoking cohort. And Elena the video journalist side kick / ingénue who’s documenting the quest to find Sir Frances’s treasure. The hunt takes you to an unpopulated tropical island where pretty quickly you run into a gang of gun toting hoodlums after the treasure too. The plot is revealed entirely through cut scenes as you progress.

Game Mechanics

You control Drake in out of body third person throughout. There are seemingly four modes of game play: duck and cover shoot outs; drive by shootings, jumping and climbing parkour challenges; and stone twisting puzzles. Here’s the breakdown:

Most of the game is a shoot out. To shoot back you of course need a gun, Drake can hold two a rifle/machine gun, and a hand gun. You’ll find or loot various types of each. When you pick up another of the same type you’ll automatically drop one. You can aim while shooting or blind fire. You gain precision by aiming but it slows you down a bit. Pressing O while against a surface causes you to attach to it and crouch for cover. When in that mode while aiming you expose yourself to gunfire. You can also stay down and fire un-aimed shots, but good luck hitting anything. Along the way, you’ll also find some grenades. Throwing trajectory is controlled by tilting the controller, which is awkward and anything but immersive. The AI has all the tricks that you do in terms of diving for cover and rolling about however most of the time they duck behind something and shoot in your general direction.

There’re a few sequences in which you control and or shoot from a vehicle. Not much to say about it except that it provides some variety, though the sequences all felt a bit run-of-the-mill.

Various places in the game you need to scale cliffs, walls, buildings etc. The challenge all though generally a light one is figuring out exactly what to leap to next. Luckily Drake has Spiderman like ability and he does most of the work. If you get stumped for long enough you’ll be prompted with the option to press a button which points the camera to guide you on your way. There are a couple balance beam walks that require you to balance the controller. Again it feels like they were just trying to be hip and add motion control rather than do anything meaningful with it.

Which brings us to the puzzles; fortunately for Drake he carries with him all the answers in the form of Sir Francis Drake’s diary. They pretty much all go like this: you find 4 statues pointed in different directions. You consult the diary and see it has those statues. You twist them to point the same way as in the diary and it opens a secret passage. I’m not a big fan of Mensa challenges in games but these seemed particularly remedial.

Conclusion

The game is a well made product. Visually it’s very nice. The artistic direction has a nice realism to it. The cut scenes and the action flow very well. The voice acting is generally good the motion capture is fluid. The plot is a bit weaker and more cliché than National Treasure, which if you missed it was pretty thin. But it does feel cinematic while still managing to be a game. It auto saves regularly and load time is minimal. Unfortunately game time is also minimal, I played on hard difficulty and it took me around ten hours.

The combat system is nice but it stood out to me that for a treasure hunt the body count is remarkably high. After you mass murder your way through a level the cut scene has you talking glib to their leaders. I’m not against violence in games; I’m just not sure the level fits as it’s not a war zone it’s supposed to be an unpopulated tropical island. It also felt odd having enemies pop up in areas that to access you have to do acrobatics or solve puzzles. I think they should have focused on non-lethal combat or combat alternatives like sneaking, fleeing from the guys with the guns or more complex treasure hunt puzzles.

Naughty Dog managed to avoid serious missteps and delivered a solid title. They deserve praise for that. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything exceptional about it.

Rating: C