Uncharted is so short, I didn't even get a chance to toss up some impressions before I finished it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, considered how well put together it is, how amazing it looks, and how much fun it is to blow people away around corners without even looking. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Uncharted is one of those games that I started looking forward to way back at some E3 when I first saw a video demo. It looked like the evolution of Tomb Raider: running and gunning, platforming, and puzzle solving in some ancient temple/tomb/lost city in glorious 1080p at 60 fps. And that's exactly what it is. Our hero, Nathan Drake, is a bad-ass with his 9mm pistol and shotgun strapped to his back, while leaping around jungle locales like a monkey and finding lost treasure. He's joined by Elena Fisher, a smart and cocky reporter who can hold her own with a gun, and Victor "Sully" Sullivan, a shady treasure hunter out for one last big score. They're all looking for the treasure of El Dorado, aided by the diary of Nate's ancestor, Sir Francis Drake.
The game plays like most other third person shooters/platformers. Drake can run and jump, climb, deal out savage beatings, fire from the hip, or take aim for more accurate shooting. He can also take cover, and pop out to fire or just fire blindly from safety. At certain points, there are context sensitive button presses, such as turning a crank to open a gate or diving away from falling debris.
Sound, music, and voice acting are all excellent. Firing an AK sounds like it should, the score hits all the right points, and the actors really do a wonderful job. It helps that the cutscenes (which are in-engine) are fantastic, and the facial expressions convey the right emotions.
Which brings me to the way the game looks. I could use a number of different adjectives here, but I think amazing pretty well sums it up. After Assassin's Creed, I didn't think a first-gen PS3 game could look any better, but Uncharted does. There are some minor issues with texture-pop, but nothing major.
Besides the occasional replacement textures, there are a few other issues. The difficulty can be uneven, and there are certain spots of trial and error. If you get stuck, the game will often provide a hint on where or what you're supposed to go or do next, but they come only after wandering around lost for five minutes. Even when you know what you're supposed to do, sometimes it feels like the game is mocking you as you try to do it and fail repeatedly (the endgame is a perfect example of that). When you do fail, you usually don't get set back too far, but it's still an annoyance.
Even with the try, try again sections, the game is almost criminally short. At most, the first run-through takes 8 hours. There are 60 treasures to collect, and a new game mode that's unlocked after beating the initial campaign ("Crushing" difficulty. I did Normal, not Hard, and Crushing sounds downright painful), but I don't really go for that. If you do, I imagine finding all the treasures and doing everything there is to do adds another 8-10 hours.
While I'm glad I rented and didn't buy (if only because it took me 3 days of play to finish the campaign), Uncharted is a very good game. Definitely a solid rental, and maybe a purchase once the price comes down, if you're a completist. There's a lot of polish here, and an entertaining story. It might not be Game of the Year, but Uncharted is worth your time.
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