Why Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a pacifist archaeologist's worst nightmare

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007)

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007)

I’m not an archaeologist of any description, history being probably my least favourite subject in school. But if you somehow haven’t played any games in the Uncharted series, then I need to warn you of an absolute menace and terror to the undiscovered world. His name is Nathan Drake, and I hate him.

Before we get to speaking about him, a quick word on the Uncharted games; we’ll discuss the first title in the series today, subtitled Drake’s Fortune. The lazy comparison is that this game is essentially an updated Indiana Jones, mixed with a bit of Tomb Raider.

As for Nathan Drake, the character you play as, he seems to find himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I don't just mean that literally. It's more that he's not quite ultra-cool, like Harrison Ford as Indy; but nor is he outright dorky but lovable, like Leon from Resident Evil 4.

He's a little bit caught in the middle, every line out of this mouth being a cliche. Avid historians out there will hate Nathan though, if only because he seems to make it a point of desecrating each and every historical site and landmark he touches.

---

Not forgetting the fact that he's more of a treasure hunter, or more accurately an artifact swiper, and though he does get caught up in nerdy monologues about the trials and tribulations of his ancestor Sir Francis Drake, in general he's a money-hungry hound, and when anyone gets in the way of his moneymaking ambitions, his first, second and third instinct is to mow them down on the spot.

It's always a little bit jarring when the scholarly protagonist goes around killing people - even the famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indy just shoots the sword guy, never really sat right with me. But Drake's expeditions turn into vicious massacres and bloodsports very quickly. The new protagonist for the next-gen of consoles? Not really, this guy Drake is an anti-hero at best and an evil, guntoting maniac at worst.

But to be honest, he's not really the subject of my ire, no. Where I have problems with this game is what you get versus what it sold you. From a development and marketing standpoint, the first Uncharted game was less about selling itself as a game, and more about selling the then-new PlayStation 3.

It was well and good to have a new Blu-Ray player in your house (and be honest, how many Blu-Rays did you ever even amass over the years?). But eventually the customers needed some next-gen games as well, and Metal Gear Solid 4 was still a way's away.

Mega game developer Naughty Dog, used to triumphing against impossible odds, managed to create a next-gen engine and developed Uncharted 1, getting it out the door early enough in the PS3's life to be considered a truly great exclusive, and a system seller. The idea of the game, and the troubled development it went through, makes for a cool story. But the execution in the end was quite a bit wide of the mark.

It's not an entirely broken game, which you might have expected with its hastened development - just take a look at the infamously terrible Sonic the Hedgehog ‘06 to see an example of that. But flaws in Uncharted 1 are obvious. Actually, though you may not regard it as a flaw (I didn't), the game is rather short to begin with.

You can pick up the Uncharted Trilogy of PS3 instalments for nothing these days - they even gave the Remastered version away free of charge during the Covid-19 lockdown days, or you can buy physical discs for next to nothing.

But I wouldn't want to have paid full price for this bad boy (on top of the 600 or 700 bones you put down for the PS3 in the first place), only to get about 10 hours of play out of this game.

It does try to encourage replays, inviting you to try higher difficulty modes and speedruns, or challenging you to collect all 60 of the findable treasures. But you simply won't be compelled to do this, like you might in Resident Evil 4, because the gameplay loop is so frustrating and repetitive.

What's so frustrating about it? I mentioned that Nathan tends to shoot first and never ask questions later. Well, here's the deal: for maybe 10% of the game, you are going deeper and deeper into ancient crypts or caves, using your quite incredible athleticism to climb and jump along crevices and handholds.

All the while, you’re hoping that you don't pivot Nate the wrong way and send him flying to his death. These parts are not so bad, they’re fun actually, the climbing is relatively well programmed and even if you do drop 500 feet to your death, it's pretty much an instant retry.

The problem I have is that there are almost no interesting puzzles to do in these sections, Tomb Raider style; it's usually just triggering some dialogue, jinking your way to the next spot, triggering more dialogue, and then you move on.

But what always happens next, yet never fails to make you groan, is that suddenly there's an army of 12 soldiers, all firing at you with near-perfect accuracy from behind some rather convenient cover. And you're thinking, lads, could you all wait a minute please?

You can accept the fact that you're the first one in this tomb for God knows how many years. Even though you usually exit this mystery tomb out the other side, through a massive can’t-be-missed hole back into the sunshine. You can accept that.

You can accept that there are somehow flames and torches still burning deep down in the caves and catacombs. You can even accept that, while the rest of the place has been scoured and cleared, the specific treasures and artifacts you need are all left behind for you. That's fine, it's game logic, whatever.

But when's the last time you chanced upon a hidden cave that already had a full army in there, waiting to blow your head off? And, oh God, now we're getting into it, the other 90% of the game, and what makes Uncharted 1 so frustrating and repetitive - the shooting set pieces.

You can carry a main weapon and a sidearm, plus a few grenades. I might have preferred if my superhuman chisel-jawed all-action climbing hero could have carried 20 assault rifles at once, but whatever. You will quickly find that, unless you score headshots every time, these weapons just shoot naught but jelly.

The AK47s and the like tend to be horrifically inaccurate as well, so there's nothing for it but to poke your head out from behind cover and line up the headshot, only to get blasted several times in return.

The enemies are horrible aimbots, I'm telling you, and just when you think you've taken care of all of them and you can begin to move forward, more of them spawn in from nowhere, including behind you. The game may be a PS3 jewel, but it's definitely PS2 in its gameplay loop and thinking.

There's a melee function as well, but you're already dead if you have to use this - by the time your piss-weak punches actually floor an enemy, two or three of his pals will have been shooting you all the while, bringing your regenerating health right down to that black-and-white image, the telltale sign of your character being on the cusp of death.

Yeah, this is one of those games where, if one enemy catches sight of you, the entire rest of the squad instantly knows about it, hive-mind style. There is no real stealth in this game either as a result, which is probably a good thing.

I must complain about one more part, because I'm ranting now - in the last 10% of the game, things take a turn for the supernatural and you're no longer fighting against humans. This is actually a bit of a recurring thing in the Uncharted series, and I can't really explain why, but this kind of tone shift just puts me right off.

It makes the game become more like Doom, or something. Or maybe Resident Evil 4, though at least with a Resident Evil game, you accept madness and visceral stuff from the start, and you watch it get worse from there.

And it's relevant that I mention Resident Evil again, particularly the 4th game, because the influences are obvious - there's even some sections with the old fixed-camera from the PS1 Resident Evil days, designed to show you nothing. There's a jetski section too, although I won't say any more about that in case my blood starts boiling again.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune elects to be more of a run-and-gun type of game, but doing that just gets you killed sooner, until you drop the difficulty to its easiest setting so you can just get past the BS as quickly as you can, and actually appreciate the good parts hidden beneath the exotic exterior: the decent story, the nice visuals, the swashbuckling atmosphere. Nothing in this game is what it really appears to be, which I suppose is on theme. I'm just awfully glad that its short length meant it only ruined two of my evenings.

20 June 2025