its just a playable hollywood action movie with a bit of cheese and that's fine by me :) def plays and feels clunky though, idk if the ps4 remaster fixed a lot of that stuff but this deserves a complete overhaul

edit: idk if anyone else talks about this but compared to 2 and 3, you can kinda see a bit of naughty dog's prior work still shedding its skin here, mostly in the presentation and acting. it's a bit more game-y than its sequels, and some character animations and cutscenes really remind me of their ps2 work with how things are framed or scenes end (specifically when drake says "this is so not cool" when the plane gets hit in the intro) just something kinda neat i want to write down here

I really wanted to like this game. It had some great moments, but most of the time it was frustrating and repetitive. Gunplay took most of the gameplay time, which I might have been okay with if the enemies weren't bullet sponges, each encounter didn't feel almost the same, and they were broken up more often with other tasks. I know gameplay isn't what Uncharted is remembered for, and the other aspects of this game were good. I don't mind a game with uninteresting gameplay if those other aspects make up for it, but gameplay that's so frequently frustrating sours the whole experience.

I will catch slack for this statement, but without the 2022 Uncharted film, I would’ve never become an Uncharted fan. It was only after watching the movie and seeing the fan criticisms being levied at it that I became interested in playing through the franchise at all. I needed to see for myself if the writers and actors of the film failed to capture the treasure hunting antics and iconic personalities of Nathan Drake and Victor “Sully” Sullivan that are so important to the series' identity. In hindsight, the film did fail in those respects, but let’s ignore it and discuss the first game in the franchise - Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Released in late 2007, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was an unprecedented success on the PS3. I’m unsure if this was a foregone conclusion at the time given the stellar track record of the studio creating the game up to 2007, but nowadays the Naughty Dog name is synonymous with polish and quality. Coming off the heels of their success with the Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series, Uncharted took the studio in a new direction. While they left behind the quirky orange mascot of Crash, the wisecracking of Daxter, and the stoic badassery of Jak, Naughty Dog replaced them with the adventure loving, gun wielding, treasure chasing, and still wisecracking Nathan “Nate” Drake. This was obviously a wise decision on the part of Naughty Dog, as the Uncharted series would become synonymous with the Playstation brand and Nathan Drake would become another Sony mascot of sorts. I, however, was not on board with this change and actively resented the series at its debut. It was replacing my favorite game series of all time, Jak and Daxter, and killing my hopes of a Jak IV (no, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier does not count). Looking back, I realize the advent of Uncharted was necessary to continue the growth of Naughty Dog as a game developer and a studio known for its storytelling. With the overtly adult themes and dark tones of their most recent releases, however, maybe it is time for the studio to return to form and give us something a little more campy and a little more fun.

Drake’s Fortune begins on a boat as the player is introduced for the first time to Nate and, arguably, the second most important character in the entire series, Elena Fisher. The two are in the middle of the ocean to uncover the coffin of the famous pirate Sir Francis Drake, a possible relative to our titular hero. Elena, neither an adventurer nor an experienced diver, is here to document the historical find, while Nate hopes to unearth long forgotten treasure. The two soon discover the coffin, but are quickly ambushed by the antagonistic force of this game, a highly trained group of mercenary’s lead by Atoq Navarro. A shootout between the unlucky couple of treasure hunters and the mercenaries acts as the game’s tutorial and an introduction to the gameplay of the entire Uncharted series.

The best way to describe playing any Uncharted game is likening it to playing an Indiana Jones movie with bigger stunts, just as many puzzles, more guns, more death, and less Nazis. The player will spend most of their time guiding Nate through treacherous ancient death traps, solving challenging puzzles of the past, and engaging in intense and nearly unwinnable gunfights with a limitless supply of goons. The controls are smooth and responsive allowing for precise aiming, quick dives to cover, and effortless 3D platforming. While your ability to aim true and find the right cover will be tested on harder difficulties, the game is never unfair and is able to strike a balance between frustratingly difficult and excitingly challenging.

Looking back on Drake’s Fortune with the knowledge of where the series will go and where Nathan as a character ultimately ends up, this game is a fantastic introduction and is only made better by the subsequent games. Thanks to this foresight, the game's title becomes multi-faceted where “Fortune” takes on several different meanings for Nathan Drake as a character. Let me explain.

Fortune has three widely accepted meanings: (1) a very large sum of money, (2) prosperity attained partly through luck, and (3) destiny or fate. For the first meaning of the word, it is obvious by the end of the game that Nathan and friends find a fortune in treasure. The second meaning, while slightly less obvious, was explained by Naughty Dog themselves in a 2018 interview stating that Nathan’s health bar is actually just a luck meter, with each decrease of the bar representing Nathan’s luck running out. When the bar gets low enough Nathan’s luck has run out and his enemies will get a clear shot and kill him. While this sounds silly, it does mean that everything Nathan has accomplished is partly due to his insane amount of luck, i.e. his prosperity is attained partly through luck. The final meaning of the word, destiny or fate, can be applied to this first game in two different ways. First, the meeting of Elena and Nate was destined to occur as they are meant to be together. Second, it was fate that brought Nathan to the coffin of Sir Francis Drake in the first place and set about this whole chain of events that would span several games, a spin off, and a movie. Am I looking too deep into a title? Maybe.

In conclusion, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is an absolute gem and a great introduction to the series. With its compelling narrative, thrilling gameplay, and memorable characters, it set the benchmark for action-adventure games going forward and would only be topped by its sequel.

Certainly a pretty average start to this series. Drake's Fortune isn't really all that special nowadays since the core appeal this game had has been outdone by an incredible margin since, everything that remains outside of the virtue of being a "cinematic game" doesn't really deliver all too well. The shooter gameplay is serviceable, the locales get pretty stale, the story isn't really anything special. Something that does still shine though is the characters who are all decently well written and fun to watch. Although I will probably never go back to this game I still recommend it to anyone who is planning on getting into the series, it isn't too long of a game thankfully.

This game was recommended back in the day, when I freshly got my PS3. And I was not disappointed. A 3rd person cover shooter with exploration and riddles to overcome. The game takes inspiration from Tomb Raider and the movie franchise Indiana Jones but it has an unique charm to its characters. My problem is that the different sections aren’t balanced enough, I feel like there is a little to much shooting and way less exploration and riddle solving. Overall a really fun shooter to play, also I kinda like the treasures you collect. Game also enables extra stuff after beating. Very decent first entry.