Navigating Though Uncharted Waters

Since its release in 2007 Uncharted has been at the forefront of the PS3’s exclusive games. The game creates a cinematic experience by combining together spectacular graphics, an exciting story and plenty of action. The original Uncharted, entitled Drake’s Fortune, told the story of Nathan Drake on a quest to follow his ancestor’s journey to the legendary city of El Dorado, with the help of fellow treasure hunter Victor Sullivan and reporter Elena Fisher. The Uncharted games are third person shooters with a large amount of platforming and some puzzle solving too.

All of the Uncharted games are cinematic throughout.

The developers, Naughty Dog, used body and facial motion capture technology extensively in the game to bring alive all the characters not only in cutscenes but during actual gameplay too. This gives the games a very cinematic feel as all the emotion in the actor’s voice translates into what’s on screen; giving it the game the feel of a blockbuster. Naughty Dog's loving attention to detail has helped them produce some of the best series of games ever made, firstly with Crash on the PS1 and later with Jak and Daxter on the PS2. So far Naughty Dog has only developed one francise per console so I'm looking forwards to what they'll do on the next generation. Naughty Dog are also developing a game on the PSV which may just mean that I will have to buy one.

Graphically Uncharted has always been at the top tier capable.

For Uncharted 2: Among Thieves the developers added multiplayer, updating the graphics and increased the size of the cast made Among Thieves a bigger and better experience over all. In my opinion Uncharted 2 is still the best looking game on any console with an insane level of detail on every aspect of the environment. In a time when single player experiences were tacking on multiplayer components Among Thieves shined as an example of how to do it correctly. Including many competitive game types as well as cooperative arenas and missions it was obvious that this was meant to be a quality experience and wasn’t just rushed out.

It's nice to get revenge on Nathan Drake in the multiplayer.

The Uncharted 3 multiplayer adds more varied competitive team games and a more varied arena mode that includes a medley of different objective based games in one. My favourite mode was a 2v2v2 deathmatch where three teams face each other and you have to rely on your partner to cover your back, it’s great to play whilst talking tactics. Also included in the multiplayer mode is character customisation that allows you to choose weapons, different perks and how your character looks. The new levels all look beautiful; so far my favorite one is an Arabian city with multiple levels but I have only played what was in the beta.

The dynamic sand effects are beautiful.

In the developer talk for Uncharted 3 at the Eurogamer Expo the lead game designer told the story of how one of the team members got heat stroke running up and falling down sand dunes so that they could get realistic footage for in-game animations. Also at the conference was Nolan North, the actor for Nathan Drake, and it was great to see how passionate these guys are for the game and how important making a quality experience is to them. With new lighting and particle effects Uncharted 3 is set to outshine the previous games and with Brits being the antagonists it looks as though the story will be a good one.

I'm looking forwards to having a British antagonist.