The Big Finish

I play a lot of games, but I don't finish very many. Some of it is simple practicality--there are only so many hours in a day, after all, but for the most part, games just can't hold my attention past 10 hours or so. It takes a very special game to inspire me to keep playing it until it's done, and this year there were four such titles: Mass Effect, Portal, BioShock, and Uncharted:Drake's Fortune.

We've talked about the first three enough at this point, so I thought I'd spend some time talking about the last one, which I absolutely adored. In case you're not familiar, Uncharted is the story of Nathan Drake, an explorer and treasure hunter on the trail of El Dorado, the city of gold. His partners in adventure are Elena, a documentarian, and Sully the cigar-chomping pilot. As you search for the treasure, you'll run into pirates, a flooded city, a curse, and, of course, Nazis. Seriously, it wouldn't be a real search for gold without Nazis, now would it?

Given Nate's chosen profession, comparisons to Tomb Raider are inevitable, and not inaccurate, though Uncharted throws in a pinch of Gears of War for good measure. In between the more acrobatic environmental puzzle sequences, you'll engage in some serious gunplay with all sorts of bad men. Taking cover is vital for survival, but so is knowing when to move. Naughty Dog apparently realized something that many other developers are happy to blithely ignore, that when you shoot at stuff, it takes damage, so that wooden crate is only going to take machine gun fire on your behalf for so long before it says "to hell with this" and disintegrates.

Once you've dispatched those who would do you harm, you'll have a moment to examine your surroundings, and I strongly recommend you do so. Uncharted is, simply put, one of the most staggeringly beautiful games I've ever seen. The jungles are enormous and lush, the ruined city is glorious in its slow decay, and the characters all look and move like actual people. Nate isn't some hugely-muscled superhero, he's just an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation. Ok, an extremely good looking ordinary guy, but you get my drift.

Everything done to tell Uncharted's story is absolutely perfect. The writing is superb, and the voice acting is some of the best you will ever encounter. Naughty Dog took inspiration from the type of heroes you would expect--Indiana Jones, and suchlike--but also watched a lot of Firefly before creating Nate Drake, and you can tell. Nate is charming, funny, and utterly likeable. You want to spend time with him not only to see how his adventure turns out, but also because he's just such a great guy. Game characters today seem to fall into one of two camps: either the faceless everyman or the aloof, wisecracking loner. Nate is someone who'd play on your softball team or who'd help you move house. You would totally let this guy borrow one of your DVDs, is what I'm saying.

Gushing aside, Uncharted is not without its flaws. For starters, the environments are so gorgeous that it can actually be difficult to see certain key items within them. Like, you know, the guys shooting at you. Once they fire, their muzzle blasts will help point out their locations, which is fine so long as you're not trying to get a bead on the guy shooting the rockets. At one point, I was in a tunnel with no clear idea as to where to go, when the helpful hint popped up to tell me to shoot the barrel. What? There's a barrel? I was playing on a TV that's only slightly smaller than my car, so I don't think the fact that it's a CRT was really a factor in my inability to distinguish important bits of the environment, but I suppose I could be wrong.

The camera is also problematic at times. Though it works beautifully for the majority of the game, there are times during certain environmental puzzles that you can't move it at all. So if you can't see where you're going, that's just too darn bad.

Then there are the jetski levels.

Have you ever been playing a game, only to have some random-ass task thrown in, seemingly from left field? It's oftentimes an escort mission, or a vehicle mission, and it's in there because the developers feel like they have to break up the gameplay. Attention developers: you don't. Really, you don't. If you've made the rest of the game fun, as you did with Uncharted, you really don't have to throw stuff in just for the sake of throwing stuff in, I swear. Now, some folks really love the two levels in which you jetski through the flooded city, shooting badguys and evading explosive barrels, but I couldn't be rid of them fast enough. They did show off some really gorgeous scenery, but they're so obviously filler (and not fun filler, at that), that I really, truly wish Naughty Dog had just skipped them altogether.

Just like Mass Effect, BioShock, and Portal, the second I was finished Uncharted, I wanted to start playing it again. Flawed though it may be, it's a rollicking good time. Worth getting a PS3 for? You know, it just might be.