Ah avast me har..nope sorry wrong movie, this is Indiana Jones territory, don't be fooled by the opening scene with all the pirates you’ve got a first class ticket to jungle town and no mistake. Oh and what fun your going to have, treasure, curses, a false sense of learning history and guns, lot’s and lot’s of guns.
Anyway there are more important things to a game then loads of guns, jungle and ripping off your favourite treasure hunter. To start with this game just looks soooooo god dam pretty, really I'd say the best looking thing on my PS3 aside from all those porn movies holiday photos I have on it. Honestly for the first 2 hours I played this I found myself stopping every 5 minutes then just looking around at the scenery going eeeeeeewww purttey; from the glistening water on the rocks to the picture perfect postcard sunsets it’s all so beautiful, but this is not just stuck to the static backgrounds this detail follows through the whole game, for example when drake walks through long plants they fall out of his way, when he's been for a swim all this clothes get wet and dry out slowly and as you swim or walk through water it ripples and swashes around you.
As far as game play is concerned Drakes Fortune is no Metal Gear there are really only a few basic building blocks here, you run jump, swing jump, jump jump, scrabble across walls and jump and pump near Jack Bauer levels of bullets into your fellow man. This could easily have ended up being really dull if it weren’t for every one of these elements being polished to perfection. It's as if during the testing phase Naughty Dog hired Gordon Ramsay to play though, then every time he said f this or that they'd tweak and polish a little more, then a little more again, until he was lying on his back purring away with sear joy scoffing naughty doggy treats from their very hands. Drakes fortune manages to filter out almost all of the irritation you’ve ever found in a game by you never ever having to worry about saving, it just saves all the time at very frequent checkpoints, if you die after a bit of dialog you don't hear it again even if the check point is just before the chatty bit, the controls are tight and fluid and I never found myself wondering why I had died or how the hell they had managed to shoot me from there, the game always seemed to be playing fair.
If I have to criticise this design philosophy (and I do) it's because it makes the game bit too easy, not in everyway the hiding and gunning can be a bit of a challenge at times but if I repeated a section it was only usually once or twice and at most 4-5 times for the last few bits, the puzzles are well not even really puzzles as I got them all the first go and did not need to curse the heavens in the process, then when your stood in a room not sure of where to go it flashes up a little hint for you. Now you don't have to take it (you have to press L2 to see it) but I don't know in these days of shared information on the interweb when you get stuck on a game you don't need these in game hints you can just look it up, you'll still feel although you've cheated yourself either way but at least the old way your more likely to figure it out for yourself and gain a lot more satisfaction from doing so. Sure now this kind of design means you much less likely to plant your pad through to the other side of your TV but really I'm not dim a bit more of challenge would have been nice and I'd have felt a much greater sense of achievement in the end. Remember the puzzles in games like Silent Hill and early Resident Evils where you actually needed a pen and paper, to figure most of them out, how good did you feel once you'd solved them?
As for the story it’s more than intriguing enough to suck you into the world with the right amount of humour and twists to keep you enthralled and connected to the characters to the point where you will actually like them as people, unlike most of the twats you have to play as in some other games, naming no names (Assassins Creed). Although you don't really get too much from the dozy bint that follows you round like a lost puppy, then again you are shown a pretty convincing friendship between you and your grizzled buddy.
In short, it’s truly an excellent game. I’ll play it again, I'll still find it funny, I'll never get tired of its gun play and I will be haunted by that image of Gordon Ramsay for the rest of my days.
Anyway there are more important things to a game then loads of guns, jungle and ripping off your favourite treasure hunter. To start with this game just looks soooooo god dam pretty, really I'd say the best looking thing on my PS3 aside from all those porn movies holiday photos I have on it. Honestly for the first 2 hours I played this I found myself stopping every 5 minutes then just looking around at the scenery going eeeeeeewww purttey; from the glistening water on the rocks to the picture perfect postcard sunsets it’s all so beautiful, but this is not just stuck to the static backgrounds this detail follows through the whole game, for example when drake walks through long plants they fall out of his way, when he's been for a swim all this clothes get wet and dry out slowly and as you swim or walk through water it ripples and swashes around you.
As far as game play is concerned Drakes Fortune is no Metal Gear there are really only a few basic building blocks here, you run jump, swing jump, jump jump, scrabble across walls and jump and pump near Jack Bauer levels of bullets into your fellow man. This could easily have ended up being really dull if it weren’t for every one of these elements being polished to perfection. It's as if during the testing phase Naughty Dog hired Gordon Ramsay to play though, then every time he said f this or that they'd tweak and polish a little more, then a little more again, until he was lying on his back purring away with sear joy scoffing naughty doggy treats from their very hands. Drakes fortune manages to filter out almost all of the irritation you’ve ever found in a game by you never ever having to worry about saving, it just saves all the time at very frequent checkpoints, if you die after a bit of dialog you don't hear it again even if the check point is just before the chatty bit, the controls are tight and fluid and I never found myself wondering why I had died or how the hell they had managed to shoot me from there, the game always seemed to be playing fair.
If I have to criticise this design philosophy (and I do) it's because it makes the game bit too easy, not in everyway the hiding and gunning can be a bit of a challenge at times but if I repeated a section it was only usually once or twice and at most 4-5 times for the last few bits, the puzzles are well not even really puzzles as I got them all the first go and did not need to curse the heavens in the process, then when your stood in a room not sure of where to go it flashes up a little hint for you. Now you don't have to take it (you have to press L2 to see it) but I don't know in these days of shared information on the interweb when you get stuck on a game you don't need these in game hints you can just look it up, you'll still feel although you've cheated yourself either way but at least the old way your more likely to figure it out for yourself and gain a lot more satisfaction from doing so. Sure now this kind of design means you much less likely to plant your pad through to the other side of your TV but really I'm not dim a bit more of challenge would have been nice and I'd have felt a much greater sense of achievement in the end. Remember the puzzles in games like Silent Hill and early Resident Evils where you actually needed a pen and paper, to figure most of them out, how good did you feel once you'd solved them?
As for the story it’s more than intriguing enough to suck you into the world with the right amount of humour and twists to keep you enthralled and connected to the characters to the point where you will actually like them as people, unlike most of the twats you have to play as in some other games, naming no names (Assassins Creed). Although you don't really get too much from the dozy bint that follows you round like a lost puppy, then again you are shown a pretty convincing friendship between you and your grizzled buddy.
In short, it’s truly an excellent game. I’ll play it again, I'll still find it funny, I'll never get tired of its gun play and I will be haunted by that image of Gordon Ramsay for the rest of my days.
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