I downloaded the demo for Uncharted: Drake last night and I must say I'm impressed with many things about this game and a little disappointed in others. Perhaps it's because it's a demo and not the full game there is just some things missing.

The game starts off with you and some lady travelling in a plane towards an "Uncharted" island in the Pacific Ocean that supposedly houses the gold of Eldorado. The assumption is that this gold is an immense fortune there for the taking. Then the sky lights up with AA fire and your plane is taken down.

This was excellently done. The cinematics were all done in-engine (as is the norm anymore really), and they were very well done. The facial responses to speaking and emotion were very close to those in Heavenly Sword, which is quite possibly the best facial features in a game I've ever seen. The negative was teeth. Every time there was a close up of the characters, the teeth just stood out. They were super white and seemingly large. They just stood out as weird to me.



Now to gameplay. Excellent again. The character motions are fluid and life-like IMO. The animations for jumping over things and hiding behind things to avoid gunfire are excellent and fluid. The controls are also very responsive. It is obvious that a lot of time went into this aspect of the game. I've not played Gears of War, but the taking cover system is what I imagine Gears having, and the Naughty Dog may have just completely borrowed this system from Gears. The main character can also use his fists. And, similar to the Heavenly Swords super moves, the game kind of slows down and isolates you from the rest of the world as you kick the bad guys's ass with your hands. Very cool.



The camera system was well tuned as well. When you hid behind a rock you could see just where you needed to. You can flip shoulders when shooting to get a better perspective, and once I figured out how to flip the vertical axis I was very comfortable with the game.

There were a few really cool things about the game that immediately shot out at me. When you turn corners or look at things at a certain angle, the focus of the game changes. Literally like camera focus. Things far away seem out of focus compared to things closer to you. And, a few times in the game where you look further away, the focus of the foreground goes out. I don't know if anyone else noticed this (maybe I'm crazy), but that was a cool effect. Another effect that is really awesome is also your health bar. As you take on hits the screen goes from full vibrant color to black and white. If you take cover, you slowly recover and then you can go blazing with the guns again.

One effect I think was sorely missing, though, was water interaction with the character. He seemed to move through water like it was a gas. There was no hindrence to him as he moved through it, nor was there any movement of the water in response to him. This is really nitpicky though. It didn't really hurt the gameplay at all, but it stood out in my mind.

I have to admit that some of the platforming elements were a bit frustrating. In one case, I was jumping up and the the main character got stuck in limbo. I got a loop of the jumping sound and the guy was just flipping out in mid-air. It was like the game couldn't decide which animation to play so it got stuck. The game wasn't frozen though. I just paused and said go back to last checkpoint, and went right past the place it got stuck on.



I am so getting this game. It was a lot of fun. It felt like an Indiana Jones movie. This demo was extremely effective. It left me wanting more.