Previews// Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Okay, so the demo only included the briefest of opportunities for button-mashing, hand-to-hand action… so maybe I’m over-stating the case right now. However, I’ll balance that with the fact that in order to use the grenades you’ve got to use the motion control in the Sixaxis. Well, for an old dog like me, that took some getting used to. But I still enjoyed my oh-too-brief time with Nathan, his chums and his English-accented enemy…

Yes, despite the fact that we Poms (or Brits, or Limeys, whatever you like) are some of the few nationalities in the world who still support that glorious Untied State in whatever it does, we are still being cast as bad guys. I say, that’s simply rotten and hard cheese on us! But what can you do?

Don’t worry too much fellow Englishmen (and chicks) the majority of the baddies are Hispanic looking, just to balance things out.

“So, the graphics, you doddery old twat?” you ask, “What of the sound?”

Alright, well, given that this is a demo played on a debug, I’m going to take it easy. There is - even on our ultra-hard HD telly – some graphical glitching (then again, you can still stick your gun through a wall in Warhawk… and that’s ancient). My hope is that, because over-all backgrounds, characters, impacts and enemies are all marvellously rendered, the minor demo niggles will be sorted out.

Audio – look, by this stage in video game development, if the audio isn’t top notch, crystal clear and bassy as a room full of Fender Jazzmasters, you’ve probably got a dodgy set of speakers. The voice-acting is brilliantly timed (synching is a little off in places) with a decent script. Explosions explode, music rises and falls at appropriate moments – all is good in the aural world.

Now to the A.I.- yes, as this is a single-player game (or ‘experience’ if you want to use marketing bullshit) the Artificial Intelligence of both friend and foe is crucial. To me it’s more important than all the graphical, audial, plotial and scriptial shenanigans in the world. One sure-fire way to have your game-life blown into a puff of pixels is for hyper-stupid or uber-clever NPCs to bugger it up.

Now… there is one character in UDF who – at least in the demo I played – made me fall of my chair in a fit of giggles thus ruining the experience: bloody Sully. There are a few points where the old dear needs some brain tweaking as he begins to walk in a circle, speeds up, and can’t stop himself – even walking straight into walls; well not straight, more parabolic. All of this happened in my peripheral vision until a colleague pointed it out as well. But frankly, it got to a point where Sully was doing my head in and I wished death upon him… cold, harsh, quick death.

Come on Naughty Dog, sort it out. Sort it out because the rest of the interactions with friend and foe are fabulously fun. Enemies ‘enem’ in different and interesting ways depending on where and when you are in a level – my gods, when you shoot the buggers they even react ‘correctly’. And, as I always hope, the further in I forayed, the brighter and more devious they all got.

Your pals, to be honest, they’re more training wheels, at least in the demo. Sully will circle walk but suggest, “Maybe you should shoot the obvious thing with the shooty thing” if you get stumped (not in those words), while Ms Fisher will do her best to take pot shots where required.

As demos go – this one went – it ended too quickly for my liking as I was immersed in the action, having got to grips with the grenades - finally. The puzzles are not – at this point – puzzley enough to test anybody much above the age of four. The jumping can, for the most part, be done with one-hand (seriously). But the overall feel of UDF is of a game that has come together and that will bear deeper and more concerted play.