Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered

Ally Foley
Sep 4, 2018 · 6 min read

So a while back, and I mean a while, the Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection was released for the PS4 console boasting new remastered graphics. Due to not owning a PS4 until recently I was unfortunately unable to buy the collection at release, but I have finally managed to get my hands on a copy which I will be reviewing all of the games it contains for the next few weeks. So like any sane person I started with the first game of the collection, Drake’s Fortune.

So let’s start graphics since this is considered a remastering of the original few games and should look better, right? I played the game blind not having looked at the original game graphics so I could give an unbiased opinion of the quality. Just from the start you can tell its a remastered game and not one made with the engines and equipment of today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it looked bad. The cut scenes are good quality with smooth looking graphics and animation and it doesn’t degrade too much in quality once you swap to actual game play. That being said I can’t ignore some of the visible glitches in the game play. There is often instances of clipping, some are only noticeable when you are actually looking for them as I was, but some are extremely obvious such as your gun clipping into a wall, rolling into a surface only for you to sink into it a little, enemies spawning in the air and dropping a few inches ect. All the classic clipping visual glitches of an older game. On top of these standard instances there are also a few walking on air moments where your character doesn’t register the edge of a ledge or some similar situation and will perform a weird animation cycle where they think they are falling and flail their leg accordingly, but get stuck in that position till you back them back onto solid ground. There was also a very memorable moment for me where I accidentally jumped from a ledge and panicked and also hit the dodge button which resulted in Drake jumping and then executing a perfect combat roll half way through the jump with nothing for him to use as a push off to make such a movement possible. Though some of the glitches and clipping can get a little annoying, most just resulted in incredulous laughter from me and my roommate, who was playing the game with me, as they are just super ridiculous and out of the blue most of the time.

Also this has nothing to do with the graphics themselves but was more of a personal observation as a first time player, which is that for someone who is meant to hold some respect for history and historical objects Drake and co. sure destroy a lot of it. We eventually started a drinking game for every time Drake would blatantly destroy a piece of history and had to use water for our own health and safety due to the sheer frequency. It just seems a little odd to me.

As for actual controls and game play the game follows a pretty standard set of third person action game controls with only a few discrepancies. You have the standard jump, which honestly looks ridiculous and defies any kind of physics most times, dodge, cover, aim and fire ect. As for the odd controls that I noticed I’ll start with swapping weapons. Disclaimer I spent many years growing comfortable and trained to Xbox controls so some of these issues may be because I am just unfamiliar with PS4 control layouts, but in my experience the general location of controls tend to remain the same across both platforms. Drake can hold two weapons at any given time and in most cases cycling between them on the fly would be the triangle button and your weapon reel would be the directional pad when you had more time to select, and that is true, but they added a rather annoying detail with this game. Players aren’t able to simply tap triangle to swap their weapon, they have to be actively aiming their weapon to use a quick swap? I noticed this detail immediately due to having played a lot of FPS games, however, my roommate who tends to avoid FPS saw no issue with this control so it may depend on the player if this is annoying or unusual and a players past gaming experiences.

I also found the reload and melee to be placed oddly and almost reversed. When I reloaded for the first time I immediately went for the buttons because that is usually where that command is mapped, but in this game reload is actually R1 which my muscle memory says is in fact melee. Instead melee combat is mainly square with combos involving the triangle button. I will go ahead and say this is an awkward layout for a combo and I only performed it successfully once with a normal controller grip. All other times I re-positioned my entire hand so I could spam the two buttons with my first and middle finger and even then it didn’t always work. I personally believe melee to be a waste of time in this game as most of the time, though successful, it has little effect on the enemies. There are also instances of the climbing jumps not working properly, for example a player may be hanging and jump to another ledge hang and even though the character was clearly close enough to grab the ledge they will not make the grab leading to a completely unpreventable death. Then when the player does the exact same thing and looks like they should miss the character defies physics once again and latches on? I couldn’t find any rhyme or reason at certain parts that dictated a successful jump.

I realize I have pointed out a lot of flaws so far, but I like to be upfront about such things. In my experience no game is perfect and being an older action game a lot of this is not only expected, but almost part of the play experience in my opinion. It gives the game personality and there are so many good elements of the game that a few glitches and weird happenings are in no way enough to make me not want to play the game. Some of the cinematography and lighting in shots both in cuts as well as in play are absolutely gorgeous. I enjoy the art style of the game and after playing for a while, just like any game you eventually just readjust to the controls and don’t even notice weird controls anymore.

From what I have played of the game the goal of the game is to find a giant gold statue that one of Drake’s ancestors was trying to track down as well as the Nazi’s, though this game for sales reasons in Europe refuses to call them such. The overall feel of the game is a very strong Raiders of the Lost Ark feel minus the blatant Nazi’s and set closer to modern times, but it is you and your witty plane flying sidekick and a girl tracking down treasure in a race against a rival treasure hunter to get there first. You are kept to a very rigid railroaded story line and path with little chance to wander or explore your surroundings. The enemies are thrown at you in waves which you have to kill to move on between banter with your witty older sidekick who in my play just sorta vanishes occasionally only to reappear when he is meant to have dialog which can be disconcerting. Other then that this is a very well scripted and fun action/adventure RPG that I believe is a good choice for gamers of any skill level to just enjoy an old fashioned treasure hunt.