3.5/5 ★ – Em_SG97's review of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Remastered.

I gotta say this game has not aged very well compared to its sequels. It’s still a decent romp but the cracks in the game are far more apparent after playing it again. Uncharted was pretty revolutionary at the time of release and knowing what games came from after it, it totally makes sense. Not a lot of games had a big focus on writing with a cinematic feel to it. It feels like playing an Indiana Jones game and it’s well executed for the most part. Nathan Drake is probably one of the most likable and fun protagonists in gaming history, helped greatly by the natural writing and great performance by Nolan North. He’s a super witty adventurer with a heart of gold. The side characters are also very entertaining. Elena’s drive to get a good story makes her a fun partner for Nate as she often surpasses him in tenacity. Sully is equally great as the grumpy and horny old mentor who’s getting too old for this shit. The story is an incredibly straightforward adventure about a race to find treasure before the bad guys do. It’s really the writing and chemistry between our heroes that makes the story remotely interesting. Even though the heroes are fun and have vibrant personalities, the villains are very one note and bland. Gameplay works for the most part but I noticed some pretty irritating flaws on this play through. It’s standard third-person cover based shooting used by numerous games. The cover isn’t always consistent though and I found I was still getting shot from angles that I should’ve been covered by. Enemies will sometimes spawn right behind you during a firefight and you are given no time to react unless you know ahead of time when and where the enemies will come from. Certain fights don’t give you very good cover options at the start and it’s very easy to die with multiple enemies shooting at you from every angle. Most of theses issues are more apparent on the harder difficulties but they are still consistently annoying enough to point out. Certain enemies can straight up one-shot you on higher difficulties with absolutely no warning and it’s incredibly frustrating. Grenades are clunky to throw and have a very small blast radius. The cover system itself is pretty janky and can be difficult to control at times. The pacing is also way too fast for a majority of the game, throwing you into fight after fight with almost no stopping or build up. It can get pretty exhausting. There is one part that I think really saves the gameplay, and that’s the changeup towards the end of the second act. It almost becomes a horror game for a little while and it’s a fun twist. Overall it’s a decent game today held up mostly by the fun characters with flawed but serviceable gameplay. It’s a good base for much better games to come. 7/10