Uncharted:Drake's Fortune

[KnackChap]

 

Uncharted:Drake's Fortune

Developer:Naughty Dog

Publisher:Sony

Genre:Action Adventure

Platform:PS3

Players:1

Release:Nov 07

 

A 400-year-old clue in the coffin of Sir Francis Drake sets a modern-day fortune hunter on an exploration for the fabled treasure of El Dorado, leading to the discovery of a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The search turns deadly when Nathan Drake becomes stranded on the island and hunted by mercenaries. Outnumbered and outgunned, Drake and his companions must fight to survive as they begin to unravel the terrible secrets hidden on the Island.

 

Taking full advantage of the power of PS3, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is developed using proprietary technology that promises to impress players with incredibly realistic characters and lifelike environments. Building on its legacy of extraordinary storytelling, developer Naughty Dog has created an elaborate plot that will have players guessing at every turn. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, brings players into a world ripe with realism and unexpected juxtapositions.

 

Official website

 

IGN Preview

If anyone can rise to the task though, it's Naughty Dog, with its rather fine pedigree of past hits hopefully indicative of Drake's ultimate quality. Right from the off too, signs are good, with our Uncharted experience opening with a beautifully orchestrated edge-of-the-seat action set-piece. As Nathan and obligatory hot lady-friend fly over the Pacific Ocean toward their tropical island destination - a sequence roughly twenty minutes into the final game, we're told - it's hard to find fault with Naughty Dog's simply gorgeous new game engine. Translucent clouds float serenely over an undulating ocean, light cascading across the water from behind the expansive island hideaway on the horizon.

 

More impressive still is the sheer polish in production values, even at this early stage. Music is suitably bombastic, voice-actors actually sound like they're acting - injecting our stars with genuine wit and warmth - plus animation and character detail is near impeccable. What's more, facial animation is simply incredible, with both leads emoting convincingly, lip-synching accurately and just exuding personality. If nothing else, Naughty Dog looks to have created a world of adventure you'll be glad to be lost in..............................................................................

.................

.................................................................In fact, that pretty much sums up Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for us at the moment, the game positively dripping with promise, despite some early build niggles. Naughty Dog has completely nailed the pulp '50s action-adventure atmosphere, with its likeable cast of characters and exotic locales and we have full confidence in the developer's ability, based on its past achievements. By all accounts, Uncharted is shaping up to be an incredibly slick, engaging action platformer for PlayStation 3. We can't wait to see more.

 

Screens

 

More videos http://www.gametrailers.com/game/2654.html

 

Reviews

IGN-

Gamespot-

1UP-

CVG-

[KnackChap]

new screens (56k R.I.P)

 

[KnackChap]

new screenshots

 

[MarketTantrik]

Hey, the babe's changed her hair colour.

[KnackChap]

uncharted looks a stunner no doubt,but the gunplay and camera look a bit loose ATM,hopefully naughty dog will fix it by november

btw there is a scene when he jumpsinto the water and when he gets up back his shirt is completely wet,gets a dark color and has water dripping out of it-AWESOME

 

ingame shot

[Ne0]

looks cool....is this sandbox type ? with all those forests, sandbox would be kickass !

[KnackChap]

 

best cover art i have seen in a while

[Snake]

Thats a class cover

[rad2689]

f**kin' awsome cover

[CarbonCore]

Now all they need to do is print that on soft drink bottles and cushion covers to create the hype.

[SchizoidFreud]

totally, it looks terrific.

[KnackChap]

Now all they need to do is print that on soft drink bottles and cushion covers to create the hype.

 

good game will sell no need for hype *cough* bioshock,MP3 *cough*

[KnackChap]

actually that cover comes with the warhawk manual

[CarbonCore]

Now all they need to do is print that on soft drink bottles and cushion covers to create the hype./sarcasm

 

Corrected

 

PS. are you talking about MGS4 cover ??

[KnackChap]

Now all they need to do is print that on soft drink bottles and cushion covers to create the hype./sarcasm

 

Corrected

 

PS. are you talking about MGS4 cover ??

 

no in the manual there is the same pic in the upcoming game list

[MightySkate]

Sony should create the hype as well as bundle it with a lower price ps3 in some regions like the US.

[KnackChap]

new 9 min gameplay video

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_4772_en.html

 

looks like they tightened the shooting and balanced the weapons

[KnackChap]

Translated summary from that spanish dev Q&A, credit to VG Aficionado

http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?p...058#post1702058

 

- They're still optimizing the frame rate, will end up running at constant 30 fps. Sometimes it goes up to 45 fps with all effects on, but they aim at constant 30 fps as already mentioned. Less than 30 fps is considered a bug.

 

- All textures have been drawn, there are no scanned textures. That's why it looks somewhat cartoony.

 

- Jetski level has 6 million polygons + water reflection + refraction + bump mapping + jitter + shadows + a good number of characters + physics + AI + volumetric explosions + etc(psm has scans of this level)

 

- It should take 12 hours to complete.

 

- The AI will learn your behavior and react accordingly. Experienced gamers will have a hard time. They're proud of the AI.

- There are no scripted events when you fight with the AI. You'll never see the same situation twice (to some extent, of course).

 

- No auto-aim.

 

- The effects still aren't final. They'll improve close to the very end of the project for optimization's sake.

 

- There's a lot of stuff we haven't seen yet. It's like a movie where a lot of things happen, and it will have lots of varied action: shooting, fighting, platforming, puzzles, enigmas, races, treasure hunting ("you'll be finding things"), etc.

 

- Real time HDR lighting: if there's a sunset, everything on screen will have a reddish tone. Everything will be real time.

 

- 720p allows better geometry. We might not see anything better than Uncharted geometry-wise at 1080p.

 

- PS3 devkits let them know all the game stats when they're developing it (duh): GPU load, texture memory, level memory, shadow memory, buffers, how is streaming affected, frame rate, etc.

 

- "I love the AI. The fact that it learns from the player's actions and that it adjusts the difficulty itself is awesomenage. We haven't even exploited half of what the Cell can do. Besides the CPU power, we've got the GPUs (sic) inside the PS3, where you can send some tasks to spare Cell from "digesting" them, so that you get more free CPU time. PS3 still has a lot of untapped power."

 

- They didn't have the time to include a co-op mode and getting the game finished in November. Tons of ideas left out of it, might make it to Uncharted 2. (This is usual in game development)

- Nathan Drake has 3000 animations.

 

- Real time cutscenes, no prerendered stuff. It's all real time, in-engine.

[vinitwins]

so they're finally taking advantage of the extra horsepower, eh?

 

 

V

[reaper]

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Update

source: ign

 

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Update

We head indoors and see how Naughty Dog's action adventure is coming together.

 

Though the holiday release season is nearly half over, Sony still has a handful of big titles up its sleeve slated to hit this year. Naughty Dog's first PlayStation 3 title, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, could turn out to not only be the best PS3 title of the season, but the best all year. Its mix of action and adventure looks like it was ripped straight out of an Indiana Jones film, and the game looks tighter and tighter every time we see it.

 

Yesterday we were able to check out a few snippets of some indoor-based locales from the game, the Customs House and Catacombs. The Customs House is where folks would check in and out anything going through the island, just like you'd do at an airport or whatnot these days. With the amount of gold, spices and such being ported around the seas in those days, it was a heavily-trafficked area.

 

 

These days the building is quite dilapidated, but that doesn't mean it isn't beautiful. Outside, vines creep in and out of a balcony that has fallen into ruin over time, which Nathan must carefully navigate by jumping from ledge to ledge. Inside, a series of outlaws blanket the floor where pillars lay broken and crumbled.

 

It's here that we saw some of the refined animation features in place in the current build. Thanks to the game's blending technology, different animations can be run together to create more lifelike reactions to the goings-on. For instance, if you shoot someone in the hip, he could hold his side while running for cover, or limp away if shot in the leg. The enemies react a little more realistically now as well, taking cover and getting out of fire if you blanket the area with bullets.

 

Enemies also take fewer hits now to kill than they have in the past. This is a great change for multiple reasons. Firstly, it keeps the action quicker and more hectic. Rather than sitting in one place and having to unload a clip to kill someone, you can move from guy to guy to guy rather quickly and take them all out, keeping the pacing up. Also, machineguns and such didn't feel all that rewarding before, but now they quickly cut down foes and are a good bit more fun.

 

A few chapters later in the Catacombs, Drake has to make use of the flashlight on his belt to navigate the area. Coming upon an opening, a number of thugs patrol a large pillar-filled room, each wielding a laser-sighted machinegun. After utilizing the cover as much as possible and dispatching them, Drake moves into what looks like an underground church and is faced with another roomful of enemies.

 

The scenery in all of these areas looks fantastic, and is both starkly different than the outdoor sections that we'd seen before while also perfectly matching the look and feel of the island. Naughty Dog's art team is at the top of their game here, as is the technical department for getting so many whiz-bang rendering features running so smoothly.

 

Getting our hands on the game, we noticed that the camera has come a long way since the first time we played Uncharted and the whole movement and aiming system feels great now. Taking cover and rolling to dodge gunfire also works very smoothly, and Drake overall feels like he has more weight to him than earlier builds that we played. Naughty Dog's experience shows here with how well the controls have been refined and tuned.

 

Of note is that Uncharted will indeed support the DualShock 3 and its rumble functionality. We tried out a prototype version of the controller with the game and the tactical feedback added a lot to the gunfire and overall experience, proof that Sony finally did the right thing by adding it to the Sixaxis' base functionality.

 

One last cool bit of info that we learned is that throughout the course of the game you'll be able to earn Medals, which in turn unlock bonus features. Some medals can be earned by performing certain gameplay objectives, like getting five headshots in a row, killing three enemies with a single grenade or things like this. More so though, you'll earn Medals by finding treasures scattered around the game, so exploration will indeed pay off.

 

There are a whole slew of different types of unlockables that you'll be able to snag, including behind-the-scenes footage, artwork, additional costumes and even other playable characters (though Nathan will still appear in the cutscenes). You'll also be able to unlock different rendering modes, like a black and white mode, a sepia-toned mode, a next-gen filter (with appropriate super bloom and saturated colors) and even a mode that doesn't utilize textures, allowing you to see how the geometry was put together more easily. It's worth noting that any unlockables you earn are shared between all the save games on the system, and that you can carry over Medals that you've earned into a second or third play through in order to help you find all the treasures and unlock everything.

 

Naughty Dog's latest is looking great at this point, and we can't wait to see how Uncharted: Drake's Fortune will turn out in the end. We expect great things from the finished product and are eagerly anticipating the title's November release.