Uncharted: Drake's Fortune £33.98 play.com

An action adventure game in the vein of Lara but with more of the game based around shooting rather than solving block pushing puzzles. The lead character is certainly resembling Indian Jones in his action abilities but seems to be missing his whip and hat. Nate is a rather smart character, if a bit full of himself at the beginning but soon start to like him. This may be in part to his female character who's filming his trip to locate Sir Francis Drake's forune as he's an ancestor of Nate.

The graphics really are something special and show that the PS3 is a truely next gen game and I've only played it on a Standard Definition TV. There are some amazing camera and motion effects when you pan the camera to get a view of the area you're in.

The story which I won't spoil for you, but starts with Pirates attacking Nate and the camera woman on the boat they've hired. This really throws you straight into the game which doesn't let up until you either turn it off or you play right through.

The game flows beautifully without the need for loading screens and each chapter rolls into the next, which means you can spend hours just playing through the story. Sadly if you do you may find playing this on easy then you'll clock it in less that 12 hours. I chose Medium and it's taken a fair bit longer mainly due to dying repeatedly on certain levels.

The controls work really well and are simple to get to grips with. O being the go to button when bullits start to fly as it sticks you to the nearest surface so you can return fire either blindly or with a more precise aim. You can also fire whilst moving but has no crosshairs. There is also the punch combos that Nate can perform. This is simply done by pressing [], Triangle, []. These moves are context sensitive and depending on the angle of attack and position of the enemy. My favorites have to be the punching someone against a wall or a running flying kick.

The guns which tend to be the basis of this game work well and each feel slightly different. Handguns aren't very powerful to start with but can be used to hit people from varrying distances. The rifles fire quickly but aren't acurate over distance. There are a few special weapions ie desert eagal, sniper rifle and grenade launcher. Powerful but carry far too few shots. Keeping the game balanced. The enemy AI that you shoot at are really smart and tend to provide each other coverfire and will move to flank your position. My biggest issue is that enemy's don't die very quickly and can take a lot of shots to down them.

You also have the ability to throw grenades which sadly uses the motion control to aim with so I spent most of my time blind throwing them rather than standing in the open and being shot to bits. You can also shoot and throw grenades whilst hanging from a ledge which works really well.

There are a couple of vehicles in the game. A Jetski that shows off the water effects wonderfully and my favourite being the gunner on the back of a jeep, launching greneades and firing bullets at enemy's on quad-bikes.

To add to the replay value you have to collect treasure dotted randomly around the levels and challeneges such as getting certain number of kills as headshots, with specific weapons, or collecting a ceratin number of treasures.  

The climbing parts of the game are never too difficult but do work really well and look amazing, sadly not requiring the mental taxing that Tomb Raider games do but still wrok really well and can feel like an acheivement when you have spend 5 minutes repeated jumping and falling.

If you don't at least play through this game you are doing yourself a diservice. Well worth the price paid and I'm aiming to go back and finish more challenges.