I finally made friends with someone who owns a PS3. After a horrible experience with Genji near the release of the PS3, I had vowed to keep my distance from that console. Fortunately, game developers have been working to utilize the capabilities of the PS3. When I saw the screenshots for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, I wanted to see if the game looked as good as the promotional images. Fortunately, I was not disappointed.

The PS3 felt similar to the 360 in terms of next-gen console quality. The PS3 controller was oddly light compared to the PS2 controller, but that was the only significant difference that I noticed. The PS3 start menu seemed confusing compared to the more straightforward layout of the 360 menus but the PS3 menu was prettier. After getting over my fascination with the new and unfamiliar, I started up the Drake’s Fortune demo.

I’ve had limited experience with adventure games that involve a lot of shooting, with the exception of a couple hours with Lara Croft. I didn’t have many expectations beyond the spectacular visuals I’d seen in the screenshots – and the vast jungle scenery didn’t disappoint. The jungle felt lush and alive. The water looked fantastic. It was great to be able to walk into a lake and have jeans appear wet only where my character’s legs were submerged.

The gameplay felt a lot like Tomb Raider until I got into a shooting match. While I could easily run at enemies shooting in the beginning of Tomb Raider: Legend, Drake’s Fortune was more realistic. I had to aim and use more stealthy tactics. I hid behind cover and darted from one area to another as quickly as possible.

The realism in Drake’s Fortune immediately pulled me into the game. The enemies I shot felt like real people, not just faceless alien clones. They would flank and attempt to get closer. There was no health bar, so a drop in health was indicated a loss of color on the screen and a heartbeat when my life was on the line. Health recovered relatively quickly when behind cover, so I never felt like it slowed me down. It was refreshing not to have to worry about resource management for health packs. Fewer fictional elements to manage health systems create a more immersive experience.

While there were a lot of enemies, there were plenty of elements to help me survive. Sounds such as footsteps always alerted me as to enemy presence. There was plenty of cover. This cover would sometimes get damaged due to grenades and other weapons, but there were always sound and visual cues before the grenades detonated.

The Drake’s Fortune demo was a very cinematic experience. The opening cutscene was just the right length and got me straight into the action. From there, I was fully immersed and enjoyed exploring the rich world and fighting off the realistic enemies. I probably won’t buy a PS3 to play Drake’s Fortune since I’m not a big fan of adventure games with lots of aiming and shooting. However, it is certainly a well-rounded game that gives me hope for the capabilities of the PS3.  

My first experience playing the PS3 was not with the acclaimed Resistance: Fall of Man. I had watched that intense game out of the corner of my eye while I was playing the more serene Okami. I had no real interest in playing Resistance, as I knew I would die in no fewer than two seconds and not really get to appreciate that game at all.

However, when I had the opportunity to play the PS3, I did not want to pass it up. I decided to play another game, Genji. It looked like something I might actually be able to play (an action game, not an FPS) and the boxed advertised a game about ancient Japan. It sounded interesting at least, so I began a game.

While I had expected a cutscene at the beginning of the game, I was unprepared for the horrible voice acting. The characters’ mouths moved and were poorly dubbed. As if the dubbing weren’t bad enough, the voice actors had accents from Australian to American to pseudo-Irish. I found it incredibly distracting from what would otherwise be a mediocre cutscene.

I do not hate cutscenes; in fact, I really enjoy them when used in moderation, which is the way I see them in many newer Final Fantasy games. One of the best aspects of the Final Fantasy cutscenes is that they rarely try to do voice acting with mouth movements. (This has changed in FFXII, but I have yet to form a real critical analysis due to the short amount of time I’ve played the game thus far.) Looking back to games such as FFVIII and FFX, the full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes were used mainly as showy pieces of drama – they did not burden them with dialogue. I really do not see the point in animating a FMV cutscene for one language only to have it poorly dubbed into another.

The cutscenes in Genji were poor not only because of dubbing but also because of their content and quality. As I implied before, a large amount of time was spent on a scene where two characters talked in what amounted to a poor substitute for a film scene.

Then there was the issue of the graphics. The whole game had a very red tone – much of the set, especially in the beginning with a fire, was very red. It was hard to look at it for any length of time. The graphic quality of the game was very high, but the characters and backgrounds didn’t blend well together. It looked like someone had done a poor job in Photoshop and forgotten to soften the outlines of the characters to look more natural. It seemed as if the quality of the PS3 detracted from the game rather than complimented it – the high quality console revealed all the flaws.

Aside from the tone and graphics, I really wanted to like this game. I had hoped to find a game I wanted to play on the PS3 that I could return to – something that rose to the challenge of developing for a new console. I understand that practically every game developer is having a terrible time working with the PS3, but this game just seemed to get worse the more I played.

I played first as a character who was a sword fighter. He moved with decent speed, but I found the controls to be somewhat counter-intuitive. I had a hard time going where I wanted to in the environment and understanding the fighting system. Later, I got to play another character, but he moved ridiculously sluggishly and swung around what amounted to a glorified stone column. While he was powerful, the stereotyped fighters – big = sluggish and smaller guy = more agile – has been done so many times it’s not even fun anymore.

I had held out hope for this game. I played it for nearly an hour, hoping that it would get better. Instead, I found graphics temporarily freezing up, cutscenes that revealed a plot I didn’t care about, and many of the same mistakes I’d seen in other games set in ancient Japan like Onimusha 4. I really hope the PS3 gets better soon and developers will make games I want to play.