Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 14 Years Later

The Uncharted series is widely praised and is the blockbuster smash hit of the 7th generation and to an extent the 8th generation of PlayStation consoles. Though, few show the first game any love and attention. I want to take a look back at and critique Uncharted Drakes Fortune in this video. This will also be an Uncharted Drakes Fortune analysis.

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Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 14 Years Later

Chapters -
Prologue: 0:00
Ch. 1: Uncharted Territory: 3:02
Ch. 2: Blockbuster Scaffolding: 9:16
Ch. 3: Gold Plated: 18:59
Ch. 4: Final Thoughts: 29:02
Epilogue: 31:17

Uncharted Drakes Fortune is the first game in the Uncharted series. In this Uncharted Drakes Fortune Critique and Uncharted Drakes Fortune Analysis, we will be looking at all the angles of Uncharted Drakes Fortune and analyzing the entire game. This Uncharted Drakes Fortune Retrospective takes both a modern and past perspective in mind to properly critique Uncharted Drakes Fortune 14 Years Later. I hope this video does well enough to warrant a full Uncharted Retrospective. I do mention that the puzzles here aren't very good but I don't know if that is just me because there are a ton of Uncharted Drakes Fortune Walkthrough online and I see people praising the puzzles in other Uncharted Drakes Fortune Review. If you enjoy this Uncharted Review and want a full Uncharted Series Retrospective. Let me know! I would love to make an Uncharted Series Review and potentially an Uncharted Series Explained video as the stories these games tell can be a bit confusing at times. This Uncharted 1 Review captured Uncharted PS5 gameplay at 1080p 60fps. I don't think we will get an Uncharted 5, assuming you don't count Lost Legacy as Uncharted 5, but we could perhaps get some Uncharted PC ports. Hopefully I will see you all again soon for an Uncharted 2 Critique and an Uncharted 3 Critique!

Greatness, from small beginnings... It’s a phrase that is repeated on more than a few occasions throughout Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and poetically it serves as a phrase that can be applied to the game as a whole within the context of the series. With each entry being greater than the last and with the quality gap between Uncharted 1 and 2 being as colossal as it is, it’s no surprise that the series humble beginnings doesn’t receive a lot of love these days. This doesn’t come as a surprise because the future Uncharted games are, while not immune to criticism, are praised to near infinity and in my eyes for good reason. Since Uncharted 2, the first of the series I had played, I had been hooked and loved the 3rd and 4th entries to the series. So much so that I want to begin a marathon of sorts to give my thoughts on the whole franchise. But before we get into what will hopefully be some gushing reviews of the creme de la creme of this series we need to start from the beginning.

Now according to a poll that was posted a while back, Drake's Fortune isn’t at the top of many peoples list, but many of you also clarified that the game certainly isn’t bad by any means. It actually reminded me a lot of the Arkham series as Arkham Asylum is seen as the worst, but not because the game is bad, it’s great actually, but because it’s sequels are so much better. Asylum was released in 2009 but it was surprisingly almost 5 years earlier that Naughty Dog began work on Uncharted as in 2005 they decided to take a new approach to development and their games. Being well known for the Crash Bandicoot and Jak games, games that were stylized to something like a cartoon, attempting to transition to realistic humanized games would prove to be difficult.


Making such a large pivot development wise was something Naughty Dog was aware of, and as such they titled this new project, BIG. A big game for a big jump in technology. With the 7th generation of consoles on the horizon, games were no longer prohibited from making realistic games by the hardware and while plenty of games still went for a stylized look, Project BIG wanted to plant itself somewhere between the two. Upon first being shown at E3 2006 it was immediately compared to the ever popular Tomb Raider games and was promptly dubbed “dude raider” on internet forums. Of course, the Tomb Raider games focused far more on puzzles than Uncharted, though Uncharted eventually shifted to focusing more on puzzles and exploration and I’d argue that the Uncharted games and the Reboot Tomb Raider games did a bit more than share test answers if you know what I’m saying but that’s for another video.