Just finished it. Forget what you've heard about Uncharted being Tomb Raider with a male lead. Uncharted is basically Gears of War in a jungle with worse AI, less responsive controls and a bit more platforming action. Let's count what they ripped off GOW: 1) Cover system 2)aiming trajectory with the grenade 3)blind shooting 4)clearing sections one at a time 5)inventory system 6)hint look button. Like most Naughty Dog games, Uncharted seems to be satisfied with refining what others created.
Sixaxis don't interfere too much with gameplay but they're also completely unnecessary. You use them to balance on beams or to control grenade targeting. The melee combat is very unresponsive and feels like it was added on at the last minute. The game taught me to use square, triangle, square as a combo but I couldn't get the timing to work even after experimenting several times. I just stuck with pressing square afterward which worked but also made the combat quite uninteresting.
Like I said before, there was just a little platforming. What's there isn't even as good as Tomb Raider 1. There was zero big jumps. Mostly it was just climbing a couple of short columns and making really easy jumps.
Graphics are pretty good. By PS3 standards. For every plus with Uncharted's visuals, there are two negatives. The jungle has pretty dense foliage but the plants sway back and forth in a robotic, unrealistic manner. The anti-aliasing is pretty good but there's quite a bit of tearing and slowdown, although it's nothing more than a typical PS3 game. Everything is rendered with the type of pastel colors that Mondain can't stand. Enemies are a bit stiff and basically they're just repeating the same 5-6 frames of animation.
The shadowing and lighting are quite good though. Unlike Heavenly Sword, there wasn't any weird flickering shadows. However, HS has far better cutscenes. The best word to describe the cutscenes in Uncharted is mundane. There was nothing in the cutscenes that hasn't been done elsewhere. The most impressive aspect of Uncharted's visuals is the main character's hair when you're aiming with a gun. Unlike Naruto's rags, the hair in Uncharted actually looks like it's composed of many keratinized fibers.
In summary, it looks like PS3 owners are going to be disappointed again if they were expecting a AAA game. However, looking at the PS3 releases so far, Sony fans really should be celebrating the fact that Uncharted is at least a solid 7.
