Publisher: SIE

Developer Bluepoint Games

Release Date: 10/07/2015

Available Exclusively On

Uncharted was one of those games that really pushed the boundaries of next-generation gaming. The visuals were out of this world amazing, the acting was top-notch, and the character was memorable. The game has some flaws, for sure, but most of these were fixed later on in the series. I did notice that the first game consists of more shooting than climbing, which was not obvious when I first played it on PS3 back in 2009, but it’s still a lot of fun just for the dialog and action alone.

For fans of Uncharted, I will just say this: this is the definitive version of the game. It runs at 60FPS, which makes the gameplay so much smoother, and the textures and visuals are just smoothed over and given a polish to make them look clean. It doesn’t look nearly as good as the PS4 games or even Uncharted 2 or 3, but it’s impressive how well the game holds up today.

The shooting and cover mechanics work just fine as Nathan jumps around pillars and low-lying covers, but I never quite got used to Uncharted shooting mechanics; they just feel really slippery and somehow off. The jumping can get weird as Nathan does not catch ledges when you run off of them, like in later games, so he just falls off. There were times I restarted areas over a dozen times because I couldn’t figure out where to jump. The handholds and areas to go aren’t highlighted like in later games, so everything just blends in, and it makes it frustrating to progress and even explore because you don’t know what you can climb on.

While the story is decent enough and keeps you interested to the end, the Spaniards coming back to life as some sort of demon never sat well with me and was off-putting. Having this realistic treasure-hunting adventure turn into something from Hollywood was so weird, and I never liked that aspect. I also found the game extremely frustrating at times, with stupid difficulty spikes everywhere.

Despite all of this, Uncharted is not something I think I will ever go back to again, as so many things were fixed and improved in Uncharted 2 and beyond. The game isn’t really all that cinematic-like like later games, so there are no interesting things to re-explore. It feels more like an experiment at this point than the masterpieces the later games became.