Of all the games I’ve sampled in the last month or so as part of a Playstation 3 vs. Wii quest, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is by far my favorite. Here’s why:

Motion. Nathan (the main character) has got to have the most fluid, natural, flexible character animation I’ve ever seen in a video game. He runs, jumps, climbs walls, vaults obstacles, takes cover, and so on just like a real boy. Now, admittedly I’m really not that familiar with video games in general, so there could well be some games on par with or better than Uncharted, but precious few, i’d wager. I’m pretty confident in recommending it to just about anyone.

Acting/Story. I’ve never been a big fan of video game storylines. Usually I feel that they just get in the way of gameplay. Plus, the voice acting is usually so bad as to trigger the gag reflex (try Resident Evil: the Umbrella Chronicles for an excellent example of horrible acting). Uncharted, on the other hand is the first time I’ve felt involved and interested in the storyline, much like a movie. Much of this is due to the best acting I’ve ever seen in a video game. I think most games take the story a bit too seriously, and don’t let any humanity leak into the acting. In Uncharted, the characters are as believable as any movie out there (provided you squint a bit to disguise the CG-ness of the whole experience). At one point the leading lady is trying to convince Nathan she’s going to keep her word on something and does some weird little pseudo-military boy scout at attention arm gesture and says “I swear”. Before I could even finish thinking what’s that supposed to mean, Nathan imitates the gesture and says “Whatever that means.” It’s a pretty good example of the subtlety of writing and acting the game demonstrates. In the end, I enjoyed the narrative portion of the game probably as much as an Indiana Jones film or National Treasure. It’s just a fun, rambling, impromptu-feeling adventure story.

Nathan Drake can only carry a couple items at once. He can manage a pistol and a rifle of some sort. Plus a handful of grenades. It’s a nice little touch of realism that most games don’t bother with. You can only have a single rifle at a time, so do you think the sniper rifle, or the shotgun is going to work better for you? Or maybe the AK-47? You can only take one, so choose wisely. This is, of course, in direct contrast with Ratchet & Clank, where you somehow manage to tote around enough firepower to arm a medium-sized militia. More about that another day.

Visuals. Uncharted is a heaping scoop of eye candy. I think it’s one of the first games to really take advantage of the horsepower of the PS3. In some of the behind-the-scenes videos the developers talk about how they were able to pull of more realistic water, facial animation, shaders, shadows and so on because of the capability of the hardware. I have no doubt there will be many games that best the graphics of Uncharted in the future, but for now it’s about as good as it gets.

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