Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Comments by Kristan Reed

monkie_king lol steady on now lad, this is the first PS3 blockbuster(which some reviewers havent rated AAA.... 9 or 10 is a tripple A rating... "dats right ya heard me - 'Tripple', I speaks the Sony lingo good"), if thats what you think then fair enough but 360 has the best exclusives by far IMO and I can only see that improving(granted it would be better to wait till E3 to see exactly what theyve got planned but Im thinking they will have more big announcements after the bungie, bizarre and bioware situation, I feel they must have something big up their sleave).

Having said that it would be so good to see close a battle for the best first party exclusives between them, infact all three of the platform holders.

bcolter: Awww I wanted it to get a 10

Fixed ;)

[And it's going to get us in trouble again. -Frowny Ed]

surely that's the reason you put it in the review?

more controversy means more users = more stupid angry posts.

*claps*

I think the "only 30% of PS3's power utilised" could be true. I remember this kind of thing was rumoured a year or two after the PS1 was released, except developers were saying they were only using 10% of its true power!

levis: well, it's meaningless even if it is true. see, it's not like they *chose* not to use 70% of the PS3's power, is it? It's not like they got it running at 60hz in 1080p without tearing or pop-up and went "that'll do it, looks like we don't need the rest of the powah of teh Cell".

The actual scenario is that they were unable to exploit more than 30% of the SPU, because the Cell is not a good architecture for game development. It's very good for protein folding though.

This is an interesting read, by a PS3 coder who sounds qualified in these matters:
http://daveasbell.blogspot.com/2007/08/t...

The crux of it is that optimizing an engine for PS3 "is extremely challenging, expensive, and not something a studio really wants to be spending money on. When you can make an excellent game on an XBox 360 for a fraction of the development cost why would you ever lead on the PS3?" (And that's not to mention that the 360 is a much larger market).

Lovely to see how a thread about a good PS3 game is always overrun by XBox fans repeating the same things to exhaustion.

"Lovely to see how a thread about the good PS3 game ..."

fixed that for ya.

/unable to resist

Monkie_king

Read another way he's saying "even in an engine built ground-up for PS3, we still can't exploit 70% of the SPUs' potential".

Agreed - if I had have been interviewing him - you can not help but think the next obvious question would have been "Why are you only using 30%?"

Obviously he infers, that at current standing, they can not yet (if ever) filter (which sounds like another way of saying - work out how to use something that was never designed to be used for the current purpose, while something else in the machine should have already been doing it well but isn't) out enough to stop the RSX chip(s) from choking.

I really hope Sony sort it out for the next machine as I am becoming a bit fed up of paying the Live fee - when it can be as flaky as it has the last few days. More so when my PC seems to be completely unaffected by a new game coming out! Lol

@monkie_king: Thank you for once again proving my point.
You can go back to your obsessive propaganda efforts now.

@BadBoyBonner:

I really hope Sony sort it out for the next machine as I am becoming a bit fed up of paying the Live fee - when it can be as flaky as it has the last few days.

That is one good reason among others why we should all hope that Sony doesn't quit gaming.

don't be a baby, i don't get emotionally involved about which console is my bff. it was just a cheap obvious gag and i even flagged it as such.

apart from that, we're having an interesting discussion here about the pros and cons of different console architectures. do you have anything to contribute?

And from the dark corners of the earth they emerge, scavaging, like blood thirsty animals ready to tear down any entity, be it beast, man or machine to defend their Overlord. It is the green envy that consumes them. Beware !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Lovely to see how a thread about a good PS3 game is always overrun by XBox fans repeating the same things to exhaustion."

You mean that kind of thing is exclusive to PS3 threads?
Weird, I've yet to see any desperate calls of "Bribery! Corruption! Blackmail!" that were common on the Bioshock, Halo3 and any other 360 game comments you care to mention...

The current bottleneck in game fidelity is not the fact that developers can't exploit 100% of the 'power' of the cell (whatever the hell that means).

The bottleneck is in developer time and talent. It's in creating quality art assets. It's pixel shaders and tools like ZBrush that are pushing forward game visuals. It has absolutely nothing to do with the 'power of the cell CPU'.

As far as I can see the GPUs of the 360 and the PS3 are capable of broadly the same things.

andrew, i dunno, go here, where one of the Assassin's Creed devs is posting as "Charles":
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/...

He first says that the 360 version has the edge graphically, then says "not to get in to any specifics, but there was a hell of a lot more effort put in to the PS3 version."

That's entirely down to the difficult architecture, and nothing to do with art resource.

Weird, I've yet to see any desperate calls of "Bribery! Corruption! Blackmail!" that were common on the Bioshock, Halo3 and any other 360 game comments you care to mention...

For the simple fact that much less comments of such nature appear for a 360 game, and even looking for them, I'd miss a lot of them: fools such as Apologie are in my surprisingly large ignore list.

Or let me put it this way: By following the same exact criteria, I end up clicking on "ignore user" much more often when someone is trolling "Teh Tripple, ps3lol" then when someone is doing the "XBox suxxorzz!" crap. The reason is simple: it does happen much more often.

(but yes, broadly they are very similar in capability).

Taken from 1up :

1UP: Moving forward, obviously Uncharted is kind of the big thing for you guys right now. Do you know what your next project is? Are you just going to continue with this for a while?

EW: You know, we built the game to be a franchise, and the pulp action adventure genre is built right into that as well, but I say this with complete honesty, and I'm not trying to mislead at all, but we were so heads-down and focused on getting this game out the door that there have not been any meetings about what our next project is at this point. We talked about what went right, what went wrong -- postmortems about Uncharted -- but we've got to get back in the office and figure that out.

1UP: So let's go there: what went right and what went wrong?

CB: I guess we lost some time with our technology at the beginning because we...I think we were over ambitious and made some mistakes there.

EW: And actually what he's talking about is the tools that they have specifically.

CB: We lost a lot of time there, but now I guess we have something that is very solid and we can -- as soon as everybody is back from their break -- start working on the next game from day one. So that's a very good thing.


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I guess that explain why the game is a bit short for some.

Say Eurogamer, why print this review now, if the game doesn't hit the shops until the 7th of December? This does not help the sales of a title at all. A review on release week is better in getting people to the shops and buying the damn thing.
And with Uncharted not having that much hype behind it (a shame really, 'cause this game DOES deserve it), all help in getting better sales is welcome.

It's surprising how many haven't learned from last gen and are still fooled by meaningless percentage used figures for consoles (in this case, 30% quoted).

Still, at least this is one PS3 exclusive game which has turned out great. :)

cool, maybe its time to finally get my ps3 back from my borrowing friend.

good review!

1 UP LINK ( it's been posted before )

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager....

Please don't read selectively...

@ monkie king,

Aye, most of what I have read suggests that the PS3 GPU is slightly inferior to the 360s (specifically it has a lower fill rate), which is why I said 'broadly'; I didnt want to incur the rancor of all the PS3 fans in this thread ;)

Prodigy, umm, wha'? o_O

/didn't realise EG was actually supposed to be ND's marketing department

andrewwd, yeah i concurred on the broadly, but SeesThroughAll got in the way and became the filling in my comment sandwich. i'd have used "edit" instead, but it screws up hyperlinks.

Anybody else think "Uncharted" could be a sadly ironic title..?

"For the simple fact that much less comments of such nature appear for a 360 game, and even looking for them"

That's bollocks for start. Look at the Halo 3 review, a complete clusterfuck of spazmos moaning from page 1

The only really retarded comments on here so far are from the completely batshit insane (and ignored) Apologie (and I'm sure we'll get some egster action as well if we're lucky). Nobody said 'the ps3 sucks' nobody's said anything about Uncharted being shit... I'm just not seeing these hordes of 360 fanboys.

It's all very civilised, considering the obvious flamebait review.

LOL Drumm23

9/10 from EG. Good job you naughty Dog.

Eurogamer: a complete clusterfuck of spazmos moaning.

(with apologies to Metafilter.com)

Cool, one to spend the inevitable Christmas tokens on then. I wasn't expecting much from this but maybe its worth a peek after all!

drake's runs at 720p though, 1080p is upscaled.

i don't see much point in getting a 1080p screen for games tbh, the few PS3 games that support it natively seem to suffer in terms of framerate. and then you have to scale your 360 games too. 720p seems a good compromise.

Wow, this one review has me considering a PS3 purchase. After having completely written the PS3 off!

There's a very simple reason we've posted this today: because Sony allowed us to. We got code early, and asked Sony when US reviews were going up. We timed this to hit with those because traffic is exponentially higher when reviews hit at the same time as the US. Internet readers are amazingly fickle and simply go where things hit first, and that's something we've had to learn and compete with over the years.

We've also agreed to give the review another plug when the game comes out, so Sony isn't losing anything, but we get about quadruple the number of people reading this review than if we'd have left it until December. The payback for us is that if some of those fickle readers come back, we gain a bigger readership overall.

It's a good PS3 game from the looks of the review...that's good for PS3 owners, having good games...i wish it were on 360 as i cannae play anything without acheiving meaningless points at the mo

definately one of those i'll be noting on my to get list when the day comes that i have to get one (MGS4 or ICO team day by the looks)...it's nice having plenty to play and seeing plenty more good stuff come along to be bought when some spare cash arises...Mario Galaxy, this, Crysis (tho i doubt i'll be getting a new PC soon), there is a goldmine of stuff out there all waiting till discount time....think of the people yet to buy any new console, in a year or so they'll be able to do the best value shopping ever

So the PS3 still doesn't have any 10/10 exclusives then? Even after it's been out for a year or so? Oh well, better luck next year kids.

"9 is what Halo 3 should have got."

In your 'oh so important' opinion, of course. Shame the masses don't agree, eh...

Kryon

your comment reflects the lack of prespective that many of us have, i don't care if the game is not rated 10/10, you must read between the lines, these one is very good, and will give me as much pleasure playing it "if not even more" as Gears of War. By the way, Gears of War scored 8/10 in eurogamer, did that maked the game any worse? NO.

Uncharted in terms of graphics, is one of the most impressive games ou there... just beautifull, i can't wait to see Killzone 2 or Metal Gear 4.

And i agree, Halo 3 is in my opnion protected by the media... not an impressive game at all..

I was secretely hoping this would be good...looks like it is. It may be the first real/physical PS3 game that I buy! (having had one for yonks). When Everybodys golf 5 FINALLY arrives that will make 2!

@Xiphos - "720P/1080i is not going to cut it based on the review."

As far as I understand no one has yet said what the game runs at natively and given the graphics I seriously doubt that the GeForce chipset in the PS3 is doing 1080p.

It's also worth remembering that the Xbox 360 has 1080p titles as well, like Virtua tennis, but both consoles run most their titles (simpler arcade stuff aside) at 720p.

1080p isn't going to be a big deal this generation, as developers will aim their games to look as good as possible at the most common HD resolution, and that is overwhelming 720p (or actually 1360x768 for most 26in and 32in LCD TVs)

Halo 3, Microsoft likened it to STARWARS in regards to franchise, the masses did not!. Number 1 in the uk chart for only one week!


Sorry, the Halo franchise is pap at best.

"Sorry, the Halo franchise is pap at best."

Not pap just overrated.

Did anyone else think the demo was more than a little 'meh' and looked awful.

The water effects are specifically mentioned in the review, and I'm sorry, but the actual water surface looks very similar to how xbox 1 games did water (that's no slate on the PS3 - as I know it could do better). The water effects on the character are pretty damn good though. Wet clothes are done very well indeed.

The whole environment, although lush and green is poorly rendered with an excess of detail causing serious noise on all the surfaces.

And don't get me started on the whole spinning motion blur mess.

I'm really confused as to how such a high-spec system can be churning out such horrendous graphics. (GT Prologue's depth of field being another total shocker)

Seeing the demo, and reading this review, the 2 seem totally at odds to each other, I hope I'm proved wrong as I do value eurogamer reviews.

D.

why bang on about Halo3 all the time...seeing you think it's pap at best / protected by the media (nice one apologie)

it's merely a very good game on a platform you don't like, get over it...what FPS is better? - Half Life Series, and yer stuffed for that too atm.....sooo, leave it aht and enjoy this...i am sure you will love seeing all the things you think only PS3 can do, like 1080p shirts, and nice looking jean textures

a great PS3 game comes out and all you can talk about is Halo3, that there is chips on shoulders

Definitely ordering this now. Loved the demo so I'm certainly glad the full game lives up to or even exceeds it.

"Did anyone else think the demo was more than a little 'meh' and looked awful. "

No, thought the demo was looking great (some ugly tearing though!) and fun to play... I will order the game for sure on US import now that the postive scores are coming in :)

10/10, minus 1 to appease the rabid XBots who still managed to find their way here. Will definitely be bought.

Not only have IGN mentioned the screen tearing and pop in but so have Gamespy which says to me this is a problem with the game. The fact that Krudhead decided not to mention it makes me wonder if he gives a shit about writing an unbiased review or rather more about promoting the PS3's supposed graphical power over the 360. I have know doubt that this is a great game, but please next time mention if there is a problem with the games visuals.

The defensive stance of certain fanboys speaks in volumes. "boohoo, teh 360 games shouldn't have got a 10/10 but this game should have because of teh powa of teh cell*sniff*" ... Get over it, the PS3 has a better than average Tomb Raider clone, I'm glad you finally have something worth playing but it's mere peanuts in comparison to the 360's catalogue. Call me back when you get a triple A exclusive or 10/10 title, otherwise give it a rest, yeah?

Krudster says that he doesn't notice the tearing on his plasma TV and I believe him. It's not the first time I've heard a plasma TV owner claim that tearing is less noticeable than on an LCD TV so it may well be true although I've never owned one to comment.

Uncharted code using 91% of the BluRay Disc!!!

so, never possible on X360... the same will hapen with Killzone 2 and Metal Gear 4... the only reason Konami diddn't anounced a x360 version, and most certain never will, is because the game had to be different, and penalized severely due to the lack of space (and not only).

In 8 months from now, the only console worth talking about will be PS3, with all the exclusives coming up.