I first played Drakes Fortune 2 or 3 months before i received my copy via the demo released on the ps3 network. I remember at the time commenting that the game felt alot like tomb raider and gears of war smashed together in a blender then topped off with some Indiana Jones whipping cream..

Again for the most part I’m not going to cover the storyline here cuz that ruins the game for everyone. In fact this review is going to be rather short for a few reasons. One of which is that there really is NOT a whole lot for me to be picky about on this game. I really liked the game! I enjoyed it very much so!  After coming from the frustration that is known as super mario galaxy, I needed something I would enjoy. I played through this game on the normal difficulty setting and for the most part didn’t have any issues with it being too hard or frustrating.

I must take an issue to say that there are area’s where enemies will constantly climb out of the woodwork to come at you, and sometimes it can be one of those ‘god of war’ moments where they keep coming and you kind of roll your eyes. But Drakes does it in a better way. Why? or maybe i should say how? Because generally these enemies will not instantly charge you and hit you from behind while your trying to attack another enemy sending you into an endless loop of ‘recoiling in pain’ animations. Drakes has you ducking behind cover, so adding another enemies or two doesn’t really get too frustrating beyond “When are they going to stop coming?” . And it’s it not to say I died, but these situations never really pissed me off.. I actually enjoyed killing in this game, because generally the guns were fun! they do good damage! Although I will gripe a little bit, the Makarov that he uses is EXTREMELY accurate and fairly powerful, it’s nice cuz it makes it fun, but i highly doubt any of the handguns would be as accurate, but I will not complain too much. The other issue i had is that sometimes head shots were not doing their job. Maybe I wasn’t actually getting head shots? But sometimes i swear i was headshotting with the AK47 and the guy would not go down. Sometimes the guys take an outrageous amount of bullets to kill also.. I own an Ak47 I know for a fact that 5 or 6 of those to your chest/head are going to bring you down pretty damn fast. Sometimes in this game, its not the case. Its not frustrating cuz you just get used to spraying a bit longer to take guys down, But i have to make note of it, cuz its not a simple ‘blam blam blam, three guys are dead!’ its more like ‘blam blam blam blam blam blam blam blam.. GOT HIM!’

There was one part i died 10-12 times at, down in the tombs, where you jump down into knee high water, i’m sure you’ll remember if you finish it. lots of pillars to duck and dive behind. I dunno it was the worst part of the game, and I never turned off my console and quit saying “this is BULLSHIT” like i did in god of war during the endless spawn of Medusa’s or dog attacking things.. I got through and it was a challenge, with a TINY squirt of frustration tossed in, but not enough to piss me off.. *cough cough mario galaxy*

Graphics look great in this game! When Drake gets wet, his clothes appear to stick to his body, and after a few minutes out of the water he dries off! very nice! there are some ‘invisible wall’ boundaries which kind of break realism a bit, but not quite as annoying as a game like god of war where you just don’t understand why you cant run in between those two houses or what not..  There’s traps to be avoided, giant submarines, smooth nice looking water.. Jet skiing, long miles of driving sections. IT all looks FANTASTIC! in my opinion the best looking game on the system and it doesn’t really bring it to its knee’s yet! Bright and colorful very nice looking.

Sound. Great sound. I don’t have a surround setup so I cant comment on how it works, but I’d be surprised if the surround wasn’t on par with most other games. Sounds are distinct you know when a grenade lands near you and you pick up on other sound effects like when someone is firing a heavy machine gun at you or just an ak47 or an uzi. Weapons feel pretty accurately depicted. Lots of voice over dialog for all cut-scenes and the voice acting feels fairly realistic. You’d expect him to act as he does, if, in a few places it IS a little cheesy, it’s livable.

My stupid biggest gripe with this game is that you cant hold more than 2 weapons. I am never a fan of games that do this. What they do is make you try and decide which gun you’d like to have more and stick with it. The problem with this is, often times you’ll give up the 90 bullets you have in one hand gun to take the 6 shooter which does a hell of a lot more damage. This isn’t a huge issue since most baddies carry the stock hand gun, I just wish you could carry a few more guns, is it realistic to carry 4 carbines and 8 handguns and still jump and duck and dodge? Probably not no, but its also not fun running out of ammo and having to scramble around during a fire fight just to find something you can shoot at that bastard who is sniping you from 80 yards away. On that note, there is plenty of guns to pick up and have your choice on what you want to arm yourself with, but generally i found i didnt use the shot gun a whole lot personally as i was more of a fan of distanced combat.

Despite that, this game was a real treat, it was very much as good as other review sites let on. I was happy with the purchase of this game and hope that if they do a sequel they don’t make it any more difficult. I had a good challenge with regular mode and any harder or more spawning guys and I probably would have hated it as much as I ended up hating god of war. This is a game i can see my self playing through again in the near future becuase i had fun. This isn’t a game I would curse and say “Jesus i never wana do that part agian!” which makes me want to never play it again. That is bad design in my opinion. 

My final verdict is..

9.4/10