Drake's Fortune

Existing somewhere between Tomb Raider and National Treasure, Drake's Fortune for the PS3 is one of those 3rd person adventure games where you shimmy along cliff faces, shoot the same four random generic bad guys over and over again and obsessively tracking down shiny objects. Naughty Dog has put together a fun and competent, if not terribly original, gaming experience… and playing can now earn you these new weird PS3 trophies for playing! Oooh, meta-shiny!

First Impressions by Tanx
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

Game: Drake's Fortune
Platform: PS3
Played For: about 11 hours


In Drake's Fortune you play an almost uncomfortably affable hero dude who is supposedly a descendent of the childless Sir Francis Drake… you know, that famous explorer guy who had the maybe friendship maybe something more awkward relationship with Queen Elizabeth around the 16th century. Drake, by the way, was knighted in 1581, and he fought the Spanish Armada in 1588, cultivating a life-long hatred between him and, well, everyone Spanish… which maybe explains why his descendent is so blasé about shooting hordes of Hispanic pirates in this game.

Drake's success against the Spanish fleet was heavily supported by a prior choice to sack two Spanish towns which would otherwise have supplied the Armada with the cured barrels necessary for potable water on ships… i.e. when Drake was later actually facing the Armada, the Spanish were already at a disadvantage as their sailors were drinking rotten barrel swill rather than clean water. In a strange metaphorical nod to this bit of history, Drake's apocryphal descendent also gets to shoot and blow up copious numbers of barrels in this game… very clever, you Naughty Dog historians you.

Drake managed to catch several gold-laden Spanish ships, at least one of which was full of Peruvian spoils… thus this game, which bends history ever so slightly to accommodate a mostly silly story about Drake pursuing El Dorado and dying heroically protecting its magical treasure from the world… rather than falling to Dysentery as History suggests. Drake was apparently buried at sea in a lead coffin, making the opening scene's coffin recovery and missing body a nice track to follow into deviant, secret speculative history.

But here's where I have to criticize… understanding that this is not the “this game sucks” kind of criticism, but more the “things are good but it's too bad they weren't great” variety. I like the hidden history and lost treasure themes of this game, and was a bit disappointed when the story fell back to video game clichés like magical cursed objects and wiry sub humanoid monsters. It would have been nice if there could have been more emphasis on weird historical footnotes and archaeology… magic and monsters felt like the developers ran out of ideas. Perhaps building an investigative structure into the game, simulating archaeological process like forensics is done in the Condemned games… this would have provided a nice vehicle for newer ideas to be explored.

As it is, Drake does its pre-established formula very well. The main characters were well envisioned and professionally realized… kudos to the actors and the script. The environments are pretty and flatter the PS3's HD graphics capabilities, and the Gears of War style combat system (cover, death by massage damage rather than hit points, etc.) works very well. I was surprised that the game crashed on me twice during my play through… one unsuccessful load and one time Drake got stuck in an infinite loop when wedged between a wall and some debris… it is unusual for Naughty Dog's play testers to miss quirks such as these. But overall Drake's Fortune is a standing example of textbook game design and talented implementation.

Will I play it more: Only if I get competitive over trophies with my PS3 friends