Platted That! – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Platted That! is a new series brought to you by your boys at Handsome Phantom, that amounts to a review of getting the platinum trophy for a given game.  I’ve had plenty of titles on my shelf or in my digital library that were beaten or added to the library, and then slowly forgotten. A lifetime spent with the Toy Story films has left me wary and guilty of leaving anything unloved for too long. So, whether it’s a new game we can’t put down, or an old game we’re dusting off in pursuit of platinum, we’re here to grind through and give our thoughts on our run, and hopefully inspire others to do the same!

A couple of weeks ago GameStop was doing a buy two, get one free sale on used games. It’s been awhile since I purchased any used games, so in a bout of temporary insanity and self-indulgence I purchased the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection, Uncharted 4, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The last time I had really played any Uncharted titles had been in 2007 when I tried the first hour at a friend’s house. During the last gaming generation, I was very faithful to my Xbox 360. Thankfully, a friend down the road was always willing to share his PS3 for exclusive titles. Ten years later, I’m now happily partnered with a PS4 and finally ready to give Nathan Drake the attention he deserves.

I went into Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune knowing I was gonna go for platinum, and so I had to take a couple steps at the beginning to ensure an efficient play-through. This included setting the game to crushing difficulty (very hard, in common parlance), and pulling up a guide for finding the game’s 61 scattered collectibles. Other than checking my phone every few minutes for the next collectible, I had very little else I had to be aware, as most combat related trophies unlocked organically, and the rest could be farmed after I finished the campaign.

The crushing difficulty in the first Uncharted is aptly named. I became good friends with death over the course of the campaign, as he followed me closely through the lush, bright jungles of Drake’s Fortune. The simple combat mechanics have aged well for a ten-year-old game, though it’s been updated by Bluepoint Games, the company responsible for the port. In a pleasantly surprising turn, I rarely felt that a death was due to the mechanics. When I was one-shotted by a sniper rifle or “Wes .44” I knew I had failed to respond to the threat. While it was incredibly frustrating to die so quickly, it didn’t stop being fun – it stayed comfortably in the realm of challenging.

I found my biggest distraction while trophy gathering was the collectibles. The guide I used here, on the wiki page, had a few minor spoilers, but nothing that ruined my experience. The real issue was pausing the game every couple minutes to check where the next treasure was. Uncharted is a well-paced game that deserves a more cinematic, unpaused play-through.

After I finished the campaign I had the majority of trophies, and certainly had gotten the most difficult put away. Clean up was a breeze, and though grindy, wasn’t even comparable with how grindy and repetitive other trophies in other games have been. The most I spent on one trophy might have been “Master Ninja.” I had organically gotten one of the 50 stealth kills this required, and so spent four songs on Spotify’s worth of my time stealth killing a lone guard, reloading a checkpoint, and repeating to satisfaction. Like I said, a little grindy, but not the ridiculous waste of time trophies can sometimes be.

Recommendation: Uncharted’s platinum was low-time commitment and never got overly repetitive. The crushing difficulty is aptly named, and gamers should be ready to die a lot. Finishing the campaign on this difficulty does add an extra layer of satisfaction that felt worth the effort to me. Collectibles can be distracting, so players might want to save that stage for cleanup, just to enjoy the action-adventure heavy script that Naughty Dog did so well. So, whether Uncharted is sitting on your game shelf, in your digital library, or waiting patiently on your to-do list, I fully recommend pursuing the platinum trophy!

As always, let us know what you think! If you platted Uncharted, Tweet us your thoughts. If you’re stuck on a trophy, let us recommend some tips or a guide. What’s on your list for possible platinum play-throughs? If Nathan Drake wears a leather wristband, does that make him a member of the band Creed? Let Handsome Phantom know your thoughts and you could get a shout out on Adventure Mode!