Drake's Fortune: Who's Got the Demo?
 

Well, I do.

Heh.

Story:
Anyway, the demo starts off with Drake & his camera happy reporter girlfriend, flying off towards the treasure of El Dorado. I at least assume that's what they said, as El Dorado is supposedly the city of gold.

Anyway, Drake's plane takes on incoming anti-aircraft fire & the plane takes a hit. After a somewhat amusing interchange, it is discovered that the plane does indeed have chutes. And despite her hesitancy Drake eventually coaxes his girlfriend into jumping. Only to later reveal he's just as freaked out about jumping, but he eventually does jump out only to have a rather hard landing thanks to a burn hole in his shoot.

Gameplay:
Well, (and I'm borrowing the term from a review I read of Gears of War,) DF is a stop & pop game. You basically find cover as best you can (which includes going around corner corners, hanging cliffhanger off of obstacles & going into crouching positions), then shoot the baddies, or if you run out of bullets, fight 'em hand to hand.

For weapons, you've got your .45 type weapon, grenades (if you find them) & one larger rifle type weapon. You're limited in what you can carry, so you can only pack either the shotgun or the machine gun, not both.

The .45 & grenades might be equally interchangeable with something else, but that wasn't in the demo.

The enemies are smart & tend to have some intelligence to them. My only complaint about their actions, is that they seem to be hard of hearing. Baddies from nearby portions of the environment, didn't seem to be especially on their guard, considering they should have heard me blasting their comrades a short distance away. (Then again this is a demo, & likely near the beginning of the game, so that kind of challenge might have been taken away.)

There aren't any hitpoints, as death seems to be determined by death from falling way too far, or taking too many consecutive hits. Drake does have the ability to recover from damage, just as long as he can avoid it long enough.

Controls:
Honestly? It felt like Ico/Shadow of the Colossus, but with guns. Drake couldn't jump any unreasonable sort of distance, and moving around & climbing the environment was very similar.

Targeting was very natural, and easily done. I just wish there was either some auto targeting, or something that would at least get the crosshairs in the ballpark of the baddies.

Overall:
Well I enjoyed it for the most part, but it did feel a little dry. Not that I should be expecting everything from a demo, but I wouldn't have minded a bit less combat & more puzzle. Platform puzzles of this nature, after Ico & SotC, didn't seem all that difficult.

SWB

heard the framerate was bad, is that true?

Also, can it be really called a "Male version of Tomb Raider" ? Just for comparison sake

Fun fact: one of the cheat modes you can unlock in the full game is basically a "lol bloom" joke.

Wait.... is this the new Naughty Dog game?

There'd better be a cheat code that makes a "lol brown" joke too or my consumer dollars shall have been wasted.

Not that I noticed, the game seemed to chug along just fine, and I had at least 6 baddies on at the same time. I'd like to think that framerate is a resolved issue, and nothing you should worry about.

Funny thing. I've never played Tomb Raider, so I wouldn't know.

Well a demo of it at least.


Although, despite my wishes otherwise, that's about as much of a review you'll get out of me, till post Christmas, as I've slated this as one of my desired Christmas gifts, so I won't be able to say much more till Jan.

SWB

Like, they distort tha graphics with bloom till it looks really bad or something?

Basically, gamer.tv (game show here in the UK) had a special on this game, and near the end they talked about the unlockable stuff. One of these was called something like "next gen filter" and when turned on it covered everything in lots of bloom and made it look all greeny brown.

That sounds cool. I assume though, it would make the game very hard on the eyes, as well as hard to play.