I learned more details about the story, which made it slightly less trite than the usual "obtain treasure, save female" yarns. As Nathan Drake, you find the journal of Sir Francis Drake in his coffin, revealing that the explorer actually faked his own death to search for the treasure of El Dorado unimpeded. Being a blood relative of Sir Fran (as he was known to his friends), you too feel the need to fondle gold dubloons and set off to find your fortune.

I went hands on with two new levels to see if the game played as well as it looked. Simple answer: it didn't, though that doesn't mean the final product won't. Nothing really stood out about the gameplay--it felt like the developers took parts of platformers and third person shooters and mashed them together.

The two sections I played, a Spanish fort and a separate tower, showed the game's traversal, exploration and and combat sections. The climbing sections were much the same as Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, or God of War, in that you find yourself moving along handholds on a cliffside and jumping or vine-swinging between them. These traversal sections were fairly linear.

During exploration, you've got a few more options. To guide the player, pathways leading in the correct direction feature similar shading. Stone walkways along the proper path in the ruins of a temple have a whitish color to them that appears to be natural wear, which is an unobtrusive way of saying, "Go this way." Nathan can actually grab onto most ledges, but you're not going to get anywhere unless you follow the paths, so this faux open-endedness seems a big pointless.

In the combat sections, Nathan squares off against several pirate fellows in the recently popularized cover-firing manner. New to these sections was an improved melee combat system. When Nathan gets close to an enemy, a context-sensitive fight ensues, with Nathan using the best method to dispatch his foes based on the environment and his positioning. If you time button presses with onscreen prompts, you can dispatch your enemy quickly with a neck-breaking grapple move or kick to the face. If you fail, you'll take a few sucker punches from your enemy and possibly sustain incoming fire from enemies around you. The camera zooms in during combat, and all visuals except Nathan and his opponent become fuzzy, making a quick dispatch of the pirate peoples conducive to completing your conquistadorian quest.

Thompson noted that the environments would include many more areas than the jungles and temples we've seen thus far, which is promising. I suspect once the game comes together in a more cohesive package, it will be easier to appreciate the combination of gameplay styles. At the moment, it's a bit of a mixed bag, with graphics easily being the standout element of the game, and everything else trailing behind. Naughty Dog has a bit of time until this game comes out, so we'll see what later builds have in store.

SCEA plans to ship Naughty Dog's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in late 2007.

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