This doesn't surprise me much but it's just sad to hear of IW taking money from MS so that 360 owners can get first dubs on the new maps. Here's the link.

To be honest, I had no intentions of playing Naughty Dogs' Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Prior to it's release, I played the demo and was very critical with the experience. With a poor hit detection system, awkward aiming controls, and a suspected AI, I completely wrote off the demo and had no interest in the game. This was disappointing at first because I was a huge Tomb Raider fan. The gameplay mechanics in Uncharted was familiar territory, but I just coudn't get into the demo. However, after the game was released, all "hell broke loose" when the Gamespot review was published.

Many of the PS3 community felt angry and thought the review was incongruous. The review was so inconsistent to such a degree that it sparked an online riot in the forums! At first, I didn't even bother to read the review but, there I was, feeling proud of guessing correctly the GS final score for the game. After all, the demo felt a bit less polished to my liking. Days went by and more outrage dominated the boards. This prompted a read through the review. It was a confusing read to say the least. I read other reviews of Uncharted and there were far more favorable scores and output. Several weeks later, I decided to buy the game, and hoped that it wasn't a mistake in doing so.

Having very little time, I played Uncharted for only 20 minutes. The story was interesting and I realized that I needed a weekend or two to play. This past weekend was reserved for Uncharted. The more I played the game, the more I felt the demo was completely different from the full version of the game. The aiming was the same but it wasn't as awkward once I got used to it. The story, visuals, believable characters, and puzzles were impressive. The constant amount of enemies that I encountered felt a bit repetitive, but they were challenging. Some enemies moved around for better cover, others flanked the area to gain ground. It was pleasing to see.

Once the credits came in, I felt disappointed that it ended as I wanted to play more but also felt foolish to criticize the game prematurely. I felt cheated and a bit angry just as much as the PS3 community about the illogical review. Most demos will give a good idea of what to expect in an upcoming game. But the Uncharted demo almost prevented me from playing a great game! Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a game that truly deserves a score much higher than an 8.0. I won't make the same mistake in writing off another PS3 game.

I did some extensive research on the game (Gamespot, IGN, you players,etc) and decided this may not be such a bad purchase. I thought $60 (BD version with Bluetooth headset) dollars is small change so I won't feel too upset if I didn't like it.

After putting a good amount of time into the game (12 hours over the past three or so days), I can admit that the game is actually not that bad, pretty addictive, but it isn't that great either. The concept of battling other players online using land and air (would have been an epic title if they included sea combat but I won't complain) is great. It's a pretty balanced game as there are counters for every kind of attack.This was done well. Everything blows up well, whether it's the Warhawk/Nemisis planes, tanks, etc. With all that's going on, surprisingly there is no lag. I was concerned about the game freezing and in fact did freeze on me once but it wasn't frequent. I can truly see why this game was so highly anticipated. However, there are a few problems I do have with that can't go unnoticed.

Only five maps-For an online only game you would think that there should be more than five maps. The maps have different sizes ranging from small, medium, to a full size map, which totals 15. That is fine, but what I don't like is when you have 20-32 players on any of the smaller maps, it can get pretty chaotic to plan an attack and will result in a not so fun experience. Which leads to my questioning of certain weapons like the sniper rifle. Why is that in this game when there is practially no way of sniping anyone? This is a run and gun kind of game with no tactical or stealth approaches since you know where everyone is located. There should be a set limit of players that matches the size of maps. I am sure there will be more maps for this game with an update.

Lack of ranked games-Virtually every dedicated server (blue highlighted ones) is full. It's a bit annoying to wait to join a ranked game when practically everyone of them is full. Open up more servers or have players with very strong connections create ranked games with similar settings of the dedicated servers.

Lack of unity-This was my first Massive Multiplayer Online game so I didn't know what to expect. I found that playing with other players in team modes was more frustrating than fun. Every player on my team had their own agenda and didn't want to work as team to get the wins. Surprisingly, I won some awards for Team Bandit (I don't remember). Obviously, the best way to remedy this is joining clans (I am interested in joining one). Even with headsets, players do their own thing to rank up by any means, which includes turning on their own teammates to steal points in capture the flag mode. Or crashing their warhawks killing everyone in site with no regard. None of this happened to me but it got annoying to hear teammates in my headset/ear complaining about getting screwed over when another teammate kills them. I was just as frustrated when I played the capture the flag mode and everyone decided to go get the opponents flag while I and maybe two other players at most defended the base. They wondered why they lost the game. You can't take the chance to leave the game because you will find yourself spending at least ten minutes or more to connect to another dedicated server. I am not to bad on the sticks and am sure there are clans/players out there that don't mind working with an unselfish team player, so hit me up if you are a player.

There are other concerns like a lack of messaging to keep in contact with potential friends you meet during the games but I am sure Incognito will work on this with a simple update.

I am too used to tactical games like Vegas and Recon where players actually work as a unit (not in clans BTW) to take out enemies. But, I have to admit that Warhawk is fun to play if you can put up with the problems mentioned earlier.

Overall score 8.5