Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Welcome to the second of our week-long retro reimaginings of modern games. After yesterday's video of God of War with 'Kratos the Angry Spartan' shouting something about his 'reven', today it's the turn of Uncharted, where Nathan Drake becomes 'Drake The Brave Explorer'. This is what you would have seen if you switched on a Game Boy in 1989 and loaded up Naughty Dog's sensational (and sadly completely fictitious) launch title.

July is a bit dry in terms of new-stuff quantity, but we’re really looking forward to the majority of its releases. We have a healthy amount of oddball gems, sequels and re-releases to look forward to. It’s as much a month to experiment on weird stuff as it is to catch up on stuff you may have missed a year (or five) ago. What’s particularly exciting is that we’re seeing a solid number of awesome-looking downloadable games. If you’d rather not spend $60 on bananas-bullshit like Catherine (which we’re way into, by the way), put that money toward a few XBLA games instead. You’ve got slimmer pickin’s than usual, but them pickin’s look good...

The only people you ever hear complaining about Uncharted are those who don't own a PS3. In other words, it's hard to actually play a Nathan Drake adventure and not fall in immediate love with every breath-taking, death-defying, wise-cracking moment. Can the franchise really be improved, then, or is "more of the same" more than enough in this case?

Well, close to perfection is still just that – "close." Here are 13 things that Uncharted 3 needs if developer Naughty Dog hopes to raise the stratospheric bar set by Uncharted 2...

Ever noticed a soundalike title shamelessly trying to steal sales from a well-known brand? The Professor's Brain Trainer comes to mind. Professor, doctor... it's all the same thing, right? Wrong. But there's one market that seems to be thriving on exactly this sort of thinking: The App Store. And in particular, Gameloft, which has a lookalike version of pretty much every major console franchise. Especially when you see the teaser for it's latest game. They even sent us a press release with the line 'Gameloft presents a new legend'. Get a load of this, then look at the company it's keeping:

Horrible ‘will make you want to shiv your own spine’ news, film fans and folk with man crushes on Nathan Drake. It looks like the upcoming Uncharted movie starring Mark Walhberg will be as schmaltzy as a Hannah Montana marathon. Director David O. Russell has been speaking about how he wants to emphasise the family dynamic in the film, now that Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci have been cast to play Drake’s dad and uncle. He’s already got miscasting and horrible premises down to a fine art, but we thought we’d give him a few more suggestions so he can make Uncharted the biggest flop since Waterworld...

During a recent interview, Mark Wahlberg confirmed he’s going to star as Nathan Drake in the movie version of Uncharted. A geek tragedy on the scale of Bill Shatner dying from a small fall in Star Trek: Generations, the news sent the interwebs into impotent fury. Honestly, we don’t know what everyone’s moaning about. It's not as if Marky Mark doesn't have experience of starring in video game movies. Hello, Max Payne? He’s also an Oscar-nominated actor. So here are five (almost completely tongue-in-cheek free) reasons why the lord of the Funky Bunch will make an ace Nate.

We’ve all read countless “best franchise of all time” lists, and while they’re fun to write and then to argue about, there’s an inherent problem with the “all time” part – you have to consider the 30+ years of gaming history before you get to the modern generation. Heavy hitters like Zelda, Mario, Halo, Warcraft, Metal Gear and GTA are virtually guaranteed a place on the list, so how can there be much room left over for games of right now?

That’s why we’re ousting the old guard and choosing the best of the current generation. No decades-old legacies to consider, just the stuff that’s been dreamt up since 360/PS3/DS/Wii took control beginning in 2005. Our only criteria: you gotta be a NEW game that’s blossomed into a full-blown series and will likely carry on for years. And before we even start, sorry Red Dead – you either began with Red Dead Revolver (last gen) or are a fresh start with Redemption, meaning you’re not quite a “franchise” just yet...

One the best games of this console generation has an equally stellar title theme...

Everyone knows about Max Payne taking all its best ideas (alright, one good idea) from the Matrix. But there have been many more games over the years that have taken their inspiration from Tinsel Town’s finest cinematic output. And when we say inspiration, we actually mean they broke out the tracing paper and copied these films' best scenes or stars almost exactly. And you know what? We’re thankful, because the nearly all of the

Ever wondered what it would be like to have video game characters in your Pokemon party? Why choose boring old Bulbasaur when you can choose a beautiful Kasumi? Or a level 50 Sackboy?

We've given 21 game characters the Pokemon treatment, with four moves to choose from and some evolutionary states too.

Who would you choose?