Drake's Fortune - hands-on

Imagine Lara Croft as a perpetually frightened-looking man running scared through the same islands on which Far Cry is set, and you'll have a rough idea of what Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is all about. A slick-looking adventure from the minds behind Jak & Daxter, Uncharted promises to hurl players into blistering firefights through lush jungles, tempered with plenty of climbing and jumping through vine-covered ruins in between. And it looks absolutely amazing.

Heavily influenced by 1930s pulp fiction, Uncharted has a simple setup: searching for a lost Spanish colony, Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher crash-land their seaplane on a remote island, where they're immediately set upon by bloodthirsty modern-day pirates. From there, it's a race for survival - and for gold - as players scavenge any weapons they can find and tackle the puzzles that stand between them and unimaginable wealth.

A third-person adventure with tactical-shooter elements, Uncharted plays more or less the way it looks. As the demo's impressive intro ended and the gameplay began, we were able to run around through a nicely detailed tropical wilderness, but what really caught our eye was the stream of water running through the area. It looked uncannily like the real thing: shimmery, reflective and opaque, and the main character obviously looked to have a hard time slogging through it. We were also wowed by the dust clouds that went flying when we kicked a rusty gate off its hinges, and by the way the hero's shoulder holster jerked independent of the rest of him when he fired a shot. And when the pirates started shooting, well, that was when things got really impressive.