In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
When does a cliché justify itself? When it kicks ass, that’s when! Luckily Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a cliché – loving ass – kicking hell of a game, and I accept and welcome the old – school formulaic feel. Developed by Naughty Dog Software the creators behind such hits as the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter series, Uncharted is still essentially a platformer, but a much more realistic and action oriented take on the genre.
In Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune you command the role of Nathan Drake, a young hotshot professional (at least he likes to think so) treasure hunter and supposed ancestor to the famous explorer, Sir Francis Drake. Along with your long time partner / pilot Sully and a young journalist named Elena trying to make a name for herself, the three of you travel to Peru after finding Francis Drake’s coffin totally empty except for his personal notebook depicting the way to El Dorado, the city of gold. The trio make their way through the island, uncovering clues, historical inaccuracies, and the true story behind El Dorado. From here the story becomes a rollercoaster ride with backstabs, plot twists, puzzles and monsters galore. You’re not on your own however as the hints in Francis’ notebook help lead you in the right direction. Straight out of Indiana Jones, this story has been heard a million times before, but never played before so smoothly or looked and sounded as amazing.
In past reviews I’ve touted games like Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm as having the most beautiful looking graphics on the Playstation 3, and as the world goes on people will always try to get top banana in certain aspects of gaming. In this respect, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune takes the cake as the best looking game on the PS3 to date. At 720p, this game’s graphics will blow you away. From the vivid colour used in the jungle areas and use of blurs or cinema-like angles to show hints or when you’re about to die from damage, the island of Peru is truly majestic with lighting and rendered scenery. At a constantly high frame rate with little to no lag (even during the most chaotic fights) and utilizing the Playstation 3′s impressive power, the game is a benchmark for all others in the near and quite possibly distant future. The level of design is superb, at times it may feel a little too repetitive with perfectly laid out battle areas covered in ammo, shelter and a trap vibe being given off at every shootout, but otherwise for the use of puzzles and to progress the story with true-to-the-script design makes this one for the books.
Surpassing the quality and detail of the level design is that of the character models themselves; amazingly detailed clothing, movement and distinct personality gives each ‘actor’ in this ‘movie’ a unique personal connection and attitude one rarely finds in the gaming world. The biggest asset to the character design is facial emotion. As one of the hardest traits to nail in an animated world, Uncharted shows how our character is feeling through his eyes, mouth, posture and even wrinkles and, it does it with style. Perhaps one of the smallest, yet most entertaining details I noticed is whenever Drake or Elena pass through a body of water; their clothing will get wet and stay that way for a short period of time until the sun dries them off. Small additions like this help differentiate a game in a world saturated with choice.
Sure the game may look great, but how does it sound? From Inca-like tones when finding treasure, to realistic and immersive gunfire and explosions, Naughty Dog didn’t skimp out in this portion of the game. Throughout the game, depending on what part of the island you’re on (or in) the ambient noise and music will change to fit the mood; Uncharted has extremely tense scores when scaling walls, and high paced music during action filled gun fights. It’s plain to see that Drake’s composers definitely know how to make a game sound epic. To complete the full character feel and development, Uncharted went all out with their voice acting and not only found the right sounding actor for each character, but also paired up the right personality with each as well.
Onto actually playing the game, Drake’s Fortune plays very similar to that of any other third person action title. Melee fighting is interesting here as it is combo driven and time based; a player can pretty much do any melee fighting they can think up and even pull out there gun in the middle of a string for some dirty brawling. A few extra interesting features in the control scheme is that the left analog stick, when pushed in, will change the shoulder the camera is viewed over when aiming behind cover. In terms of motion sensor action, you can use the Sixaxis to control where your grenade will land when thrown and to help balance you when walking on beams or logs. Finally the last aspect to the control of spunky Nathan Drake is the select button, which will bring up Sir Francis Drake’s diary, the most important aspect in Uncharted.
For the most part, Uncharted plays like a Tomb Raider third person action shooter, running from area to area taking cover while being shot at and slowly but surely picking off flood after flood of pirates from all directions and heights. Otherwise Uncharted plays more like a puzzle / Pitfall type game, scaling walls and climbing bricks while using Francis’s journal to solve puzzles that would seem impossible without his notes. Again, the game is very cliché, like a film made ten years too late, however, think of it as more of a walk down memory lane, showing us why we fell in love with entertainment media of this sort in the first place. At times perhaps the game can get a little repetitive and fighting streams of unanimous bad guys time after time can get a bit tiring but near the end of the game, Naughty Dog takes us for a loop and all hell breaks loose. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you feel like just giving up out of boredom at times – don’t. It’ll be worth it. The pace of the game fits well as there is a fair mix of fast action shooting and slower puzzle solving; if the puzzle parts get too tricky for you, the game will usually give you a little hint to point you in the right direction so don’t fret.
An average gamer can best this title from it’s action packed start to it’s final (and only) boss battle in a week easily, but once you finish the game, you get a great sense of accomplishment – you might even begin counting down the days before they attempt to turn this game into a summer blockbuster movie. To sweeten the deal and increase the game’s lasting value, Naughty Dog added in extras such as videos and still galleries showing everything such as cut scenes in the game, behind the scene magic, holiday parties and bloopers to boot! To top off the list of additional features, there are tons of Peruvian, Spanish, and other national ancient treasures sprawled throughout the game for you to find (only to be seen by a flash of light in dark corners) and collect throughout the game for those of you who try to see and collect everything in games.
Uncharted might not be anything new story or character wise, but the way it is presented is something never before seen and is a welcome addition to the Playstation 3 exclusive title list. So if you’re tired of waiting for the next Tomb Raider game or Indiana Jones movie and want a fun, story – driven, action – packed, beautiful game to call your own, pick up a copy of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, your PS3 will thank you.
Graphics: 5.0 / 5.0
Gameplay 4.0 / 5.0
Sound 4.5 / 5.0
Replay value 3.0 / 5.0
