History tells us Sir Francis Drake was an accomplished seaman, explorer and treasure hunter, whose exploits against Spanish interests made him into an English legend. History then goes on to say that he eventually died of dysentery then was buried at sea within a lead lined coffin – or was he?

Developers Naughty Dog decided to play around with historical facts and introduce a tale of conspiracy and daring that, while a risky departure from previous titles, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune turns out to be one of the more engaging releases on the PS3 for 2007.

Cue Nathan Drake, treasure hunter and smooth talking nice bloke, supposed descendant of the famed explorer. Moored off the Panamanian coastline, Nathan finds what he believes to be Drake's coffin. With Elena Fisher, a TV documentary reporter on hand to film the remarkable discovery, the coffin's opened to reveal nothing but a journal providing directions to a legendary horde of treasure. Not surprisingly, Nathan's not alone in trying to get his hands on the loot, as the two are immediately attacked by pirates. After a brief struggle, the pair manage to jump overboard right before their ship explodes, luckily picked up moments later by a passing sea plane flown by Nathan's fellow treasure-hunter Victor Sullivan. High drama on the high seas, soon followed by loads of dark jungles and ancient ruins filled with gun toting bad types and a modern day equivalent of Tomb Raider style puzzles.

With the introductory phase of the game over, you settle in and start exploring the environment. However right or wrong, typically this is the bit when that finely honed gaming antennae start picking up the vibes - good or bad from a title. It's either love at first sight with a long gaming night ahead, or just another ho-hum experience where you'll be wondering if there's something decent on the tube. High on the list of first impressions that really count is the control system and it's very obvious Naughty Dog have it refined to just about perfect.

The game play's evenly split between one half third-person shooter and the other half Tomb Raider style puzzle solving/adventuring. The resulting blend of the two styles merge seamlessly meaning you won't have to contend with any sort of learning curve or difficulty adjusting to twin sets of control systems. It won't be long before you find yourself jumping across large gaps, swinging on vines, then hitting cover while being shot at from multiple directions, find you're out of bullets and somehow hit enough cover spots to get some melee action going, before helping Nathan walk across a log using the PS3's Sixaxis controller. It plays just as breathlessly as it reads, with all elements merging into adrenaline fuelled moments.

L1 gets you aiming and R1 shoots, while the Square, X and Circle buttons hold the melee kick and punching combos for those closer engagements if you find yourself low on ammo. With gun in hand and bullets thick as flies, standing around isn't generally advisable, so hitting circle will get you into the closest available bit of cover, while hitting circle again places you into a roll, hopefully to the next handy spot. Context sensitive situations such as opening doors, picking up ammo and climbing/descending ropes are dealt with by single or repeated hits of the Triangle while left analogue stick controls the direction and right analogue adjusts the camera. Two issues I had with the games control was how Nathan on three instances got stuck trying to come out of cover and secondly, how the camera angle becomes fixed at such an angle that you can't see the next hand-hold. Intuition should get you out of most situations but nevertheless, a slightly less rigid system would have been preferable.

Regardless on how impossibly athletic Nathan must be to make some of the trickier jumps, one other significant factor that runs in almost symbiotic fashion to the control system is the incredibly smooth animation. No matter the situation, all movements are animated to perfection, effectively cancelling out those traditionally toe-curling moments of frustration where one wrong step equals five or ten more attempts on the same puzzle. Not surprisingly, the temptation to purposefully fall from a high spot just to watch the resulting bone-crushing bounce far below is sometimes just too hard to resist. The sharp responsiveness and the slick moves make Drake's Fortune very fun experience.

It's also quite a forgiving one.

Failure to make the right move or jump doesn't necessarily mean starting the entire sequence over again, rather a small detour back to where you first fell via a conveniently placed ledge or vine. Health is dealt via regenerative means, so seeing the screen fade to grey should give you enough time to hit cover or very likely die. When death does occur, it's literally seconds before you're back into the game and back to the old position closer than you'd first expect. In the times when the brain just won't tick over and refuses to help, hitting L2 moves the camera in the general direction where you're supposed to be heading. While not literally showing you the way, it certainly inspires a few '...damn it, I should have known that' moments. From time to time, you'll face puzzles that are extremely high in visual detail and design but never too challenging. Take also into account the game's cover system where Nathan automatically moves into the correct position behind objects and you have what seems like an effortless eight to ten hours of gaming. Fortunately, that's not the case at all.

Drakes Fortune is undeniably repetitive. That can be bad. How this title gets away with what's normally a negative trait is via its mixture of enjoyably repetitive moments and situations, where the method of approaching each particular facet can be different each time. For instance, take the games linearity. Somewhat sadly, you're not able to venture off the beaten track but the area provided is just large enough to instil that sense of exploration. Further more, the puzzle types are comparable to fairy floss, light and fluffy but still consumed with a repeated, purposeful pleasure while side combat engagements are unique experiences every time.

And so we come, in a round about fashion, to an element that's not in the least bit forgiving but rather doggedly determined to leave you lying face down, strewn with holes and laugh while doing it: the AI. Roughly three or four shots should see an enemy go down, but getting them accurate enough to count is where things get tough. During the entire course of the game, the enemy manage to confound your expectations, repeatedly. Think they'll go left? No, they stop and hide, lob the odd grenade over, only then deciding to finally go left. But then you hear the call for reinforcements, when they decide enough's enough and start running towards you. Which of course makes you miss each shot as panic sets in, then you run out of bullets, start flying with fists and legs and die (yes in that order). Or else: you run away, manage to get cornered, run out of bullets, flail blindly with fists and legs then die. That's opposed to the funny moments where you hear screamed, "I've got him", then smirk as you watch a badly thrown grenade bounce back and bodies fly backwards in a puff of black smoke. At the risk of sounding like a credit card ad - priceless.

Previously, if I was asked by a console newbie wanting the low down on purchasing the best looking and performing platform, I'd have unfailingly pointed towards the Xbox 360 without hesitation.. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune has forced me to think otherwise. Finally, we have a title that shows off what the PS3 is actually capable of achieving. One word: spectacular. Stuff it, make that two: Spectacularly breathtaking. If there ever was a moment where I wanted to stick my head through the screen and experience the world in its full glory, this is it. Clothes wrinkling in synch with every movement; water rippling with incredible precision; tall grass swaying and bending as you plough through; leaves swaying with the unseen breeze; every single encountered environment, whether within the moody, dusty interiors, the vastness of the distant horizon or the claustrophobic surrounding greenery of the jungle, every moment is a picture worth capturing and framing. Seriously folks, right now you won't see anything better looking than this.

On the same level of brilliance comes the very warm and engaging charatisations made possible via some of the best voice acting I've heard to date. You won't know it when it happens, but rather than a just by-the-numbers affair where you don't give a damn what occurs, you'll actually start to feel for the onscreen characters. Add a powerful, climatic soundtrack that flows smoothly alongside the game's action elements and you have a very powerful performance which makes you not only play the game, you're living the game.

The attention to visual detail, the sounds, the story – this is a game PS3 owners will need to add to their collection. It's a feast for the senses and very much a title to get. Until proven otherwise, Indiana Jones was yesterday's man. Today we have Nathan Drake.