It would have been easy for Naughty Dog to make another Jak and Daxter game. Just bump the series up to HD, throw in a couple spiky-haired characters, new weapons, and platforms to jump around on and call it a day. Instead, the seasoned developer is taking a risk with something new: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This is easily the company's most ambitious project.

Uncharted puts you in the shoes of Nathan Drake, an energetic young adventurer eager to uncover the lost treasure of El Dorado. As a descendent of Sir Francis Drake, Nathan is keen on finding his ancestor's long hidden treasure using a tattered map. His trip immediately gets off to a rocky start, however, when his plane is shot down and crashes onto a remote Pacific island. Hanging by his parachute in the thick of the jungle is where Nathan's perilous adventure begins, and where out hands-on time with the game started, as well.

Immediately apparent is the game's blend of action and platform elements, much like a cross between an Indiana Jones film and Tomb Raider. Through the course of the lengthy demonstration, we guide Nathan across a roaring waterfall by hopping across the remnants of a broken bridge, take out a host of competing treasure-seekers, and eventually locate the scene of the plane crash.

The action in Uncharted unobtrusively mixes with the platform elements, making for fluid action-adventure gameplay. Naughty Dog President Evan Wells highlights, "We want you to feel like you're taking a role in a movie." Playing as Nathan, we got a good sense of this in sequences that had us climbing up ledges then immediately taking cover to avoid incoming enemy fire.

Platform challenges comprise much of Uncharted's gameplay, bearing more than a resemblance to Tomb Raider. Nathan can jump with a press of the X button. Depending on the situation, tapping X might yield a short hop or a long jump. All of the platform sections involve context-sensitive actions that automatically occur when you're moving about or jumping. For example, when attempting to grab onto a ledge, Nathan does this automatically without the need for pressing an additional button.

Making your way through the jungle, you often have to contend with mercenaries. Uncharted features a robust weapons-based combat system, as well as melee fighting. Most of the combat for the demonstration involved gunplay, but we did attempt a bit of fisticuffs by hitting the square button when standing near an enemy. Wells guided us through melee combat, informing us that a well-timed press of the square button when the screen blurs yields a knockout blow.

Although the variety of weapons is limited to what is available on the island, we took stock of a pistol, semi-automatic rifle, and even a grenade launcher. You can only carry two weapons and consequently you have to be deliberate in selecting weapons best suited for your current situation. Using grenades while hopping platforms across a waterfall doesn't make as much sense as swapping it out for a rifle.

Weapons fire is handled with a press of a button, but chucking a grenade is done by means of Sixaxis motion controls. When you equip grenades, a trajectory indicator pops up to let you know the approximate path of your throw. Move the controller and the trajectory adjusts accordingly. After lobbing a few at enemies hiding behind cover, we were impressed at how intuitive the motion controls became in handling grenades.