Undoubtedly the year’s headline PS3 exclusive, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception once again has players stepping into the role of sarcastic treasure hunter Nathan Drake for yet another thrilling adventure garbed in a well-worn half-tuck. Does Nate’s latest blockbuster break any new ground? How does the game stack up to its predecessors? Read along as Zach and I take on Uncharted 3 in our latest discussion review!+
Matt: Everywhere you look there is a game with a ’3′ in it this year. Gears of War 3. Modern Warfare 3. Battlefield 3. Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Resistance 3. And then of course there is Uncharted 3, the third installment in Naughty Dog’s cinematically unrivaled PS3 action-adventure series.+
The whole gang is back again for another treasure hunt gone terribly, terribly wrong. Series hero Nathan Drake is as brash, smooth-talking, and clumsy as ever. Sully returns as Nate’s mentor and right-hand man. And Elena once more fulfills her cute-as-a-button role as the on again, off again love interest. A few new characters are introduced as well, namely new villainess Katherine Marlowe and her henchman, Talbot. This time around, Nate finds himself in a desperate race to reach the lost city of Ubar, AKA “Atlantis of the Sands,” before Marlowe, trotting around the globe in pursuit of clues left behind by T.E. Lawrence and Sir Francis Drake.+
As always, the character performances, both in terms of voice acting and animation, are second to none and the campaign is yet another 8-hour popcorn blockbuster, with nary a dull moment as Nate scales walls, engages in against-all-odds gun battles, and, in customary fashion, escapes death by the skin of his teeth more times than Bruce Willis in any Die Hard film.+
Uncharted 3 is pure formula, which is both a good and bad thing. Uncharted is what it is and the core doesn’t need to change. But in this instance I didn’t get the feeling that Naughty Dog pushed as hard as they did in evolving the gameplay and storytelling from the first game to the second. Taken by itself, Uncharted 3’s story is absolutely riveting and the many set piece shootouts and escape sequences are even more spectacular than ever before. However, at times a feeling of déjà vu does set in as certain stages unfold all too similarly to key moments in Uncharted 2. +
Instead of hanging out of a derailed train teetering over the edge of a mountain, for instance, Nate gets blown out of a flying plane and must climb up the streaming chain of cargo back to safety. Instead of doing battle in a collapsing hotel, this time he’s on a sinking ship. And then there are the closing chapters in Ubar, which play out damn nearly identically to those in Uncharted 2’s Shambhala. These moments are great, but I almost felt like I’d already played them before.+
There are definitely some surprises (young Nate!) and plenty of new and exotic environments to take in (the desert area plays in a slightly different manner than anything in the previous games and the pirate shipyard level introduces vertical gun battles in a cool way). But I don’t know—for some reason I just never got sucked in to the same extent that I did in Uncharted 2.+
What are your thoughts on the campaign, Zach? Also, what did you think about the gameplay? Naughty Dog stirred up a bit of a ruckus over its modifications to the game’s targeting system, but sometime over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend a patch was released inserting an option to switch back to Uncharted 2’s style. Uncharted 3’s gunplay is a little cumbersome at times I suppose, but after switching back and forth between the two settings for alternating stretches I could barely tell the difference and I didn’t have a problem using either method. Did you notice any changes from Uncharted 2 or have issues with the aiming?+
Zach: After hearing your take on the campaign, I feel relieved. I thought that the original Uncharted was a good game that went under my radar, and Uncharted 2 blew it away, both in acting and in its story. I, like you, felt a bit disconnected the whole time I was playing through Uncharted 3’s campaign mode though. I kept trying to be engaged in the story but for some reason things just didn’t click as well as they did in Nathan Drake’s previous outing. While I think this game had one of the best escape scenes out of the three (i.e. the sinking boat), other than that there were just too many similarities with the previous title.+
One improvement that I did notice was how well the computer-controlled thugs took cover and reacted to my play style. Also, once the bullets started flying no two battles ever played out in the same manner. Believe me; I died quite a few times when playing on the game’s hardest difficulty. As you mentioned, Matt, a big deal was made about the aiming of weapons when the game was first released compared to that of Uncharted 2, but to be honest it’s been so long since I played the second game I’d forgotten what aiming was like and couldn’t tell a difference. I’m glad that Naughty Dog did listen to the fans though, even going so far as to invite some of them in to play with the aiming system while developers made real-time fixes to ensure that they could duplicate Uncharted 2’s system with the patch that is now available.+
