Good news treasure hunters! Nathan Drake, Sony’s CEO of adventure and exploring has returned in yet another installment of the highly successful Uncharted series. Is this year’s outing a treasure hiding in the sand, or just another cheap trinket? Let’s find out together, with our review of Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception.
For readers unfamiliar with the series, Uncharted has players take control of Nathan Drake, long time descendent of Sir Francis Drake. Drake has a rugged, do it all for the money, adventurer persona on the outside, but a save the world, heart of gold on the inside. The series is a combination of puzzle solving, platforming, and shooting all rolled up into a perfectly sublime package. Think Tomb Raider, meets Indiana Jones.
Ok, the GOOD Indiana Jones
Uncharted 2 made huge improvements to the series over its predecessor “Drakes Fortune”. Showcasing bigger levels, a more cinematic approach to gameplay, a stronger focus on story, and much improved gun mechanics. It also became this writer’s favorite game of all time. So to say that we went into Uncharted 3, skeptical that it could hold up to masterpiece that was “Among Thieves” was an understatement. Unfortunately we were right.
Uncharted 3 was a huge undertaking, and had a lot to live up to. The game was truly well made. The voice acting, as always was fantastic, the gameplay was smooth, the action sets were engrossing, and the graphics were phenomenal. It just didn’t provide the same oomph in most areas, that Uncharted 2 had.
“Drakes Deception” made major graphical improvements to the series. While the series has always looked terrific, players can see a strong graphical evolution in the style of the graphics. While in “Drakes Fortune” (Uncharted 1), characters looked akin to those of a Pixar movie, “Among Thieves” (Uncharted 2) gave us far more realistic looking characters, and environments. This isn’t to say that it still had room for improvement. The characters eyes were always a bit too glossy, and the skin did at times look a fair bit washed out. “Drakes Deception” fixes all of these problems. Characters look amazing, and the animation that has been put into them really draws players into the game. Drake will grab for walls, or move people out of his way while moving now, as well as stumble while full out running. Little subtle touches such as these help players connect far more to the character.
Melee Combat has also significantly improved in Drakes latest outing. While in previous iterations of the series, hand to hand combat was never a joy to use, a far more polished, and well made combat system is a pleasure for players to utilize. In the past, using Drakes fists felt like a chore, and was reserved for extreme emergencies. It had always felt more tacked on, than an integral part of the games. Naughty Dog has really upped the ante, and created a combat system that adds that much more personality to the game. Doing a fantastic job at emulating the fighting style of Indiana Jones, Drake will grapple, drop kick, smack enemies with both fists, and even grab nearby objects, to absolutely pummel his enemies. When engaging in hand to hand combat, players will actually feel as they are playing the role of the “every man”. Quick one two punches no longer exist, and it’s really feels as though Drake puts in his all to take down his foes.
The game did have some major setbacks to it however. Perhaps the area that suffered the most, was the style of the game. Uncharted 2 was all about not holding back anything. The scope of the game was huge. One minute players would be running through war torn streets while battling a tank, only to take on hundreds of armed guards at a train station shortly after. Things got bigger and bigger as players went, and never showed any signs of slowing down. It felt truly cinematic, and resembled an interactive action movie, far more than just another platforming game. Uncharted 3 never really has this same impact. While there are some great moments in the game, it never gave us that same cinematic rush as its predecessor. Naughty Dog brought this on themselves however, by creating such a massive game with Uncharted 2, it really left the sequel very few places to go.
Story, and characterization have also greatly suffered. The MacGuffin in this game isn’t ever really made clear. When players start to get an idea of what they are going after, it changes to something else entirely. We don’t want to give much away, so forgive us for being vague, but quite honestly, the motivations of the protagonists are never made clear, nor is their ultimate plot. While the game does attempt to give more background to Drake, and his always dashing counterpart Victor “G*D Damn” Sullivan, through a series of playable flashbacks, the backgrounds of their adversaries are left quite loosely explained. We don’t know what they’re after or why, and frankly, this applies to Drake as well. While previous entries of the series had players exploring, solving puzzles, and fighting, Uncharted 3 spends almost too much time in action segments.
There’s very little exploring to be done in this game, and even less puzzle-solving. In fact most of the puzzle-solving segments are practically spelled out for you, and should you have trouble don’t worry, your friends will more or less tell you what to do anyway. The story is never given a chance to grow through the exploration, and banter of the characters as it had in previous installments, and as a result becomes very rushed through in the final act. Just when we felt the story was starting to pick up, and become explained we were on the final chapter of the game, and completed it no more than 15 minutes later.
In addition, Uncharted 3 appears to have taken a step backwards in terms of its shooting segments. For starters, it feels as if this aspect of the games combat system was never really finished. In both Uncharted 1, and 2, enemies would always show signs of dodging gunfire, as well as being hit. If they were hit in the leg, they would stumble, or grab it. Should it have been a near miss, they would duck, or dive out of the way. Enemies felt more realistic than the traditional “video game badguy”. They felt as they were truly trying to stay alive, as opposed to walking into, or continuing to walk into gunfire. In Uncharted 3 however, many times this isn’t the case. There were many occasions where enemies would continue to walk straight at us, while shooting them. It actually made the game more difficult as opposed to easy, as we were uncertain if we were actually hitting them, or if our aim was off.
Aiming is an entire issue of its own. We remember while playing Uncharted 1, that the aiming always felt very unresponsive. Getting the precision required to shoot moving targets was very difficult, and moving the aiming reticule around, felt clumsy. Things were made far smoother when Uncharted 2 came around. Aiming, while still difficult due to dancing enemies, was far more pleasant to play. We knew we were missing due to the actual game making it difficult to shoot dancing targets, as opposed to missing due to a clumsy and constrictive combat system. Uncharted 3 feels as if it’s gone back to the system used in Uncharted 1. It feels stuck, clumsy, unresponsive, and just downright messy. In fact, we tried to use guns as little as possible, and opted to go into melee combat as often as we could, just to alleviate our aiming frustrations.
Rating Uncharted 3 is tricky to do, and really can be looked at in two ways. The first of which would be comparing it to the previous entries the series has already produced, as we have done so far. When doing this, you have a game that feels incomplete, poorly executed, and a rather large disappointment. Many aspects of gameplay feel they have gone backward, and this adventure just doesn’t pack the same punch. This however is also due largely to the phenomenal success Uncharted 2 was. “Among Thieves” left Naughty Dog with very few places to go, and is simply too hard to top.
On the other side of this though, looking at it independently, as just a game it is a great one. Should this have been the first installment of a brand new series, it would have been a joy to play. It’s still fun, still has some hugely cinematic moments, and does give gamers a wonderful, and rewarding adventure. It’s certainly a game we recommend playing, however we feel it should be ranked accordingly to the previous two titles. Games of such a large caliber shouldn’t step backwards as much as Uncharted 3 has. We feel not as much love was put into the game, and not enough thought put into the story. More time and care was needed, and we hope this isn’t the final send off for one of our favorite action/adventure heroes.
Overall Score: 7/10
