Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Title: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Platform Played On: PS3
Release Date: November 1, 2011
Date Played: July 2012
Time Played: 7.5 Hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5


Opinion:
The first Uncharted game re-defined the action adventure genre. It set the new bar in gaming. The second game made us fall in love with the characters and play with our jaws on the floor due to the unprecedented summer blockbuster omgwtfbbq movie action. This third game uses all of those qualities to tell yet another excellent adventure story involving Nathan Drake.

Drake's Deception goes back to the legends of Sir Francis Drake, whose trail we followed in the first game. This time we are trying to uncover the secrets of the Arabian Peninsula, which according to legend is hiding Ubar, also known as Atlantis of the Sands, a long lost city of knowledge and prosperity, a heaven on Earth.

As Naughty Dog (the developer) has done so well in the past they once again took fact and fiction and seamlessly intertwined the two together, thereby creating a perfect mesh of storytelling that allows for an easy and most of the time involuntary suspension of disbelief. They accomplish this by having the setting take place in familiar and well known places, such as Cartagena, France and Syria. They reference real people, and instead of showing made up facts or trying to change well known facts they explore lesser known nooks and cranies of these places and people, grasping on to uncertainties in history and filling in those gaps with adventurous tales. Everyone knows about Drake's circumnavigation of the Earth; however, minute details of the voyage are unkown. This gives Naughty Dog a great opportunity to put a spin on it and develop a great Indiana Jones'y story.

Uncharted 3 has everything you would expect it to have if you have played the previous games. Great graphics, brawling, shooting, puzzle solving, and of course extremely interesting story. I enjoyed Uncharted 2, but did find the story of the first game to be more interesting. Its basically about pirate treasure, what can be more exciting that that? Ill tell you what... freaking Atlantis! And in my book Atlantis of the Sands is just as good. So I am a huge fan of the plot in Drake's Deception (Uncharted 3).

Nathan is as funny and nimble as ever, all of our favorite characters make a return and we get to explore a little bit of the origins of where Nathan came from and why he wears that ring around his neck. The ring that made its appearance in the first game.

I had two major issues with the first 2 games, first issue was the mysticism. Both games were excellent up until the very end, until the boogey monsters out of children's books would come out. It broke all sense of emersion for me; nevertheless the games were so excellent that it was easy to overlook. The second issue were the boss fights. If Uncharted is to have boss fights they need to be equivalent to that scene in Indiana Jones where he pulls a gun on a knife wielding bad ass. Not fighting a crazy drug or magic or whatever induced mutant Hulk of destruction that takes a million billion rockets to kill. I am happy to report that both of those are completely non-existent in Uncharted 3. There is no magic or mysticism, everything that happens is easily (or somewhat easily) explained, and there is no silly Hulk fight at the end.

My Finishing Stats

I did however have a few problems with Uncharted 3. It seems like it has way more locations than the previous games, all of which are excellently crafted and very interesting. That isn't the problem, the problem is that I felt like they could have dived deeper into the lore behind these places. The chateau in France, probably my favorite place in the whole game. Why is it the way it is? Who lived there? What happened to it? Where exactly is it? Or the train station under London, what was that train? Where does it go? How old is it? What was its purpose? Why was it abandoned? Or the order that the bitch is part of? Thats just a few of many many things that I wish the developers would have expanded on. It is these things that make Uncharted interesting to me, and not the shooting or brawling, there is way too much brawling in Uncharted 3. Yes I get it, you put in a new context sensitive melee system that you are extremely proud of,  but don't beat it to death (pun intended). There are many other instances where I wish I would have gotten more answers. Drake's real name? What exactly was concealed in the jar in the water? We got to see what was in the statue in the first game and what was the blue stuff in the second... why leave a huge gaping hole this time? What did the guy use to pull off his "magic tricks". And so on and so forth... the list goes on.

Under normal circumstances I would have probably been alright with so many unanswered questions; however knowing that there wont be another Uncharted game anytime soon, or possibly ever really makes me wish it was a more rich experience that focused on story, details and answering questions about character backgrounds. Granted a lot was answered, but if you are diving into it, then dive all the way, tell me everything, especially if you know you wont have another opportunity to. Instead you chose to give me more of the boring parts (shooting and brawling).

Without a doubt Uncharted 3 is a must play (all 3 of them are). The series is among the finest games ever made. Its true, all 3 games have their own issues; however in a grand scheme of things these issues are but a grain of sand on a beach. There are a thousand more things that make these games great than the few nit picky things that they could improve on. Uncharted's genre falls into everyone's "like" category, and even for those that dont want to figure out how a PS3 controller works Uncharted makes a great "sit down and watch someone else" experience. It is an interactive movie. It is one of my favorite series out there, and I will continue to keep my fingers crossed that Naughty Dog will decide to make Uncharted 4, and 5 and 6 and 7...... sometime in the future. Perhaps for the PS4?


PS - I feel that Uncharted 3 will have a lot more substance and meaning if you have played the previous 2 games. So I strongly suggest playing them in order. Drake's Fortune, Among Thiefs and then Drake's Deception. At the very least play 2 before playing 3.