789th played so far

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2011
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

We’ve already played two Uncharted games. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was quite fun, but had some issues with the fighting. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was a lot better – solving part of that problem and leading to a long game we really enjoyed and saw through to the end. The third game is the last for the list – fair enough, as we’re in the final third of the list as well. I’ve had good reason to play on our consoles while I can while Peter is busy with another project, so I’m making full use of it now to get to these games.

Our Thoughts

While Uncharted 2 began with an epic action scene the game later returns to, where Nathan Drake is on a dangling train carriage ready to fall to his death while you climb it using the series’ impressive climbing set up, the third part starts simpler with a bar brawl in a British pub. And while we break into a museum, it starts off a bit more innocently here, and with Drake when he was younger. There are the usual escalations, but thankfully the game really draws out how long it takes before you get into a firefight. Those are a bit better, but still endless and I still struggled to always find them that engaging. Thankfully, the endless fights aren’t as common and I feel I spent a lot of time exploring these worlds, most notably when going into a French mansion that hides Templar secrets. It was a gorgeous forest, in a more temperate climate than we normally see, as well as a ruined mansion that felt like a change from the setting it had elsewhere.

If I wanted to be negative about it, I could say that the gameplay was more of the same. Now, the basics are the same, although that is to be expected from the series of the name when we’re only three games in. It would have been nice to feel like the gameplay was a bit more innovative, but it feels more polished.

On the other hand,t he game uses this in a wider variety of settings – most more interesting. It feels like there’s more actual investigation involved, in warehouses and so on, than it feels there were in the original games. There are still old crypts and such, but it feels like we’re staying in Europe more and the parts in London feel especially different, with a sequence where you look for a hidden tunnel standing out especially well. There’s places when the pacing feels off – the escape from the burning mansion feels interminable and it feels like it could have been fine at half the length. The fact that it comes with an interminable army of minions to fight you doesn’t help there either.

The game still sounds good – Nolan North’s voice acting is part of what makes Nathan Drake so charismatic and attractive, just mysterious enough, while the other characters come to life just as much with the voice acting. They’re animated really well, especially the different version of our main characters. And as always, the environments look amazing, visiting them is the real treat a lot of the time.

Final Thoughts

When you’ve played the previous games, Uncharted 3 brings exactly what you think it would. It adds to it, by avoiding the exotic settings that I feel it usually has and setting up some more normal, urban areas as well. It worked well for me and provided the variety and different set up that sets it apart for me. There’s something great about starting with a brawl in a London pub rather than hanging from a Russian train. The game still has it.