Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception — Lord of the Ring

Amidst the admittedly unsurprising spectacle surrounding the announcement of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, the biggest question being put forth was whether it could actually match up to the superlative Uncharted 2. There was no question that it would be a worthwhile experience, considering the talent working at Naughty Dog. But the pitfall of making a sequel to a game that won numerous Game of the Year awards (with it even having its own edition named as such) involved crafting a project that doesn’t quite capture the same qualities its predecessor did.

After playing through the entirety Uncharted 3’s campaign, this is, sadly, definitely the case. There are parts that match up to some of the greatest moments in its predecessor, but it’s not as consistently good as that one. But don’t take this to mean that it’s not a good game, something a bunch of gamers on the internet who deal in absolutes would have you believe. No, it’s still well worth playing if you’ve enjoyed the last two games in the franchise. You’re bound to be disappointed if you go in expecting the game to be GOTY material. In fact, you shouldn’t do that for any game.

Uncharted 3 opens in a bar in England, where our fearless murdering psychopath hero Nathan Drake and ever-trustworthy partner Victor Sullivan are about to exchange Sir Francis Drake’s ring for a suitcase full of cash. The deal goes awry when Nathan discovers the money is fake, leading to an eventually ensuing brawl between him, Sully, and around six or so guys. This is not-so-secretly the game’s way of teaching the player how the new brawling system works. It’s pretty QTE-heavy, but it works much better than what existed in the last two games. You’ll use button prompts to dodge attacks, break from holds, and use some objects in the background as assistance. It’s heavily inspired by Batman: Arkham Asylum’s fisticuffs system, something which took a long time for other games to take inspiration from.

Exchanging a ring is serious business.

The fight eventually takes Nate and Sully into an alley, where they encounter the main villain: Katherine Marlowe. She’s the rare kind of video game villain in that she’s an older, well-dressed woman with actual character development. It’s something not often featured in this medium, and is one of the game’s biggest surprises because of it. Her character isn’t developed quite as much as it could have been, but the history behind her motives are far more intriguing than most of the one-note villains in most titles. After she obtains the ring without giving Nathan and Sully the money, they’re shot and seemingly killed. Given that there’s a game they have to go through, and that this is only the intro, you can probably guess what really happens here.

The story never quite reaches the same height the last game did, but it’s entertaining fluff regardless. It’s still better than what’s par-the-course for this kind of game, and it’s proof that making an excellent sequel can sometimes be a bad thing.

Like the last game, Uncharted 3 isn’t limited to one location on the map. Nathan and his cohorts travel to numerous places and settings around the world in track of a treasure left by Sir Nathan Drake. The locations are nice to look at, but as said before, this game isn’t as consistently good or well-balanced as its predecessor. Some parts in the middle of the game will make you want to throw your controller against the wall, but some parts at the end are nearly as easy as the earlier parts. It’s not a big flaw, but it’s peculiar.

Just a picture of Nathan Drake here killing folk. 

And keep in mind this analysis and my playthrough were from playing the game after it was patched to fix the serious aiming issues. If you had to play though those sections while struggling to shoot your opponents, then you probably did toss your controller in frustration.

You’re given the choice to avoid some of the more difficult fights if you rely on approaching sections stealthily, something you’re also taught early on. Nate still has the silent takedown attacks he had in Uncharted 2, but you’ll also be given a pistol with a silencer where it’s encouraged. The kicker is that the
places were stealth is seemingly a necessity aren’t the places where the difficulty ramps up to borderline-frustrating levels. There are also some sections where your partner will unwittingly blow your cover, but those sections aren’t too difficult to deal with if backup is called.

You’ll probably want to engage dudes in fisticuffs this time around.

If there’s anything you can claim is just as good here as it was in the last two titles, it’s the music. Though Greg Edmonson brings a familiar sound to this game — the kind of “epic” score you would hear in a movie — “familiar” isn’t bad when it’s composed this well. It’s a fitting score, too, since the Uncharted games are made with the intention of having the player feel like they’re playing a shut-your-brain-off action film.

But you shouldn’t shut your brain off when dealing with the puzzles. The previous games have been given the criticism that the puzzles are too easy, and many of them were so easy (and, thus, unremarkable) that many critics forgot to mention it when it came to review them. The development team made the puzzles much tougher, despite clues being prevalent in the ever-trusty notebook Nathan is carrying.  If you take too long to solve it, your partners will give you another clue. If you take way too long to solve it, a prompt will appear asking to press a specific button if you want the game to show you the solution. Know that if you press the button, your self-confidence will hit rock bottom. You have been warned.

(No, I never pressed the button, if you were wondering.)

Hope you know how to shoot while riding a horse.

The voice acting is as good as you’ve come to expect from the franchise thus far. The omnipresent Nolan North lends his talents to voice Nathan Drake, and nails his one-liners as good as before. The same can be said of Richard McGonagle voicing Sully. This game also welcomes Rosalind Ayres as the voice of Katherine Marlowe, who does a great job, though some were expecting Helen Mirren to voice her considering her appearance. The slightly-less omnipresent Robin Atkin Downes voices Marlowe’s assistant Talbot. Lastly, Claudia Black comes back to voice Chloe Frazer, but her part in this game is nowhere near as big this time around.

You’ll enjoy Uncharted 3 fine if you don’t go in expecting holiness on a Blu-ray disc. But you have to wonder how different this game could have been if some of the staff from the second game wasn’t in the midst of readying another recently-announced title. Though Naughty Dog usually sticks to one franchise for the course of a console generation and abandons it when a new system arrives, Uncharted 3’s ending doesn’t offer a big sense of conclusion. And given the way the games sell, it’s possible Naughty Dog and Sony will want to keep the franchise around a little longer. Until the next game, then.