Boy, they've really beefed up the melee combat in this game. It's nice, but at the same time, did anybody really come to Uncharted for the melee? You really want to shoot guys to death, right? I mean, half the time you ever get locked into a melee brawl with someone, their friend just stands off to the side and shoots you to death with a gun or something. So it's good that they improved on it, but it frankly wasn't necessary. The amount of melee you saw in Uncharted 2 was just about right, it was present but you didn't need to bother with it too much. There's more of it here and it isn't bad, but it's not something you'll be thinking about.

The game, as a whole, is just more of Uncharted 2. More epic setpieces, that feel exactly like you're in some amazing action movie, except you've got control over it. The amount of control in some sections is certainly shallow, as Eurogamer points out, but it's still some control, as opposed to Battlefield 3's shit campaign where you're awkwardly pressing a QTE every once in a while during a cutscene for no good reason. The lighting looks gorgeous, especially while Drake's walking down a cavern holding up a torch. The way the crevices create shadows at just the right angles as you're walking along with the light source is fairly astonishing. I haven't gotten halfway through the campaign, but the setpieces already create the impression that they're a notch or two above those in Uncharted 2. The mansion in particular, you'll know, the mansion on fire that you've seen in all the previews, it's uh, it's the scene of some truly breath-taking daredevil stunts that are mindblowing in execution. Thrill a minute is such a cliche, but it's exactly what they seem to have gone for, and they've pulled it off, god bless them.

However, with all that said...

The aiming in this game seems kinda janky. The first time I got the silenced pistol, I ended up missing all over the place. Just feels stiff for some reason. And at close range, the enemies can actually run across your screen faster then your aiming can keep up. Perhaps that's why they beefed up the melee, because they knew their aiming was so shit that enemies would be able to run right past your gunfire.

Enemies also don't seem to react to getting shot now, which is strange because they did in Uncharted 2. They'd double over in pain and stagger around. Now, they just keep shooting you. They aren't even wearing body armor or anything, most of the are just dudes in business suits. Lots and lots of guards in business suits in this game. You pump them full of lead and they'll die, but you'd hope for a bit of a reaction in the interim.

Well, finally met Elena. Boy, they really messed up on her face this time. She doesn't even look like the same person anymore. It's almost as if she really did get some sort of botched facelift or something. Her eyes are completely different. It's distracting, to the point where I didn't even know what was going on in the cutscene, I just kept scrutinizing her freakish new face. It's like a car wreck, you just can't look away. She looked so great in Uncharted 1 and 2, and now it's like someone painted a mustache on the Mona Lisa, they ruined a masterpiece. If it were a completely new character and I'd never seen Elena Fisher before in my life, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem, but I have seen Elena Fisher before, and she looked nothing like this. It's almost as bad as the transformation of Nicole Brenner from Dead Space 1 to Dead Space 2.

Naughty Dog figured out how to update the details and assets of Sully and Drake, but completely dropped the ball on Elena. It's like they hired a complete newb of a 3D modeler for this third outing. The voice is the same, the personality is the same, but it all just feels incredibly jarring coming out of this bizarre new face.