If you liked Uncharted 2 ...
Then you might like this one or you might now. Liking Uncharted 3 really isn't a problem, because there is a lot of content in a single package that you're bound to like at least a part of it.
First and foremost, Uncharted 3's single player campaign is the first menu item and probably the most anticipated part of the game. It begins with Nathan Drake trying to obtain the second half of a piece of a puzzle. It's eventually explained through flashback sequences that he has been searching for this piece for several years. This had me questioning the events of the first two games, but I largely dismissed that notion and continued onward. What I found was a strikingly, but also expected, similar game compared to Uncharted 2. There are several set-piece moments to the point of almost becoming nauseating, believable and brilliant character interactions, and settings that look breathtaking one after the other. These moments are sometimes separated by some cool puzzles, but there aren't enough of them this time around. It's easy to say that this game looks amazing. It is one of the best looking games I have ever played thus far, and it deserves any compliments thrown at it because of it.
However, Uncharted 3 is not all set-pieces and clever lines. Sooner or later, the game will have you shooting at A.I. opponents, and that is, sadly, where the experience does not hold up completely. First, the way the recoil affects the player reticule makes for unbearable accuracy at times. Having a gun that sporadically jumps around at random makes Drake feel more like an amateur than a fair challenge. Second, the enemies seem to pile in some of the areas making them feel more like challenge rooms than exciting firefights in amazing-looking environments. And lastly, the game's difficulty shoots through the roof at times which makes some parts extremely frustrating. The armored enemies are no more than bullet sponges and are not fun to fight at all. They, and each point I just mentioned, all feel like weak attempts at making the game more challenging which cause them to feel cheap. I was tempted to put the game on an easier setting, but instead trudged along dying multiple cheap deaths on the normal difficulty setting.
This time around the singleplayer is completely separate from the multiplayer modes. You won't be earning currency for completing various challenges or for collecting treasures (there are still a lot to collect) like in Uncharted 2, but the worst offender is the absence of cheats to unlock that vary the singleplayer experience after you complete it. Beating the second game was a lot of fun, and the cheats made it very re-playable Unfortunately, there is almost nothing here to pull you in for the adventure for a second time, but I suppose that's where the multiplayer would come in to play.The multiplayer is separated, but not completely, into the cooperative modes and the competitive modes. The cooperative experience is great and the star of the show is definitely the coop adventure mode. This mode takes Nathan Drake and two allies on adventures that allow for a lot more variety than any of the other modes. It's a lot of fun, but it sadly only has about 4-6 missions and they are not as fun to replay them a second time. That is to say, they are not much fun to replay as the cooperative arena mode. This is a standard horde mode, but paired with the traversal and enemy types can lead to some enjoyable and extremely challenging moments.
If you'd rather shoot real people, the competitive modes have not had many additions, but are still tense and exciting as they were in Uncharted 2. There are around a dozen maps that have almost all been taken from the campaign, and some of them even have moments taken from the campaign - like buildings that catch on fire, and shooting from a moving plane. The only thing that might make this more frustrating is the recoil that was added to the game. It might just take some getting used to, but I found the recoil to be pretty random and unsatisfying in the time I spent with it. A fun new feature is the ability to collect treasures to complete treasure sets which open up new items to use.
Regardless of everything that Uncharted 2 did, Uncharted 3 just feels like a game that is trying to one-up something else. There are a lot of crazy sequences that, when looked at after finishing the last one, feel somewhat exhausting. Nathan Drake is definitely still a human being, but if he ends up escaping certain death much more, it wouldn't be far off to call him somewhat of a superhero. If you liked or loved Uncharted 2, then you'll definitely like some things about Uncharted 3. However, regardless if you have or you haven't, there is a 'been there, done that' feel to a lot of it that makes it a bit less impressive than its predecessor.
