Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Review
“Here we go again.” Nathan Drake is back in an all new thrilling masterpiece that is a complete joy to play from start to finish. Uncharted 3 is the sole reason why I own a PlayStation 3. It such a fun and engaging game. My only complaint is where is the sequel?
The game is a masterpiece just simply waiting to be recognized. Very little in the game is “new” and nothing we haven’t seen before, but it is the most refined and enticing entry I’ve seen yet. Drake’s Fortune gave us a thrilling single-player adventure, Among Thieves cleaned up the single-player and tacked on some multiplayer, Drake’s Deception gave us an awe inspiring mixture of both!
Just like before, the story kicks off on a high note, but it is a little different from before. We don’t find Drake dangling from train, but in a barroom fighting a group of thugs after a deal goes bad. It’s also here where we meet the game’s villain, Katherine Marlowe, a devious English woman whom I think has easily become the most memorable villain in the series yet.
The plot, summed up as best as possible, revolves around an ancient 16th century artifact that Drake already knows is tied into a lost part of Sir Francis Drake’s life. The queen of England sent Francis on some sort of secret mission to find the lost city of Ubar in Syria. The bad guys are after what Francis had found, Drake is trying to prevent them and beat them to it.
The real story however in Uncharted 3 is the one between the lines, relationships. Spoiler, the returning relationship between Drake and Elena Fisher are back and we learn that they were once engaged in the time-span between Uncharted 2 and 3! Something not told to us went wrong and the two went their separate ways. The real emphasis though is concerning the relationship between Drake and Sully. The game traces the relationship all the way to it’s roots, to where the pair first met! I was excited to see Sully return as a big character this time around, something that seemed to be lost in Among Thieves. By the end of the game, I felt ever so closer to Drake and Sully.
Another thing Naughty Dog always seems to nail is the high-octane blockbuster thrills. They’re back in an even bigger dose than ever before. At times, you’ll be navigating through a sinking cruise ship, dangling by the last thread from a cargo ship in mid-flight, or even chasing down an armored convoy on horseback! The game has dozens of these nerve-racking sequences that could easily serve as the single highlight of any other game.
While I’d never doubt Naughty Dog’s ability to deliver nerve racking thrills and a compelling story, gameplay is where they’d always seemed to struggle. Before we go over the few missteps I found in the game, lets cover the good stuff first. First off, the sometimes insanely difficult puzzles are back, whether you like them or not, and are once again both a thrill and a headache to solve. Melee combat is also make a triumphant return, polished up to become one of my favorite parts of the game. The various different animations that occur are all either very cool, or even comical to watch.
Now for the bad news. Gunplay, never something that seemed to be a shining beacon in the game, is obviously back, but it seemed to have taken a step backwards rather than the direct if needs to, forwards. I personally think it’s because of the animations. Naughty Dog seemed to make a huge effort to throw an insane amount of animations into the game, all of which I liked, but they seemed to dumb down the gameplay. In multiplayer, many of the animations were “switched off” and the gunplay is surprisingly more cooperative. Also, I found the control to be a tad bit “ridged.” I often messed up or died when climbing up walls or even when jumping into cover mid-combat. The game just failed to act out what I wanted to do in some cases. If I wanted to jump to the ledge next to me, every now and then he would simply miss the ledge and fall to his death when he should have made it.
Just when I thought the graphics in Uncharted could get any better, Naughty Dog proved me wrong even when against all odds at trying to beat Among Thieves. To say that the graphics in Uncharted 3 are unparalleled is an understatement. I didn’t expect much improvement from the graphics going into the game because I thought they couldn’t get any better. But once I saw the rolling waves of the ocean rocking the cruise ship back and forth, or the sand skimming atop the surface of the desert, I was sold. Even the little things such as the smoked trail of a bullet zipping through the air only added to the game’s visual appeal.
Uncharted 3 is also backed by yet another masterful score that only enhances the drama portrayed in the story. The game is also backed up with what I think is the most phenomenal cast of video game voice actors in history.
However, the biggest surprise I found in Uncharted 3 was the multiplayer component. In one day I had poured just as much time into in as I had in the single player adventure, which is about 8 hours long. Both competitive and cooperative modes are available to play. You have the standard, team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc., but Naughty Dog adds in their own flair to the mixture to help the game stand amongst the numerous other multiplayer games out there. That flair is what Naughty Dog calls Boosters and Kickbacks.
Boosters just simply enhance your experience by awarding things such as reduced respawn time or increased climbing speed. Kickbacks, which are earned by acquiring in-match medals , will instantly spawn a weapon such as an RPG or even allow you to earn double the cash for a limited time. Cash is used to buy more weapons, different kickbacks and boosters, or even cosmetic items!
This moves us in into one of my favorite parts of the multiplayer. As you rank up, you can customize your characters appearance with different cosmetic items, or you could simply slab on a character skin, meaning you could look like Nathan Drake from the desert, or even Sir Francis Drake himself! In skeleton form though. If you get bored of the standard multiplayer modes, you could jump into the game with a friend via online or splitscreen and play one of the three cooperative modes which include the classic survival where you’ll hunker down in one of the multiplayer maps and face the endless horde of enemies; or you could even try out a story driven coop mission!
Closing Comments
While the game did seem to feel a bit formulaic this time around, Uncharted 3 was still one of the greatest games I’ve gotten the chance to play and definitely marks itself down as the best in the series to date. The story is rich and engaging, graphics unmatched by anyone in the industry, all the while backed by some of the greatest voice actors in video games. Uncharted 3 is te perfect example of big-budget, triple-A game development at its finest.
