Of all the numerous videogames coming out this packed holiday season, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception probably has it the hardest. There are plenty of sequels coming out this year that have to live up to their hype and great predecessors, Uncharted 3 is a different case entirely though. The PlayStation 3 exclusive franchise has only been around for five years, but in that short amount of time, the series has racked up an impressive history. In 2007, developer Naughty Dog (you might remember them from the Crash Bandicoot series. Or not) released the first game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. The series didn’t really kick off, however, until 2009 with the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which gained critical acclaim for its outstanding mix of huge action set pieces and emotional depth and character development, something that 99.9% of other videogames are sorely lacking. Of course, Uncharted 3 carries the torch of a surprisingly great story, telling as well as continuing the story of the main character, fortune hunter Nathan Drake. You can think of him as a modern day Indiana Jones since that’s essentially what the Uncharted series is. He’s joined by his mentor/sort-of adoptive father Victor “Sully” Sullivan and romantic interest Elena Fisher on a journey following the steps of T.E. Lawrence, A.K.A. Lawrence Of Arabia. On their trip to find the “Atlantis of the sand,” however, they run into Katherine Marlowe, an old English lady who somehow has control of an entire organization of shady dudes in suits and seems to know more about Drake than even he does.
My previous comparison to Indiana Jones isn’t completely unfounded, however, as much like its predecessor, Uncharted 3 draws more from film than it does from videogames. Every intense action scene from Uncharted 3, from a giant cruise ship capsizing to a cargo plane crashing in the desert, seems like they could be featured in an upcoming summer movie. What Uncharted does better than most summer movies, however, is give the story an emotional core. Again, much like the second game, Naughty Dog has created characters that you care about. Nathan Drake isn’t some invincible space marine or an Italian stereotype in overall’s and a red hat; he’s the every-man. Granted he survives insane fire fights and explosions that should kill most people, but there is always a strong emotional core to what is happening and the developers clearly know that, showing how he first met Sully in a Last Crusade-esque flashback and delving deeper into the “will they won’t they” relationship between him and Elena (of course they will. Don’t be stupid).
If all this “competent story-telling” nonsense sounds boring to you, though, don’t worry because of course there’s plenty of shooting and blowing-stuff-up to be had as well, with great shooting mechanics and a vastly improved combat system that won’t make it feel like you’re punching through three walls of jello. All these improvements are especially apparent in multi-player. Naughty Dog has made significant improvements to the simplistic multi-player offerings Uncharted 2 had to offer. Uncharted 3’s multi-player now enables you to customize a character and a kick-back system, which gives you a reward of your choosing after attaining a certain amount of kills. It won’t exactly give Call of Duty a run for it’s money, but the multi-player is a great diversion after you beat the single-player story, and I can’t wait to finish this review to play it some more.
So I’ve heaped all this praise on Uncharted 3 so it must be perfect, right? Well, yes and no. In a vacuum, you could easily say that Uncharted 3 is without a doubt one of the greatest videogames of this generation (and it is). However, Uncharted 2 came before it and completely reshaped the genre, making everything Uncharted 3 does seem like an imitation of what came before. Still, Uncharted 3 is a highly recommendable experience and an amazing game, but seemingly only because Uncharted 2 was also.