Nathan Drake returns with a slow start, but an excellent finish.
It seems like Nathan Drake takes a couple of years off between relic hunting. After coming across the ancient city of Shangri-La in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Nate's now hunting down the location of Ubar, also known as Iram of the Pillars, or The Atlantis of the Sands. The game begins with Drake and his long time partner Victor "Sully" Sullivan getting themselves into trouble in an England pub. A bar brawl breaks out, and once the two escape the alcohol-induced melee, they meet the game's villains: Talbot and his client Katherine Marlowe. They steal a ring from Drake that he wore closely around his neck, which in conjunction with a decoder, is the first of many clues revealing Ubar's location. Drake and Sullivan will run across some old friends as they chase the two down to reclaim the ring and eventually discover the hidden Atlantis of the Sands.
Unlike Uncharted 2, there's no great opening set piece. After the bar fight in London, the game whisks you away to Cartagena, Spain twenty years into the past. You take control of a young Nathan Drake and it's in this flashback sequence that you meet Victor Sullivan for the first time. This segment is integral to the game's storyline but as a result, Uncharted 3 starts off at a much slower pace than its predecessor. The game takes you all across the world, as any good Uncharted should, pitting you in Syria, France, Yemen and many other places. It isn't until halfway in the game, however, that the campaign hits its stride.
If you've played either of the previous two games, than Uncharted 3's formula will feel instantly familiar to you. It's a well-balanced mix of cover-based third-person shooting with environmental climbing interspersed with the occasional puzzles. When it's time to unholster your gun, you can duck behind crates, walls, barrels and many other solid objects to use cover popping out for the occasional potshot. Your enemies won't just sit idly by waiting to be killed, however, so they'll move around and flank your position. They'll toss grenades at you, but if you time it right, you can toss them right back at them for a quick and easy kill. You're still only allowed to pick up one one-handed weapon and one two-handed weapon, and the arsenal of weaponry is pretty much the same as it is in Uncharted 2.
When you're up close and personal, Nate can duke it out with his enemies, countering their attacks with well-timed button presses. It's neat to see how he disposes of the bad guys in proximity to what's in the environment, such as bashing someone over the head with a pot or pushing them off a ledge. The game also serves up some opportunities for stealth takedowns, yanking enemies from behind walls and over cover and dropping down on them from above. Just as with Uncharted 2, however, there are times that no matter how careful you are, there will always be at least one guard that will inexplicably detect you and raise the alarm. There's even an instance or two where your teammate will botch the job completely, being exposed and giving you away.
There are other rough patches with combat that still carry over from the previous games. It can be hard to aim precisely at times and the game requires such precision that your seemingly well-placed headshots have missed entirely. Enemies are still bullet sponges, taking far too many hits in their vital areas before going down. There are times where they don't react realistically to being shot, running without missing a step after being raked in the legs by an assault rifle. Plus, sluggish precision aim moving speed and shaky cameras continuously throwing your aim off makes the combat a bit too frustrating at times. It also needs to be said that developer Naught Dog needs to do away with having you press the triangle button to pick up ammo. It becomes cumbersome when you want to pick up ammo for a gun you love only to accidentally pick up a gun you hate. There should be no reason at all to not want to pick up more ammo automatically.
It's a good thing shootouts aren't the majority of the game, because it can get tiring, and Uncharted is all about stopping to smell the roses. This is where the game really shines, in climbing and observing your environments. Scenery changes from lush jungles to dilapidated villas to the rusty skeletons of a pirate ship graveyard. Climbing about natural and man-made structures is awe-inspiring thanks to the game's great camerawork. The camera always makes sure it gives you the best vantage point possible, sometimes panning back a hundred feet to let you take it all in. One of the game's highlights is the cruise ship level that slams the vessel with some amazing water, sure to induce a simultaneous feeling of hydrophobia and claustrophobia. Seeing yourself coming out of the ship as it's capsized on its side is a sight to behold.
There are also several free running sequences that either has Drake chasing after someone or fleeing from pursuers or some other form of impending doom. Just as with climbing, the camera does an admirable job directing you so you'll always know which way to turn and where to jump. There are less vehicle segments this time around, so Nate won't be taking down helicopters or tanks. The game compensates for this with a horseback riding sequence where Drake chases down a convoy, taking down motorcycles and yanking armed thugs off the back of trucks. Seeing Drake hop from his horse to a truck and then back to his horse is quite entertaining.
When things slow down and Drake isn't risking his neck climbing hundred foot tall vertical surfaces, he's pulling out his field journal to help him solve puzzles. For the most part, these puzzles are interesting and require a good bit of observation, but their logic is pretty simple. This has always been an area of untapped potential for the series, because most of the puzzles are pretty forgettable. The upside to puzzles that don't stump the players is that it keeps the pacing moving forward but for a tomb raiding game, the series that invented the genre, Tomb Raider, has always done it better.
Uncharted 3's multiplayer requires an online pass to activate, which will only be included in new copies of the game. It also includes a code for early access to the Starhawk multiplayer beta. For Uncharted 3's multiplayer offerings, you can play a handful of the campaign's levels in co-op, or you can play competitively in free-for-alls, team death matches, Plunder which is a capture the flag variant, or co-op modes that have you fighting waves of soldiers. You can also play some modes via LAN or split-screen should you choose. Multiplayer is fun for short bursts, but if you have the time to spare, it would be better spent enjoying the excellent single-player campaign again.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves raised the bar for console graphics and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception raises it higher. During the darker areas, it's hard to really appreciate the improvements, but when the game opens up and fills its richly detailed environments with sunlight, you'll begin to see. The textures are some of the best that the PS3's engine has churned out, and the game continues to excel with its special effects, notably its water. The cruise ship level displays some of the best ocean water ever seen in a game. The particle effects help create very realistic sand dunes of the parching Rub' al-Khali desert with some blinding sandstorms to boot.
Even more impressive to note is the outstanding facial animations during the cutscenes. They are incredibly lifelike, capturing every subtle lift of a cheek and every shift of an eye. The textures on the character models are so detailed that they reflect every wrinkle in Katherine Marlowe's face, every bit of stubble on Drake's five o'clock shadow and every stitch and fiber of his clothing. The only drawback to this game's visuals is yet another problem seen in its previous titles: the climbing animations. They are still a bit stiff and jerky, and it's a noticeable flaw that detracts from the game's otherwise perfect photo-realism.
Keeping up with the graphics, Uncharted 3's audio sounds amazing. The firefights are alive with gun reports, bullets ricocheting off armored soldiers, and rockets reducing stone structures to rubble. Drake goes deaf for a few seconds if he's unlucky to be next to a detonating grenade, which has always been a cool sound effect. The soundtrack is composed terrifically, most notably the desert-themed music full of Arabian-esque instruments and vocals. Another sign of a game with immense production value is the perfect voice acting. Nolan North reprises his role as Nathan Drake, and leads a cast of other returning voice actors to help tell the story.
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception has somehow managed to be stuck in the shadow cast by Among Thieves. The pacing is a large part of this, because it gets off to a slower start, saving the best levels for its later half. The final chapter, although exciting, also ends rather predictably making you feel like you've been through it before. Drake's Deception was also an opportunity to finally correct some minor flaws present since Drake's Fortune, so the product is a gleaming gemstone with a couple of stubborn blemishes. Still, the campaign offers up some incredibly memorable action sequences set atop some artistically and technically impressive level designs, and a handful of multiplayer and co-op modes will keep you playing after you've finished the single-player. Make no misconception about Drake's Deception; it's still very deserving to be in your collection.