Uncharted 3:Drake's Frustration
The animation of Drake's every movement is the best in gaming history. For once we have a character who actually feels alive rather than controlled by the gamer. Drake is animated in every action. if he is walking next to a wall he will touch it, if he is in a desert island he will walk tired, if he needs to be stealthy his body movement will change, if he is just standing still he will even look around and so on and so on. This type of animation is superior to anything I have seen before as I really put extra effort in helping Drake reach his goal. The game also has lovely changes in the environment. I have found myself in a position where I was in a ship only for it to cap size and provide me a different perspective of the environment. (Although they over did it with the in game cutscenes as I couldn't tell when I was controlling Drake or not).
The acting and characters as usual are interesting and performed just as well as the previous games with Drake and Sully staring. I'm glad to see more of Sully as him and Drake's banter can be hilarious at times and you really see they have a close father son relationship.
Now onto Drake's frustration
Drake cannot even get a drink of water without having to deal with a shoot out. Too many times in the latter stages of the game you will have to deal with waves after waves of enemies, poor ai and cheap deaths. The enemies seem to not care if they die as they charge straight at you instantly drawing your attention while others try to flank you. I felt like the developers ran out of ideas as the platforming and puzzle elements started to take more and more of a back seat as the game progressed. It's like this you go into a room there is two guys with snipers, done, cutscene developers think "hey lets add 3 snipers and a grenade launcher", so then you deal with that wave as well. Its cutscene, shoot out, cutscene shoot out with only changes to design. I was even interested in the stealth elements but then they turn into shootouts as well as if they lied to me about doing things stealthily. The good thing was that the combat has been greatly improved but the problem is because it is long enemies can force you into it while you're getting flanked which leads to frustration but combat is still one of the highlights of the game.
In the end I felt the game seemed to follow more closely to the first Uncharted as Drake has to constantly deal with wave after wave of enemies rather than mixing the platforming and the shootouts like Uncharted 2. Despite these problems I do feel presentation wise it has pushed the boundaries and the animation is superb in how it changes the environments and how Drake body language changes within different situations. It really is a great game but doesn't mix up the gaming style as it feels more like a shooter in the final hours which stops it from being better than Uncharted 2. You can hate my opinion on the game but at least I have backed it reasons while acknowledging some of the better points of the game and it is good but not as good as it could have been.