Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
PlayStation 3
This is going to be a hard game for me to grade. I feel the first half of this game is just okay, while the second half is totally amazing.
Anyone who read my review of the previous game in the series, Uncharted 2, will know that I gave it a perfect score. Fabulous graphics, great gameplay, breathtaking action, awesome locales, and solid story line. The game was a masterpiece in nearly every way. You'd think that the makers of the game would have been able to build on what made the last game so great, and really turn Uncharted 3 into a truly sensational title.
I do feel as if this is a good game, but it comes nowhere close to the majesty of its predecessor. What went wrong? Let me tell you.
We will start with the story. The story is about as basic as they possibly come. The bad guys are looking for the same treasure that Nate is, and it is a race to see who gets there first. Been there, done that in the last two games as well as every Indiana Jones movie ever created. There is nothing about the story line here that makes it stand out in any way whatsoever. The deeper I got into the game, the less invested I became. And that should never, ever happen in a game as dependent on story line as Uncharted.
They do a few nice things with the story, however. Chloe and Elena both come back, which makes for an interesting dynamic. It is explained through playable flashbacks how Nate and Sully hooked up and became such good friends. And a new character who is a mole for the bad guys in the game is introduced.
But still, none of these added wrinkles were enough to distract from me the fact that this game basically has the same story line as the last two games. Maybe I would have enjoyed the story more if the locales you visit in this game were as rich and varied as the last title, but they are not. A lot of these areas, especially early in the game, seem like tired rehashes. Middle Eastern cities, crumbling castles, rain forests... oh look! Nate is falling and crashing through something again. Yeah yeah. We have seen this all before.
The first half of the game is painfully slow. Lots of uninteresting dialogue, an uninspired story line, and none of the same high flying action that the series is known for. The game was taking itself too seriously, and seemed to have all of the fun from the previous installments completely sucked out of it. I had to actually start the game over from the beginning because I lost interest about 8 chapters in and didn't pick up the game again until several months later. By then, I had forgotten everything going on up to this point in the game.
Right before I started to lose hope, the game began to improve. It started turning back into the Uncharted I had come to know and love. It started with great action, and a great locale. Swimming is something that hasn't really been explored in the series before, and in this game it plays a major role. The stage where I truly started to finally enjoy the game prominently features your ability to swim. There is a ship graveyard in the ocean, and you have to swim through it, pulling yourself up onto ship husks, taking out enemies as you go. I tried to complete this area stealthily, but I quickly got found out and it turned into a massive fire fight. It's a big environment, enemies are everywhere, and the graphics look beautiful.
I was like - YES. This is awesome. This is the Uncharted I have been waiting for. Action quickly moves aboard a large cruise vessel. More fighting, more awesome gun play. Eventually the ship sinks and it is a race to get out before it goes down. Water is everywhere, things are upside down, you are having to climb for your life. It is very intense.
The game is pretty action packed from here on out. There is a great sequence where you are forced to jump off a car and board a moving plane. There is a series of fun battles aboard the plane before it goes down. The cinematic quality is great here. The action top of the line.
When the ship crashes, Nate is stranded in the desert. There isn't much action here but this whole segment of the game I found pretty cool. He wanders around, looking for safety. Hallucinating and having flashbacks. Eventually he finds his underground city, just like Uncharted 2. Only this one is golden instead of lush and green. He saves Sully, kills the bad guys, and saves the day.
Game over.
Wait, what? The game finally starts to get good, and then it ends? This title seemed very, very short compared to the previous games. It felt as if I had beat it in record time. It definitely left a lingering, very unsatisfied feeling in my mind.
In no way is this game as good as Uncharted 2. I even question whether it was as good as the first game. It takes things FAR too long to get going here - and then once they do - the game ends.
This game did a lot of things right. The boat graveyard and the cruise ship sinking: awesome. The plane boarding and subsequent crash: awesome. The lost in the desert scenes: awesome. But everything else is just so bland. If the game had been a blast from the very beginning, this could very well have earned a very high score. Instead it seemed like I came away with only half of a really good game. And a very short one at that.
I know that multiplayer is probably a big part of the game's appeal, but I don't do multiplayer much. Especially when you have to pay for it. I think the game came across as so short and uninspired to me because Naughty Dog focused too much time on the multiplayer aspect of the game and not enough time on creating a lengthy and satisfying single player experience. Maybe if I was a multiplayer person, I would have enjoyed this more.
I want to love the game, I really do. Like I said, it does things right. The game is just as good looking as ever, the controls and the combat are spot on. There are even some added abilities like throwing enemy grenades back at them. But this just feels like too much of a retread for me.
It needed a better story line. It needed some more fun, exotic locales. It needed to be longer. It needed to be deeper. It needed to have a little more variety to its gameplay. It needed to up the ante, raise the bar, like its predecessor did. Instead it felt like it took a major step back from the second Uncharted. Granted, Uncharted 2 was an epic game that would have been hard to improve upon. But that doesn't excuse the seemingly lackluster amount of innovation that was put into this.
Does half a game a good game make? Sort of.
It's aiiiight.
Overall:
C+
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