Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Review

I celebrated Australia Day by playing about seven hours of Uncharted 3 on my brother’s Shiny Black Monolith (PS3).  The fact that I was able to finish the whole game in one day with a short ‘2 Minute Noodle Break’ should give you an idea of what I thought of Drake’s Deception.

Firstly; No.  No no no no.  You cannot have your character fall out of a plane, land in the middle of the desert, walk for dozens of hours without food or water, hallucinate and then fight off a battalion of soldiers while rolling, shooting and climbing his way around.  No.  Stupid.

Secondly; Uncharted 3 wants to be a movie.  It’s like Naughty Dog intended to make the series a trilogy of movies but resorted to an interactive medium to strike at a growing market.  It’s flooded with cut scenes which I always have an instant stigma against since it’s the non-game part of a game.  Yet, the gameplay still effectively fades in from a cinematic or flawlessly slides its way into the action.  This creates a distinct flow that continues throughout most of the journey.  Unfortunately, because these moments occur so frequently, it’s hard to tell whether you can even control Drake or not.  I couldn’t control Drake when he shot someone, yet I didn’t do anything while he was falling out of a plane, causing me to plummet to my sandy death.  If you put down the controller to watch the cinematics you’ll have to lunge for it when the interactive elements jumps back to the spotlight.

The climbing, shooting and puzzle-ing aspect is here again but it doesn’t pace itself quite like Uncharted 2.  All the sections are spaced relatively well to each other but there’s too much of everything, so it goes for too long and clogs up the experience.  This may be because I played it all in one day, but I started and finished Uncharted 2 about 2.5 times in a week and it never got tiresome.  I do more than just play games by the way.

I’ve never been that instinctive with puzzles in games and fortunately those moments are deceptively scarce here.  My favourite, or least despised, involved standing in a specific spot to hold a map up to correctly align it with objects in the room.  That is simple and dynamic, with a clear goal and way of achieving it.  When I know what needs to be done but can’t finish it because the tools are so obscure or fidgety it crushes the momentum and any enthusiasm I had.  Every single puzzle section puts such a halt on everything and you’d think the ancient civilization would just have their massive door made with a key lock instead of huge gears, levers, pillars and conveniently climbable objects.

There’s essentially no innovation here.  You could say “Don’t fix what’s not broken”, but I can say “I could play Uncharted 2 and get the exact same experience, except better.”  Drake still finds himself in sporadically varying environments which does make the experience as a whole more intriguing and vibrant, but the sheer size of everything can get very obnoxious.  Although the graphics are absolutely unbelievable, the buildings, ships and everything else that’s randomly broken is mostly seen as something that can be climbed to get out of.  The camera does pull back to give you very awe-inspiring shots but you’ll always be looking for some overly convenient thing to grab onto so not only is that difficult because you can barely see yourself but it’s seen as a truncated puzzle and not just a pretty location.  What makes the too few chase scenes incredibly enjoyable is that you’re instinctively using clearly placed objects to guide you to someone running along the same path.  It’s timed, which adds tension, and the objects that are placed like ramps are more useful in that situation than Drake climbing up something where his arm tells you if you can do it. 

Fighting was arguably my least favourite part.  Enemies throw grenades like ‘hot potatoes’ and Nathan Drake controls like a horse, so taking cover and fighting multiple targets is stiff, clunky and sometimes incredibly annoying.  The guns also have aiming that's a little too realistic for my taste.  When you finally blow up a truck or even kill a single enemy it’s satisfying, mainly because it’s one less annoying part of the situation.  Brawls with single targets are realistic and intuitive for the first couple hours of the game.  After that point you’ll realize how Drake constantly uses the same set of moves and counters, so fighting become a tedious pattern you’ll have to adamantly endure until the enemy goes down after an arbitrary amount of kicks in the jewels.  I was playing on easy yet some people can take ridiculous amounts of damage, even when you shoot them in the face.  Drake himself can take obscene rounds punishment while automatically healing his bullet wounds like a snarky Wolverine.  It feels like BioShock, in that ammo is scarce, certain enemies are hard to take down and when you shoot someone they show no feedback and red paint spurts out of them like you shot a bleeding pimple.  This, sometimes, can make for very tense conditions because it forces you to resort to guns and tactics you wouldn’t comfortably use.  Other times it’s infuriating but the autosaves are common enough to not shatter enjoyment, kinda. 

The characters are charismatic in a pretty superfluous way.  They can shine in particular moments, mostly at the start and end, but they usually just vomit out adventurous quips and exposition that I barely listen to.  It’s surprising what particular characters set up and never expand on.  One of the first people you meet is shown to be claustrophobic.  You see him get anxious in tight areas which makes him feel wonderfully human, but then he vanishes before the half way point and is barely mentioned again.  We also play Nathan Drake as a child and see how he met his friend and pseudo-mentor Sulley, but nothing really comes of it, we just see how they met, with bombastically climactic results.  We also learn that Nathan Drake isn’t Drake’s real name, but it’s brought up out of nowhere as if we’re supposed to just ride that sentence to some meaningful conclusion that the game never gives us.  There are even some ‘trippy’ moments when Drake gets drugged and these actually clash with the ‘real’ moments in an entertaining way, if just to see something different.  But nothing even comes of that, he either runs through a Middle Eastern market for what feels like seven minutes or the game (spoilers) makes you think a character is dead until it just goes “Nope, it was ALLLLLLL a dream”.

My favourite moment from the whole game is when you control Nathan walking in the desert.  It’s just that; Nathan walking in the desert.  The length of the moment and the fact that it’s essentially right on the front cover makes it clear the developers were proud of it.  They should be.  I’m glad they put in such a serene segment since every other time you’re falling, shooting, doing a puzzle or jumping off things just before they dramatically break apart.  I really felt for Drake in this situation, especially when he finds a well for a second time and realizes he’s been going in circles.  When he finally finds a city I almost started crying, ‘manly crying’…you know?  When your eyes get moist but nothing drips out…I probably could have worded that better…anyway.   

If you liked the other Uncharted games then you’ll like this, because it’s stayed exactly the same.  The situations are still grossly ludicrous but still enjoyable.  The mechanics of climbing huge structures is user friendly and simple, while the controls can make combat unintentionally difficult.  I would actually recommend playing it on VERY EASY.  Guns and ammo are sparse enough to make virtually every combat scenario effective/annoying and it’s not like the game being hard makes a chapter taking place in a boat graveyard more redundant.