Uncharted 3
If you own a PlayStation 3, the Uncharted series really needs no introduction, unless of course you yourself have been on safari for the past 4 years. Recently, Naughty Dog released their third adventure in the franchise, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
The Uncharted games play out like a modern day Indiana Jones adventure. There are great landscapes, sweeping stories that make you traverse the world, and there is always the hunt for buried treasure. The series follows protagonist Nathan “Nate” Drake, often referred to as PS3’s mascot, as he travels the globe looking for lost treasures. Nathan Drake is a cross in character between Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Nate is often accompanied by his friend and mentor Victor “Sully” Sullivan, love interest Elena Fisher, and fellow adventurer Chloe Frazer. It is the characters, and their interactions that make the Uncharted games very enjoyable. To watch these relationships develop, and this latest game fleshes out our characters even more. The story here is by far the greatest thing about the game. The script is both well written and well acted.
The first adventure, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, introduced us to the fact that Nate was descended from Sir Francis Drake and much of Nate’s personal quest is a need to discover his ancestor’s true history. This doesn’t change in this latest game with Nate’s motives are to clearly retrace Sir Francis Drake’s journey through Asia, regardless of the risk to himself or to those around him.
A trade mark of the Uncharted games is the quest to look for buried treasure. To tie in with the treasure hunting, there are typically historical figures whose path we follow. The first game made us search for El Dorado after looking for Sir Francis Drake; the second game had us following the footsteps of Marco Polo looking for Shambhala (also known as Shangri-La); and in this game we are using the journals of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) hunting for Iram of the Pillars, often referred to as the Atlantis of the Sands.
The graphics of the game are unparalleled. When going out to dinner recently and talking about video games, one of my friends mentioned that she saw a commercial for a game that looked so much like a movie that she was surprised when it turned out to be for a game. This pretty much sums up the beautiful scenery in Uncharted. While the story has to take us all over the world, the game visuals have to be just as exciting and just as grand. Thankfully, the game’s production team and artists have taken up the challenge have bettered themselves each time around. Also, while the visuals can compete with any film, the audio is just as superb. Not only the voice acting, but also the sounds of the weapons, the ambience of the environment, and the instrumental score draws the player in for a great adventure.
Like the audio and video, the game play makes the player feel like they are interacting with a movie, for better and for worse. There are too many moments where the player is taken out of the game for a conversation – or for a quick cut scene – and can seem distracting at times. Uncharted is very similar to the Tomb Raider games in that there is a lot of exploration, jumping around, pulling levers, and solving puzzles to get to the next area in the game. There is also wave after wave of enemy that comes at you guns blazing.
There have always been two things that have always bothered me about the game play in Uncharted. The first is the combat. I have never really enjoyed the way the shooting system has worked, but the one thing the developers emphasized more in this later game was melee combat. It was very simple one-button attack, and one-button counters and made the game more enjoyable for me. The second thing I have never enjoyed was that in the previous games you would be attacked by some sort of mutant/superhuman creature. Unfortunately, this latest game follows the same trend with Djinn, which are supernatural creatures from Arab folklore.
The game plays out like a movie, albeit a well written, funny, and well acted movie, but at times it can drag down the game play. Now to say all these things is really nitpicking because in the end, Naughty Dog has developed the best game in the Uncharted series with their third instalment. I not only enjoyed the story the most but I preferred the set pieces than ever before. I can only say that as the series has progressed, the games have gotten better and better, and this is truly the apex of the series thus far.
