The third in the PS3 trilogy, once again Uncharted blows you away with its graphics. Although like Drake's Fortune, it seems to take on a shiny gleam and makes it look a bit less realistic than it could. The environments are super detailed... which makes it fairly hard (even harder than previous games) to quickly scout out the enemies' positions to fire, and also makes it harder to figure out which way to go when platforming. There seems to be a lot of white jagged edges around objects and its easy to get motion sickness when scouting an area where all the sunlight and reflections shine back to you. Going into the game play, Uncharted 3 keeps the combination of shooting, platforming and puzzle-solving. The shooting mechanic seems a little bit more slippery and not as tight as Uncharted 2. It seems less... responsive. The firing of a shot doesn't feel as satisfying but it's hard to pinpoint the exact reason as to why this is. In order to spice things up a bit, Naughty Dog has put a higher emphasis on melee combat and fleshed it out more. Although I find that the camera likes to swing wildly to give you dramatic angles, but it gets in the way. Melee combat also doesn't feel terribly satisfying, it feels like it tries to be much more complex but it's stuck in the limbo between a satisfying but basic system, and a complex system.
It takes away from the game when you end up using it to fight off some damage soaking enemies. You have no choice when these enemies like to charge at you with a shotgun. Melee combat also plays a big role in the final boss battle (which is extremely disappointing) and this clunky system does not satisfy. The gunfights, in the middle of the game (where it starts to get numerous, throwing wave after wave at you), gets annoying when the developer chucks snipers, rocket launchers and armored guys at you. The intention is to make the fights more varied but it just gets frustrating. It feels like Uncharted 3 had more frustrating battles one after another than the first two games (I'm playing on the same difficulty for all three games). It isn't fun and I swear that the armored enemies soak up even more damage than before, such that it feels useless shooting at them. If you thought Drake's Fortune had bullet sponges for enemies, then Uncharted 3 can feel worse at times. What's even more infuriating is that the developers know this, they have Nathan spout out lines that I have been thinking all the time, such as "where do these guys come from" and "not again". There are some difficulty spikes towards the end of the game where the gunfights feel very unfair and a cheap way to extend the game.
What's even worse is that you get these enemies that are so much more powerful than anything you have encountered. SPOILER ALERT: Not only can these enemies teleport, they soak up insane amounts of bullets, constantly rushing at you, flanking you, coming in at great numbers, chucks bloody exploding fireballs that are one-shot kills AND the developers thought it was great idea to arm them with powerful weapons. It was frustrating and to beat them, you have to follow what the developer wants you to do, since they made these enemies weak to a few specific weapons. Be prepared to rage in those final moments as you die again and again. SPOILERS END. In terms of the other types of gameplay, the puzzles are more varied and slightly tougher but sometimes they can be a little bit abstract which breaks the flow. However, the game does give you an option to reveal the solution for you if you take too long. Some of the puzzles still feel arbitrary, especially when Drake finds some super hidden area (that has been hidden for hundreds to thousands of years), but a few minutes later, all the bad guys does too and another shoot out begins. The series is starting to get stale, since it feels like when Drake is platforming, they're using the "Drake nearly falls off as the thing he is holding onto starts to detach" method, which was great in the first game and now it just gets repetitive and predictable. Drake also does a lot of running away while the platforms are collapsing, and this is not a good thing.
The platforming feels clunky compared to its contemporaries, easier to ignore in the first two games but now, Naughty Dog should really refine the mechanics such as the jumps and speeding things up during those sections. It doesn't feel as smooth and fluid as it could, I found myself all too often having Drake jump up and down when hanging off a wall just because it couldn't detect the ledge I wanted him to jump to. The cover system also gets in the way at times, when you want to get out of cover and roll somewhere, now, since the same button includes even more functions such as grabbing an enemy, you might take cover when you don't want to, or you might want to roll out of the way fast but end up grappling an enemy. It gets too messy. Now, finally, onto the story component, which is traditionally one of the stronger elements. The story is very intriguing and it sucks you in right from the start, and although in terms of gameplay, the first two or three chapters weren't the most exciting, it's worthwhile just to see how the story is set up. The story feels different in tone to what had come before it and considering that Nathan is now searching for treasure that is related to his ancestor, Francis Drake, again, it feels surprising that he's only onto something this big, this late. This is especially considering the events of Uncharted where he found Drake's treasure already.
The story then stalls during the middle, as they always do but nothing of interest or dramatic gets revealed, Nathan meets another bad guy and now must get out trouble, la-di-da. They seriously need to ramp things up a bit. The middle chapters can be taken out and still wouldn't affect the story overall, the ending was disappointing. Basically, Uncharted 3 started out great but it dropped the ball very soon after. Marlowe and Talbot cannot even compare to Uncharted 2's Lazarevic, they were very cardboard and feel more like douches that just feel like stuffing Drake for the sake of it. They also never explained many things that they brought up earlier in the game. The story and environments also feel similar to the past games, such that it does not surprise you anymore. All the twists remain familiar, there's no novelty factor here anymore. What's sad is that the characters' interactions with each other at the beginning of the game were great, and definitely the highlight, but then they take it away and this dulls the game a lot. I loved Cutter's one-liners, which were extremely funny. They were gold and it made each scene definitely more interesting and fun to watch.
While the supernatural element has been toned down, the developers still found a way to put some supernatural enemies in here. It wasn't fun when Nathan was in that state he was in. There were a lot of sections where you experience Nathan being woozy and drugged, they weren't fun. They also put in a whole chapter with Nathan wondering around in the desert, it went on for far too long. That's what Uncharted 3 felt like, it went for too long. The story is not gripping and you lose your interest quickly. They had some great side characters at the start but then shoves them away in favour of only Nathan and Sully, who aren't the most interesting pair of characters in the game. They were also noticeably more minor bugs than in previous games. A disappointing game and I personally think it is the worst of the current trilogy, with cheap and infuriating gunfights, unsatisfying melee combat, clunky cover and platforming sections and a dull story. I had never loved the Uncharted series, but Uncharted 3 just made me become more wary of the series in the future. It feels like they tried too hard to top the second one, to wow the players and create intense moments, but improving some aspects just made many more worse.
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