How do you improve on a game that is arguably one of the best of the past decade? Uncharted 2 had an amazing story, amazing characters and improved on the game play from the first game in almost every way. The answer is you really can’t, but considering all the accolades that game received why change anything at all?
Regenfall has had the pleasure of reviewing the past two games in the Uncharted series, but this time around it’s my turn. Uncharted 3 starts off, as usual, with you and your merry band of treasure hunters looking for another lost treasure. There are witty remarks, lots of jumping, even more shooting, and of course, treasure. I should start this off by saying that Uncharted 2 was a 5 out of 5. The game was absolutely amazing and even months after beating it I can’t really think of a flaw, actually after beating this game I just want to go back and play the second one again. I loved just about everything about that game to the point of my jealous fellow reviewer calling me a fan boy, but hey besides Mass Effect 2 I can’t think of a better game than Uncharted 2 in the last few years.
Uncharted 3 does not deviate from the set up of the past game. The same characters are there, plus a few new ones. Basically Drake is at it again, trying to find a treasure that he has been looking for his whole life; this quest is what brought Drake and his long time mentor and partner Sully together in the first place. This game story revolves almost completely around Nathan Drakes and Victor Sullivan’s relationship. There is a flashback sequence describing how they met, and they whole game centers around Nate running around with Sully or running after him.
If I had to guess Naughty Dog probably heard of lot of people say that Sully wasn’t enough of a main character in the last games, this time Sully is pretty much your only partner in crime, and something that I thought detracted from the game a little. Chole is in the game for a few missions and Elena(who is now Drake wife) plays an even smaller role only appearing in 3 of the games 22 missions. I longed for a female presence in this game, similar to Uncharted 2. There was something about having at least one heroine in tow throughout the whole game which I thought brought some good dynamics to the dialog last time around.
As much as I feel like I should lower this games score because of that fact I can’t knock it. I hope that the next game will go back to featuring Elena a little bit more, but I think that Naughty Dog was trying to focus on building up the whole cast of characters and I can’t blame them for that. Part of me missed the female leads and that dynamic a lot, but I also understand that Elena in particular has been the star of the last two games so I’m sure some fans wanted a change. However, Elena and Drake are now married and currently separated so I thought that would have led to some great dialog, but it didn't until the end. I’m hoping in the next one she goes back to playing a larger role even if she has to share the spotlight with Sully. That being said it is a great ride and it does explain how much each character means to each other which will strengthen the entire series in the long run.
Ok, so this time around you are competing with another treasure hunter, who actually brought Nate and Sully together 20 years ago. I wasn’t as pissed at the enemy this time, they did some shitty things but nothing really angered me. This game did introduce numerous missions where you were hallucinating which brought an interesting twist to a somewhat “tired” formula of fighting bad guys, look there’s some type of monster, and game over. They are on your heels for the whole game and seem to be waiting for you every time you solve a puzzle, but you always feel like you are one step ahead of them for once.
I know I probably sound like I’m ripping this game a bit, but I’m not. Combat felt fluid to me and there is a greater focus on hand to hand combat. They introduced a new character, basically a very large man who Drake had to slap around for 5 minutes at a time to get him knocked out. I enjoyed these sequences but there were too many of this type of character. I guess when the villain called 1800-henchman they must have pressed 5 for dumb giant mofo at least 10 times.
This game is harder than the last one as well. Jumping sequences remain epic but many of them offer some challenges as well. There are a ridiculous amount of enemies in this game, when looking at the stats page I downed 779 enemies in the course of the game which is around 8 hours long. The aiming is not forgiving at all; I think my accuracy was half of what it was in Uncharted 2. I think Naughty Dog tried some different things and wanted to explain the very deep relationship of Nate and Sully and they did exactly that.
All in all the game is a series of great sequences tied together by a solid story. There were some great sequences, who doesn’t want to shoot a rocket launcher at a gate while riding a horse? I know this probably sounded more negative than I wanted it to; this game gets a 5 out of 5 just like Uncharted 2. I don’t think the story is quite as good, but the game play is solid and the cast of characters as a whole is improved for the next one. If you enjoy the combat and hopping around this is Uncharted 2 on steroids. I think that your opinion of this game is going to boil down to who you like as the main supporting cast. If you took the supporting cast away completely many of the story elements and some of the action sequences are almost copies of Uncharted 2(except its sandstorms not blizzards), so I don’t feel right lowering the score because I like Elena and Chloe winking at me more than I like Sully making some dirty comments. This series is worth the price to buy a ps3.
The previous game was easily in my top 5 favorite games of this console generation and even if this is not quite as good(by a hair), it’s still better than almost everything else on the market. Add Elena for two more missions and this goes right to the top of the best game ever pile. As it stands it has to settle for one of the best games of the last decade. I will be curious to see what they do with future games. The characters constantly seem to reference events that happened years ago almost regularly. My best guess by some of the comments is that this game could be 4 years after the last one, even though all the characters haven’t aged a bit so who knows. So who knows if there is going to be book tie in or if there will be flashback dlc’s at some point. There are plenty of stories and lots of money to be made with Drake and friends, I just hope they don’t forget the fairer sex as much next time.
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