Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is the third game (if the 3 didn’t already give that away) in the Uncharted series by Naughty Dog. Once again you play as Nathan Drake. If you’ve played either of the games in the Uncharted series you’ll find it easy to jump in and start playing this. For anyone that hasn’t played them, it might be an idea to read up on the story for one and two first as the story is very important in the game. The controls are pretty easy to get used to and the game does show you what to press whenever you have to do something new so you can just pick it up and start playing.
Story:
Once again there is a very impressive storyline, although it makes much more sense if you’ve played through the first two games, or at least the first one. Uncharted 3 is set after Uncharted 2, but goes back in time to when Drake was much younger and you see how he and Sully first met. You even get to play as young Drake which really helps you understand the character and see how he ended up where he is today.This time Drake is searching for “Atlantis of the Sands” which leads him on a dangerous journey to the Arabian Desert, but as always nothing is simple. Not only do they have puzzles to solve, but Drake and his friends aren’t the only one searching. Katherine Marlow is also on the search and there are men everywhere, following the group and attempting to kill them.
The characters:
Nathan “Nate” Drake voiced by Nolan North. Drake is the main character in the game and the one you control. Drake claims he is a descendant of Sir Francis Drake. He has a habit of finding himself in trouble and even though he realises how serious it is he tends to make jokes about the situation. He refuses to give up, even if it means risking his own life, and he’s always thinking ahead although the unpredictable events lead him to situations he wasn’t expecting.
Elena Fisher is voiced by Emily Rose. Elena is a journalist who is filming Drake’s quest for a documentary. She’s tougher than she looks and doesn’t give up easily, but she’s not so keen on killing people or risking her life.
Victor "Sully" Sullivan is voiced by Richard McGonagle. He is Drake’s friend and you see how they first met in Uncharted 3. Sully taught Drake how to survive and is always there to save him when needed. Despite this, he tends to take orders rather than give them. He often comments on his age and says he is too old for such adventures, but the truth is he will follow Drake anywhere and fight by his side.
Chloe Frazer is voiced by Claudia Black. Chloe likes adventure. She is a strong character and seems to have no problems with shooting the bad guys, but she does have a soft side. She clearly cares for Drake, but remains as just friends with him when she realises he loves Elena.
Charlie Cutter is voiced by Graham McTavish. Charlie appears at first to be working for the enemy, Katherine "Kate" Marlowe, and doesn’t seem to be too smart as he shoots both Drake and Sully which wasn’t part of the plan. However, it’s soon shown that not only is he working with Drake and Sully, but he has known them for many years and perhaps is smarter than he looks.
Gameplay:
There are three options from the main menu; campaign, online and split screen. The campaign is the single player story mode, online allows you to play various games against people around the world and split screen allows you to play through a different story offline with someone.
Campaign
Before starting the campaign you can choose what difficulty to play it on. You can go for very easy, easy, normal or hard and, if you complete the game, you unlock crushing.
Uncharted is a mixture of shooting, fighting, free-running and puzzles. While both Uncharted 1 and 2 were the same I think they are more equally split this time. The first two felt like they were mostly about the fighting and even though this does have a lot of fighting it somehow doesn’t seem to be more about fighting than the free-running and puzzles, but perhaps that’s partly due to the fact you use more hand-to-hand combat rather than just shooting.
Hand-to-hand combat is more enjoyable in this, although having said that I prefer it when I have a choice of that or shooting rather than when I’m forced to just use hand-to-hand combat.There are times when you have no weapons and a number of bad guys to fight. During these scenes it often tells you which button to press, the idea being to help you avoid being hit. I tend to find I actually get hit more. I don’t know whether it’s just because you always seem to have to hit the button really fast or whether I’m just focusing more on waiting for it to show the button rather than watching for when someone is about to hit me, but which ever it is no matter how quick I press the button I usually end up being hit anyway.
Despite there being a number of guys surrounding you, you only fight one at a time. Some will go to hit you the second you knock one person down while others seem to wait for you to go and fight them. There are times when you’ll hit one person then have to turn to hit another before turning back or even hitting a third person first, which can cause you to get hit in the split second it takes you to turn around. On one hand, it does make it more realistic, but on the other it can be annoying as you don’t always have chance to defend yourself and one hit can lead to other hits (and of course death) if you’re not quick enough.
As I said, there is a lot of fighting and with that comes a lot of weapons. Drake can carry two guns (a handgun and a rifle) and grenades. You’ll probably find two guns you prefer, but sometimes certain guns are more helpful or there are only certain ones lying around to pick up. For handguns you get weapons such as the Raffica Pistol and Para 9. For rifles you get weapons such as the AK-47, M9 and Dragon Sniper. There is some ammo lying around, but most will be from people you have killed. Even though I’ve attacked with hand-to-hand combat quite a bit I’ve still found myself with no ammo a number of times and it’s often been at the worst possible time.
I also found once that after dying all the guys I’d killed previously had vanished, leaving me with no ammo lying around like it was before I’d died.
Luckily this isn’t a common thing and you normally find yourself back at the start or at a point where you at least have a chance of winning. Facing people with guns and riot shields when you have no ammo is certainly something to avoid if you can help it.
Of course it wouldn’t be Uncharted without the free-running. This is made as realistic as possible as Drake only just makes long jumps and finds himself climbing unsafe pipes and ladders which can sometimes come away from the wall. Most of the time it’s clear where you need to go and not really much of a challenge, but there are occasions where you will see a treasure nearby and these can be more challenging to reach. Finding these also makes the game more interesting.
There appear to be more puzzles than in the previous two, but none of them are complicated and after so long it offers to give you the solution if you are really stuck. The puzzles are logical and usually it’s not too difficult to figure out what needs to be done, but sometimes actually doing it can be challenging and, at times, frustrating. On one puzzle you have to spin statues around and I’m sure they were all in the right order at one point yet nothing happened. After spending ages moving them around I gave up and got the answer from Drake’s journal. After slightly moving a couple of statues I waited and it did continue with the story, although not instantly so perhaps it was a glitch or perhaps I just didn’t leave it for long enough, but either way it kind of took the enjoyment out of working out the puzzle.As with previous Uncharted games, there is no health bar, but it’s easy to tell when you are injured as you see red flash around the edges of the screen when you are hit and then all the colour in the game starts draining away, giving the impression you’re about to pass out. To get the colour back again you just have to avoid being hit for a certain length of time, which is sometimes easier said than done when you have people shooting at you from various angles, throwing grenades or shooting down the wall you’re behind (though luckily not all walls will break down). Health bars can be very useful as they give a more exact idea of how much health you have, but if you keep glancing at it it can distract you where as this way you don’t have to focus your attention anywhere else.
During certain chapters you have to walk or run around. Some are chases, either where you are escaping or where you are trying to catch someone, and these are well done and add to the gameplay. There is one chapter though where you have to walk around a town and it is quite boring and unnecessary. I’m sure they could have made it a shorter walk to save wasting time. In another part Drake is walking/running through the town after being drugged by the enemy and out of the whole game I’d say this was the worst part in my opinion. It showed things from Drake’s point of view and in a way it’s a clever idea, but with everything being blurry and getting brighter as you went through the streets it just gave me a headache.
On top of that it was far too long – I didn’t think it was ever going to end! It was obvious he’d been drugged so a slight blur and running off down one street would have been enough in my opinion.
OnlineOnline has plenty of options for playing against people around the world. Annoyingly Uncharted requires an online pass which only comes with new games. You can also buy this pass through the Playstation Store, but either way you are having to buy new (which is likely to be more expensive) or pay out extra on top of buying the game used if you wish to go online. As much as I hate this feature and find it unfair, it is worth buying the pass as online has many different online games.
Once online you have an online profile. This shows the character you have, which you can customise. There are other characters and items of clothing that can be unlocked as you level up and you can then purchase these with the money you earn through each game you play.
You can also buy weapons, boosters and kickbacks that you can use during the game and these too can be unlocked by levelling up. The boosters can be bought using money and the kickbacks are bought using medals that you earn during the games for doing various things. Boosters and kickbacks give you things that you wouldn’t normally have such as throwing 3 grenades at one time, respawn faster after dying or move faster while aiming. Some are more useful to others, but overall it makes the game more interesting as you can gain an advantage. If you don’t want to use them you don’t have to and if you want a game where it is all based on your skill then you can play the hardcore mode.
You also have the option of buying one paid booster before a game, but these only last for one game so they’re good if you have a bit of extra cash, but probably not something you’ll purchase for every game.
The online modes are:
- Team deathmatch – A fight to the end with team mates at your side.
- Plunder – Bring the idol back to your base.
- Team objective – Complete the objective before your enemies, best of 5 rounds wins.
- Three team deathmatch - Grab a buddy and take on two other teams.
- Free for all – You fight alone and the victory is all yours.
- Hardcore – No boosters. No medal kickbacks. No mods. Just your skill and more health.
- Co-op Arena – Survive the waves of soldiers.
- Co-op Hunter arena – You and your friends against the world…and other people!
- Co-op Adventure - Story-based co-op missions with 2-3 players.
Loading times and finding other players, especially for certain games, can take a little while and a couple of times I have given up waiting for it to find other players, but I don’t think it’s really any worse than any other online game and it probably varies depending on the time you are online. However, once playing I haven’t noticed any lag or other problems.
Split Screen
While I like being able to play 1 player or online I always like to have the option of offline multiplayer as well, especially for ps3 exclusive games considering most of my friends don’t have a PS3 to be able to play online.
So it’s nice to see that Uncharted has a split screen option for offline multiplayer.
In split screen you play through a chapter and fight together against the enemy. The screen is, of course, split into two with player one looking at the top of the screen and player two looking at the bottom. The gameplay and everything else about the game are the same as the single player campaign, except you have someone else playing beside you.
The only thing I didn’t like about the split screen is the fact that at the side it shows the emblem you’re using and personally I’d prefer to just see more of the game I’m playing rather than what emblems we both have. After all, it’s better to get through the chapter and be able to talk about the times you nearly died or the amazing shot you managed to make than to say “well, we died and never finished the chapter because we couldn’t quite see everything that was happening, but hey, at least we have great emblems.” I don’t get why they are so big and you have no option to turn them off as they don’t do anything. i'd rather be able to see a wider shot of the game. It would also be nice if you had the option of the screen being split the other way.
Audio:
The same voices were used for characters as the previous games and they fit the characters perfectly. The voice acting is great during both video sequences and gameplay. The sound effects of things such as guns and water are realistic and really add to the game. When you are about to die you can hear a heartbeat and heavy breathing that speeds up as you get closer to death, which works really well with the colour draining.
The instruments used for the game are different to what would normally be used in games, giving the Uncharted series a unique soundtrack that works perfectly with the game.
The music also changes depending on the situation. For example, when a fight is coming the music changes so you can be prepared to fight and once the fight is over it changes again so you know you are safe to continue. This may seem like a bit of a cheat, but when you’re playing the game it’s more of a subtle hint because you’re focused on what to do and where to go rather than listening out for the music. If you do notice it though you make sure you’re ready to fight and sometimes just that slight change in music can stop you being killed and having to restart the scene.
Graphics:
The uncharted games have always had amazing graphics and everything has always looked rather realistic so it’s no surprise that Uncharted 3 looks fantastic. No matter what you look at every single thing has an unbelievable amount of detail.
Motion capture is used to make sure all the characters move realistically and it shows. Whether it’s the way they walk or run or the small details in their facial expressions, it’s clear they put a lot of work into making everything look right.
I do think the graphics have improved since the last game, especially with the characters. However, I have noticed a few glitches where the characters haven’t moved smoothly.
I think this has mostly been when it has gone from a video sequence to gameplay and the console is working hard to combine the two and continue the scene. The great thing about the game is that the characters speak and react to things during gameplay and any other characters in the scene continue as they did in the video sequence. It is because of that that I would expect the odd glitch at times with the graphics.
Bonuses:
You can view bonus videos which include things like behind the scenes and the making of certain features. It also has a lot of concept art, which is really interesting to look through. You can see how the characters were developed and how they were originally designed as well as seeing the art work for various scenes. From the videos and art work you can see the amount of time and detail that has gone into making the game.
Overall:
Another amazing game by Naughty Dog. Uncharted 3 has lived up to the expectations. I’d give the story and audio 5/5. But the reason for only giving the game 4/5 overall instead of 5/5 is simply due to the gameplay, especially that one scene when Drake was drugged that seemed to go on forever. However, I would recommend this game for the single player campaign and if you like playing multiplayer too then it’s definitely worth buying.
Another dangerous journey 
