Sony's flagship title Uncharted 3 has finally arrived. Is the third time a charm once again for everyone's favorite bad luck explorer, or should this be lost in the Rub 'Al Khali forever.
Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Entertainment
System: Playstation 3
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: November 1, 2011
STORY
The thing that sets the Uncharted Series most anything is the story. Each game has a great story and this is no different. The story is just as good with the rest of the series. The story of Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan is fleashed out here and what happens to them is easliy the best of the series. It never feels once that Victor Sullivan, or other characters for that matter, was just side kicks for Drake to interact with. They feel for each other and the relationship of each character feels more real than it has ever did. There are a few notable flaws within the story and it felt that there was much more going on than what it seems.
One of the main focuses on the story is Nathan Drake's Ring. It was made to be part of a much bigger puzzle to find the lost city of Ubar in the Rub 'Al Khali Desert. The main villains this time around would have been great characters, but compared to Uncharted 2, they don't seem that much of a threat. What would have made it better would be the chance to really dig deep into Drake as a character outside his small circle of friends. Katherine Marlowe is smarter than any other villains the past games had and here it does not seem like she could do much.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is just the same as before, but with a few differences. The action is fierce and intense this time around. What you do in this game astounds me. One minute you are in a sinking ship to its side and in the next you are dangling from a plane about to crash. It does do a few things repeated from the last game, but giving how great those scenes are I am going to forgive them for now. Each enemy you incounter will take a lot of damage before falling. Even the "weaker" enemies takes a few extra bullets than it needs to. This makes the game harder on normal than it was in Uncharted 2. All this reminds me of is the nomal difficulty on Uncharted 1 than in Uncharted 2. In some sections it will seem like the enemies soaking in bullets is not the problem, but the number of guards there is and where they attack from. In Uncharted 2 it was possible to favor Stealth over a full blown gun battle. Here, stealth seems like it was taking a vacation for awhile. Take out a guy by snapping his neck and there's a high chance of someone heard it and a gun fight starts. However, Melee is better than ever with different moves you can do, it does comes in a downside. Once you start fighting there is very small window to escape from it. So if you have a sniper beam pointing at your head while fighting, there is a good chance that the fight won't kill you. The bullet to the head will. I would advise not to start fighting in the stairs. Doing so will cause Drake's animation become off-kilter and start freaking out. The gun's accuracy is a bit of a mess. You can be right up top of someone and you can't hit anything. It's rare that it happens and it does get annoying when it does. The accuracy of the enemies is impossibly accurate. In one section you will be in a sandstorm and you can't see a thing. The enemies, however, can see your every move, even though you cannot see them. It makes that section of the game harder than it needs to be. I would have liked that during this sequence you can walk past guards as you take them out over the cover of the storm. (It should be noted that this review was written long before the aiming patch was implemented. Aiming should be better now.)
The Puzzles are far more interesting than the past games and there is a few more than the first two had. The difficulty of the puzzles can range from easy to moderately hard. The reason why it would be hard is because you didn't look thoroughly enough. Every piece and every clue you need to solve a puzzle is in that room. Unlike Drake's Fortune and Among Thieves your journal won't help you that much. It won't solve the puzzle, only clue you in. It's pretty much useless now.
GRAPHICS:
The graphics are as amazing as ever. Naughty Dog knows the Playstation 3 hardware like no other. Every detail is painstakingly put together it's hard to believe that this was made in the spam of two years. The characters look more believable than ever. Every pore, every string of hair, ever fingernail is in a detail that very few games have matched. If this was shown at E3 2005 people would question if this was real or not than Killzone 2.
And that is only the models of Drake, Sully, and the rest of the cast. The locations are, once again, stunning. Even if a location is far away and there is no way to get to it. They are still made in a way that textures are there making it the most believable world outside of real life. There are rarely any pop ups and framerate drops. It's all smooth running at a solid 30 Frames Per Second. This is what the Playstation 3 looks like when pushing to its absolute limit.
SOUND:
Like the graphics, the sound is also amazing as ever. Nolan North, Richard McGonagle, Emily Rose and Claudia Black are all back. Graham McTavish is also back but in entirely different role from Among Thieves. The cast proves once again why they are some of the best voice actors around. While Nolan North plays Nathan Drake in a way that we begin to believe that Nolan North is Nathan Drake. Emily Rose steals the show. Elena Fisher is my most favorite character in the series. Even in the more personal moments in the game, she feels and sounds real. More real than any other female character from every game ever. If gaming needed a female character to look up to it should be Elena Fisher.
The rest of the sound is phenomenal . Each gun that fires has their own sound and feel. Unfortunately, the weight of the guns don't feel heavy at all. They all seem to be as light as a feather. One thing that the series don't get a lot of attention to is the music. The music is just as great as in the past games. It builds up the action and it slows down when it needs to be. This is soundtrack ready and would gladly have some of the themes on my music collection.
DIFFICULTY:
Uncharted 3 isn't that hard of a game. You can beat the game in about 8 to 10 hours depending of the difficulty you choose. Do have to warn you though there is this one over long sequence of the game that is pretty much brutal. This makes the past games rough spots seem like a breeze. There is this one enemy combo I will not be surprised if other games take it. It's the Sniper and Launcher combo. The Launcher will draw you out and the sniper will pick you off. While dodging all this you would have to deal with the people with Shotguns at your floor moving in on you. This is the one sequence of the game where I had the most difficult with. The big problem with is that it's not even that fun. It feels like a chore more than anything. Even playing it on Very Easy wasn't fun at all. While it doesn't have the supernatural elements that much compared to the first two games there is another sequence where it get's hard. It happens towards the end of the game, which I will not spoil here.
REPLAYABILITY:
This is where Uncharted 3 crashes. One of the best part about the first two games was it's high replayability factor. It had tons of unlocks like 'making of' videos and tweaks. The tweaks could range from Costume change, character change, to changing the very game itself. There would be No Gravity, Infinite Ammo, weapon select, and even screen change like Black and White and Mirror World. This and much more made playing the games feel like a whole new game. I clocked in at over 120 hours on the single player alone on Among Thieves. So it sad to hear that none of that stuff is in Uncharted 3. After finishing the game, before I knew this, I had a plan to play the entire game as London Drake and it was going to be awesome. No, that is not meant to be. Uncharted 3 is still a fantastic game, but because they didn't have all the tweaks you can use, it's very hard to say that it's worth buying.
MULTIPLAYER:
I'm just going to say this right now. I'm not a huge Multiplayer gamer. When I buy games I buy them for single player. The Multiplayer is just something they slap into to sale more games. Having said this I am going to talk about it briefly. I played the June Beta for Uncharted 3 and I LOVED it. It had everything a multiplayer needs to have. Challenging but fair gameplay, fun gameplay modes, great weapons, sprinting is great, and an awesome buddy system. This would be the game that would finally change my stance on Multiplayer. Take everything I've said and throw it out the window because none of that is in the final version. The multiplayer is challenging but not fair. There is no fun game modes, even though it's the same modes as before. The weapons are not fun to play around with. And there is not really a buddy system. The aiming is much too slow, the hit boxes are much too small, you can infinite sprint. Because you can infinite sprint and move freely there are, at least the last time I played it, people that will just rush you and give you a chest full of buckshot. Not a lot of people aim anymore because of the sprint. In the beta sprinting was only there to get you out of a tight jam. It didn't last long and turning was more of a risk than reward. Now sprinting feels like it does in Call Of Duty or Halo. It's not really fun at all anymore.
CONCLUSION:
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception takes everything you love about the first two games and safely takes it up to 11. It has it's rough spots, but the action and set pieces are a thing of beauty. It does not do anything really new and the things that made Uncharted great to begin with continues to shine here. But lack of tweaks and a weak multiplayer mode keeps this from becoming like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It's still worth playing to see what the system can do and see what Naughty Dog has created. It all feels like a two steps forward and one step back.
8/10
Rent It
No comments:
Post a Comment