Review: Uncharted 3
Lisvender reviews Uncharted 3
Developed by Naughty Dog. Published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Available on Playstation 3.
So many threes this year! It used to be that hitting three was a big freaking deal for a video game series; Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, and Contra all made significant advancements when they hit their threes, and those games are still recognized as some of the best ever made. Capcom was so nervous about the expectations gamers had for the Land of Three, that they hesitated for six years before they brought Street Fighter there.
While I’m quite happy to see Nathan Drake, Victor Sullivan, Elena Fisher, and their treasure-hunting coterie back in action, that excitement is tempered by a dull familiarity. Like Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, and Modern Warfare 3, Uncharted 3 is not a leap forward for the series, but simple continuation with small adjustments. It’s more of what I love, but that’s just what I don’t love about it, and I just can’t give it the same wholehearted recommendation that I would for Uncharted 2.
The mysterious Katherine Marlowe, the apparent leader of some secret society of British knights, is interested in buying Drake’s ring. You know, the ring: the one that Drake’s been wearing around his neck since 2007. But Drake’s no sucker. He’s not about to sell off his precious heirloom when he understands its importance. The game’s story travels around the globe and even back in time to explain the significance of the ring, and its connection to a lost city hidden in a forbidding Arabian desert. All our favorite characters from the series make appearances, and although the sexpot Chloe Frazer disappears pretty early on this time, we get to spend a good chunk of quality time with ol’ Sully, Drake’s mentor and father figure.
Sully is thematically important in this game, as his unwavering loyalty to Drake puts him in harm’s way more than once. The actual plot of the game has a typical nature (most players should be able to guess the ending long before they reach it), so to spice it a bit, the writers decided to ask, “Drake, when are you going to settle down?” If you found Chloe’s perennial skepticism annoying in Uncharted 2, wait till you get a load of the resistance Drake faces in this game. Suddenly, everyone wants to know why Drake keeps risking his life in the pursuit of these mad quests, and I kept hoping that ol’ Drake would just get fed up and say, “We’re in an action-packed video game series, you morons! If I don’t, we’re out of work!”
The story’s got other problems too. I would have liked to learn more about Marlowe and her crew, as she seems to have an elaborate background, but as in the previous Uncharted games, the villains are given only minuscule descriptions. Apparently, all we need to know is that they’re shooting at us. Also, the elements of the supernatural, which I expected to really explode and dazzle me this time around, are restrained further than ever before in the series, so the story’s final payoff is real letdown.
But hey, you don’t want to play Uncharted for the story; you want to play it for the set-pieces. You want to see shit crumble, explode, and crash; you want to see Drake hanging by his fingernails above acres of certain death. Fear not, you get a whole lot of that in this game, but you should be prepared to wait a while for it. Though it probably would have been derivative to begin Uncharted 3 in the same way as its predecessor, with Drake in some unimaginably precarious situation, I still think it would have been preferable to the slow-paced setup that we get instead. Drake is still a walking disaster area, and there are lots of crazy and creative scenarios, but they’re not front-loaded this time, so beware.
Uncharted’s gameplay is comprised of three elements: climbing, shooting, and brawling. The first two games had some unique fighting elements with brutal combos and steel fist finishers, but this one beefs up the brawling significantly. You can now manually grapple and shove enemies, counter incoming attacks Batman-style, and sock people with random nearby objects. You can even earn a trophy for slapping three enemies with a fish. The fistfights don’t feel as smooth and elegant as they do in the Arkham games, but they’re still dramatic, exciting, and thrilling. The game’s best fights pit you against giant gorilla-men called Brutes, who can take a terrific beating before finally staying down. You’ll really feel like a tough guy after taking one of these bastards out.
When you’re not punching bad guys, you’re shooting at them, and this part of the game still doesn’t quite feel as good as it should either. The aiming speed is noticeably slower than it was in previous Uncharted games, the few new guns don’t feel all that new, and sometimes Drake will roll out into the open instead of taking cover like you want him to, but these aren’t the worst troubles. The real problems are in the level design. While Naughty Dog continue to prove that they’re the masters of creative shootouts, you’ll still encounter a few spots where you’ll get killed repeatedly by unseen dudes with rocket launchers, and others where you’ll be pinned in one place by snipers while heavily armored jerks with shotguns march up and kill you in one hit. A protracted struggle near the end of the game takes place during a sandstorm that wrecks your visibility, but doesn’t seem to hamper the accuracy of the mounted machine guns you need to take out. It’s incredibly frustrating. I understand the need to come up with creative challenges, but irritation is an important factor to consider, and I was hoping that Naughty Dog would watch for this crap and iron it out. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.
So this leaves the climbing. The climbing sequences have traditionally been the easiest parts of the Uncharted games, demanding only keen observation to complete, and here things are extremely guided. You almost always have a partner telling you what to look for, or how to get where you need to go, and it’s never very difficult. Even so, they’re still enjoyable, as they give the game a chance to showcase its incredible details and settings. Some of the scenery is just gorgeous to look upon, like an old creaky chateau or the ballroom of a sinking ship. The game has a propulsive feel overall, though, and as a lifelong gamer, I get hungry for action quickly, so my inclination is to keep moving forward. I don’t have time to marvel.
This inclination made things frustrating for me because Uncharted 3 often wants you to slow down, either to tell its story through controllable cinematics, or to make you solve puzzles. I really hate controllable cinematics: those slow-paced sequences in which games force you to walk around while you get your head dunked in exposition. Uncharted 2 had a couple of scenes like this, but Uncharted 3 takes them way too far. The first such scene in the game isn’t too bad because it’s mysterious: we’re taken to a strange time and place, and we aren’t told what we’re looking for. After this, though, it’s all downhill. Do we really need to play through half a dozen scenes of Drake wandering through a desert before we finally get to some action? You really do control Drake through these painful scenes of nothingness, too; in fact, you are forced to control him, or else the game won’t progress! It’s the equivalent of that Super Mario Bros. art video where Mario walks across a flat, featureless level, endlessly. Why couldn’t these just be put together into one long, skippable, cutscene? Why am I the only one who’s angry about this?!
The game’s puzzles, on the other hand, don’t want you to linger at all. Your companions will often call out hints for you, and sometimes even Drake will figure things out before you do. One particular puzzle required me to line up a series of cogs which were scattered around the room to make a door open. Whenever you enter a puzzle room, the game prompts you to press Select to open Drake’s handy-dandy journal. I did so, and when I flipped to the last page, I found that Drake had already drawn the solution to the puzzle before I even picked up my first cog. It was amazing! How the hell did he do that? I guess he just wanted to save me some time.
I never thought I would say this, but for me, the saving grace of Uncharted 3 is its multiplayer. While the competitive aspects are the usual frustrating games of run around, shoot people, and die, the cooperative games include a surprisingly fun adventure mode. In this mode, three players take on the roles of Drake and his buddies as they play through a non-canonical story split across five half-hour missions. Series villains Eddy Raja, Harry Flynn, and Zoran Lazarevic all make exuberant comebacks, and the delightful writing and acting of the single-player experience is all there, but condensed to keep things moving quickly. You can rescue your friends from danger, high-five them as you go, and see who can rack up the highest score. It’s the perfect way to blast bad guys and explore levels in classic Uncharted style, while earning points and money that you can put towards your multiplayer upgrades. I found it incredibly addictive, the ultimate online video game, and I sincerely hope that that Naughty Dog will release further co-op adventures as downloadable content.
If you’re a fan of Uncharted, you really can’t go wrong with this game, but I feel you should be warned that it’s not going to feel as exciting this time around. While Naughty Dog has gone to great pains to create some tremendous, scripted spectacles, it’s simply impossible to ignore the familiar, comfortable, and just plain formulaic design of the rest of the game. What Uncharted needs is a significant transformation; some real, fundamental upgrades in its structure. A total overhaul, perhaps. Or, maybe it just needs to study Portal 2 a bit more closely.
Controller1.com rating: 2/3
