Uncharted 3 [Review]

FULL REVIEW

The day Uncharted was born was the day Naughty Dog studios let Tomb raiding out of the tombs and into the light, handing over the keys to the Red Bull energy drink warehouse. The Uncharted series is the finest gaming has to offer on console and Naughty Dog doesn’t ever fail to craft and deliver an edgy adventure packed to the brim with attitude, fantastic graphics, and full on entertainment. But can Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception best the high standards set by the last Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? Read on to find out.

Nathan Drake is part Indiana Jones with a lot of Captain Jack Sparrow with none of the extra baggage that Lara Croft lugs around. You see, he is a descendant of the legendary Sir Francis Drake, so with adventure in his blood, Nathan Drake and his companions jump right out of the frying pan onto derailed trains teetering over the edge of dangerous precipices in the Himalayas, into plane crashes in deserts and the usual running as fast as you can while an earthquake devours an entire ancient civilization. All these kinds of situations that make jumping into a fire feel like a stroll in the park with kittens.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception’s biggest driving points is the storyline. From start to finish it feels like you are sitting through an interactive summer Hollywood blockbuster that would put most of Hollywood’s finest to shame. The only reason why the Uncharted movie never happened is probably because that they can’t ever best what you have already experienced. The opening sequence itself is fantastic as Nathan Drake and his partner Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan find themselves in the thick of a traditional bar brawl in Britain. This inevitably sends then off on another treasure hunt across the globe fueled by clues left behind by Sir Francis Drake.

If you have played the other games in the series, everything about Uncharted 3 feels like deja vu. Like you’ve been through most of this before, except in a different avatar. Mostly this is because the developers have played it safe and stuck to the tried and tested formula and you can see why. That formula makes for a fantastic seamless gaming experience. Especially now Uncharted 3 takes those death defying situations from previous games and then scales it up multiple times making for some fantastic and memorable situations. Not only that, there’s something about the way Uncharted stirs up those feelings of adventure, the intrigue that follows the hint of a long dead civilization somewhere, hiding with a delicious pile of gold. This kind of thing never fails. 

The characters come alive with their witty banter jumping back and forth. Quippy one liners and clearly defined personalities just pop out at you. This seamlessly moves you from one set piece to another and another keeping you glued to the screen. Uncharted 3 introduces a lot of new characters into the mix and to add to the masala, the old cast makes a comeback too, like Elana and Chloe. However at the central focus of the story is the buddy relationship of Nathan and Sully as they wise crack their way into the loving, spiked arms of danger.




The gameplay of Uncharted 3 consists of the action parts which makes use of the now familiar cover system used in most action games nowadays. The game keeps throwing waves and waves of gun toting enemies at you and during the later chapters, the enemies get a bit annoying, mostly because you feel that they're just there to stretch the gameplay time, a lot of games seem to be doing that these days. Thankfully the gunplay is tight and the controls are superb.

To break up the action there are puzzle and platforming pieces. Most of the time it’s platforming to get to the puzzling, or vice versa. While these sequences are welcome, they sometimes get a bit tedious, especially the parts where you miss a ledge and have to start all over.




The graphics of Uncharted 3 push the limitations of what the PS3 is capable off. As mentioned before, the set pieces are humongous. Everything is a visual feast. In the desert levels the sand dunes shift realistically as Drake plods along. In the opening sequences in London look real with the rain falling and the reflections on the stone. The ancient ruins are detailed and beautifully decaying and crumbling. From a distance they look beautiful and mysterious. Add to that some impressive cinematography, and it ceases to be just a game and moves into the territory of something more. The sound is top notch, and all across this review we’ve raved about the voice acting. A brilliant sound system is highly recommended, as the levels in Uncharted 3 blow up real good.

Naughty Dog has built in multiplayer elements into Uncharted 3, along with a co-op campaign you can play through. We did not really get a chance to review these elements mostly because of a few hardware problems on our end. However, look out for an update on the multiplayer in the future.




Uncharted 3 is a visual feast, a full on parade of the perfect elements that go in to make a fantastic game. Older player may feel the formula stretching a bit, but they will still fall in love with the game all over again with the edge of the seat story telling. Newcomers are in for one of the best experiences gaming has to offer.