yeah, it's badass

So, I recently had the lovely experience of watching my best friend play through Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I didn’t play it myself – I am a platforming wizard, but I’m not good with switching between that and combat. That, and my best friend is possibly secretly the God of Video Games, because I think he died all of ten times throughout the whole game.

Which we beat in one sitting, coincidentally. My brother and friend and I sat on couches to “watch the movie,” with snacks and backseat gaming goodness.

So, anyway, the game itself: WAS AWESOME! I have to admit that I remember the motion being a bit smoother in the second game, but I also experienced some voice-syncing glitches, so I suspect my PS3 may have just been having a bad day. The rendering of the characters was absolutely beautiful, but it was nothing compared to the backgrounds. There were a few times that I was shocked when the characters appeared on screen, because I’d forgotten that it wasn’t real footage.

The story itself was excellent. While I found the second one (and the first, to some extent) a little too supernatural at times, this was perfectly tasteful in its allusions to otherworldly things: it was nuanced rather than IN YOUR FACE OMG ZOMBIES. The characters were well-fleshed out, even the less major ones. The game surprised me by making one of the characters claustrophobic – it was an attention to detail that I wouldn’t have considered, and I was really impressed. Side note – I totally didn’t realise that Chloe’s voice actress also does the voice of Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Alistair’s voice actor did a role in Uncharted 2.

One critique I have to make regarding the game was the combat. Not the system itself; the controls seemed fairly fluid and the only issue we really had was accidentally picking up the wrong gun instead of ammo 147380432 times. No, the problem was that there was so much of it. Some scenes were really exciting, but others dragged and dragged, and you just wanted it to end so you could get back to the spectacular story (or to puzzles or chase scenes!). They keep throwing battle after battle of 20-30 guys at you, when really most fight scenes would be plenty exciting with 5-10 guys. You start to wonder how on earth the baddies are affording nice black suits for all their henchmen. You also wonder how many 7′ tall, 400lb guys they hired (really, could have at least given them different faces). After a while it felt like the developers either thought “we can make the game longer by making them kill more guys” or they couldn’t think of any other way to make combat harder as the game progressed.

In defense of the development team, I greatly appreciated the few bones they did throw us – having Drake shout “Why are they shooting at me?! Don’t they know we’re sinking?!” made what might otherwise have been an issue worth complaining about into a meta-game joke.

tell me you don't see malcolm reynolds here

Speaking of voice overs, the actors in Uncharted are far and beyond some of the greatest voice actors, hell, actors period, that I’ve ever had the privilege of listening to. Their interactions are so natural that one wonders how much is adlibbing – or if they were even given a script at all! You can easily imagine them just told what happens and then made to act it out on their own. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend at least renting the game – as we’ve showed, it can be beaten in one sitting. However, purchasing it means you get the badass multiplayer as well! Admittedly, Battlefield 3 just came out, but if you’re looking for a change, the multiplayer in Uncharted 3 is pretty damn solid.

I’m looking forward to the movie – I swear to God if Drake isn’t played by Nolan North or Nathan Fillion, though…heads will roll.

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