Drake's Deception is fooling you into thinking it's GOTY worthy

By BatRastered — November 8, 2011
Tags: naughty-dog review uncharted-3-drakes-deception

Poor Nathan Drake, first he lost the Gouki.com GOTY to Batman Arkham Asylum in 2009, this year he’s up against Arkham City. Challenges of timing aside, Drake has another problem. While I can definitely state that Arkham City is an improvement over the already excellent Arkham Asylum, Uncharted 3 just isn’t any better than Uncharted 2. At least not in the story mode. The biggest campaign improvement over UC2 is the lack of weird, blue Sasquatch things as enemies.

The game has a good multiplayer mode with lots of variations in how to play. There’s your standard team death match (5v5), a free for all, and a cool 2v2v2 three team match. Plunder makes its return from the UC2 multiplayer. What’s new is the team objective mode where you do a best of 5 in random objective matches including king of the hill, turf war (like territories) and Marked man (similar to VIP in some other games).

Naughty Dog has again created a visual masterpiece, their level design always creates these really large, unique, and often stunning arenas for Nate’s story to take place. The cruise ship level from UC3 is an example of what great level design should be.

As pretty as the game is, Uncharted 3 lacks the control and choice that are the hallmarks of today’s best games. The game is very linear, never giving you the chance to solve something your own way, but it likes to give you an illusion of control avoiding many cut scenes by having the characters interact in real-time is great, but often in these areas the game doesn’t allow all your moves (you can’t even pull your gun out for instance) which kind of kills the drama of whether or not a bad guy is around the corner. On the other hand, if you see some waist high walls in the area, you know you’re going to see a gunfight soon.

There are certain types of enemies that require specific actions to take down. One is a “brute” who you can take down in hand to hand combat by countering his attacks. For some reason he shows up in many different places, even in the middle of a gunfight at the top of a castle. This lead me to try pulling my gun and shooting him mid-fight. To my surprise, the game engine allowed me to pull my gun out, but to my even further surprise, several gunshots to the face did nothing to this guy and I ended up KO-ing him with another fist fight counter. This, of course, made the fist fighting feel forced and tacked-on. It's still fun to fight, shoot, and climb in UC3, but you don't have as much freedom as you think and when you try to move out of the box you will be disappointed.

Overall, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a good game with some minor flaws and gameplay that feels a bit dated. Its biggest problem is that it just doesn’t feel like an improvement over its predecessor. I’d suggest giving the multiplayer a try before dropping your hard-earned cash on this as the campaign probably wont pull you back in after you finish.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

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14 Stories

Release Date: Nov 1, 2011

Buy it! 67% - Rent it! 22% - Flush it! 11%

Verdict: Rent It

Comments

I have a feeling the lack of innovation is going to be the biggest tick against Uncharted 3. Most of the critics will praise it to death anyway, because they apparently have short attention spans and can't remember what they played two years ago.

jalexbrown has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 8, 2011 by jalexbrown

Sounds like I made the right choice skipping this one. My brother picked up a copy and I'm not even interested in borrowing it.

dragonkiss83 rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Flush it
Nov 8, 2011 by dragonkiss83

One bad review and it's easy to see after beating it as this reviewer states complains which aren't factual at all. What kind of review starts off by saying that Arkham City is GOTY?

Uncharted 3 isn't an improvement over its predecessor? what exactly makes Arkham City an improvement? larger environment and the sudden transformation into Assassin's Creed/inFamous? I've beaten it and I know that Uncharted 3 added varied epic moments instead of copy pasting from Uncharted 2 and it also has a better story than the previous one.. you learn more about Drake and his relationship with Sully and it shows technical prowess with both the boat level and airplane sequence.

The game being linear is really part of its core and it really is core to all games and thus I disagree calling it an issue. You wouldn't be able to get to the end of Arkham City if they didn't guide you along. You also forget that the game has elements of stealth as well which gives you options in gameplay (go gun firing or knock everyone out by being stealthy). Moreover, linearity is what sets up the great set pieces and the level is design to pull you towards them which is always good level design.

The second last paragraph is erroneous since the "Brute" can also be taken down by shooting and only in a couple sequences are you forced to melee him, but at those points you are 1 vs 1 against him. Saying it "fools" you into believe that it is GOTY is also untrue because it is a great game with a heavier emphasis on storytelling. I understand that this is a new website, but I have written this in 10-15 minutes and it's almost as lengthy as the review itself.

DingWade has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 9, 2011 by DingWade

Your closing argument is the length of the review? Thanks for reading. How did you find this review?

goukijones has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 9, 2011 by goukijones

Being linear is "core to all games"? WTF? Having a map with a waypoint doesn't mean it's linear if you can ignore that waypoint and do something else.

Just because you're 1 vs 1 against the brute is no excuse to make him impervious to bullets. I want to be like Indiana Jones and just shoot the guy and get on with my quest.

I didn't say that Batman AC was GOTY, I said Drake will again have to compete with Batman like he did in 2009. A battle Drake lost on this site. But Skyrim isn't even out yet, and GOTY isn't set yet.

Thanks for posting. :)

BatRastered rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Rent it
Nov 9, 2011 by BatRastered

He came six hours ago, posted one comment, and left. My guess: troll.

jalexbrown has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 9, 2011 by jalexbrown

I just now finished the game and purposely waited on reading your thoughts on the game. Most of the things you've mentioned I agree with. I personally think the controls, particularly shooting, is hit or miss and don't remember this being as a big a problem for me in UC2. After finishing the game I feel up and down about the game. I myself immediately thought I enjoyed Arkham City more from start to finish over UC3. Like you said, it's a great game, but I expected more and wasn't completely satisfied with the game overall.

hoho23 rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Buy it
Nov 10, 2011 by hoho23

"Just because you're 1 vs 1 against the brute is no excuse to make him impervious to bullets. I want to be like Indiana Jones and just shoot the guy and get on with my quest." I checked last night and nowhere in the campaign is there a brute that is immune to bullets, so in that sense your review is flawed.

"I didn't say that Batman AC was GOTY, I said Drake will again have to compete with Batman like he did in 2009. A battle Drake lost on this site. But Skyrim isn't even out yet, and GOTY isn't set yet." Then the title of this review is misleading since its states that its fooling you into thinking that it is a GOTY which also says that it isn't worth GOTY consideration.

You can ignore a waypoint, but there is a linear path within all games... you can't ignore certain parts of Batman all the time since you wouldn't then be able to finish it. Moreover, linearity is a core aspect of the Uncharted series and if anything U3 gave you more freedom than before, but again not everyone likes it and in my opinion thats what helps it set up those WOW moments.

Lastly, I actually feel that Batman was overall a good game, but took several wrong steps that made the experience worst. 1) Becoming a sandbox game. 2) Minor development for the majority of characters and inconsistent side quests. But that doesn't belong here. People here should be happy to get criticism, because that is the only way to improve.

DingWade has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 10, 2011 by DingWade

"He came six hours ago, posted one comment, and left. My guess: troll." Sure, because the reviewer always has to be right... it is his opinion and we are all capable of having and sharing our own.

"Your closing argument is the length of the review? Thanks for reading. How did you find this review?" Did you read the rest of the post? I made plenty of points, but I guess you only focused on the last sentence.

DingWade has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 10, 2011 by DingWade

I wasn't in any shape, way, or form suggesting that you were a troll because you disagreed with the review. Your absence made me think you had no real interest in defending or expanding upon your statements. I've disagreed with reviews on here, and I'm sure that when I post a new review someone will inevitably disagree with me. There's no harm if it's done constructively and not by insulting the writer or the site for which they write.

jalexbrown has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Nov 10, 2011 by jalexbrown

............

kof2012 has not rated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception yet.
Dec 21, 2011 by kof2012

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Drake's Deception is fooling you into thinking it's GOTY worthy

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