Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

(Spoilers are a-coming)

I will preface this blog by saying Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is among my favorite games of all-time. It blew me away. The first part of the game was a slow burn. I was in college at the time and I only played maybe a 1/4th of the game before the Friday following the game's release. That Friday night I started playing again and didn't stop 'til 7am the next morning.

It was, and still is, incredible. I remember my jaw dropping multiple times that night. The 1st time I played the chapter where Drake and Elena assault the driving caravan; with Drake jumping truck to truck, I remember thinking, "I can't believe I'm doing this in a video game."

Suffice it to say, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Nathan Drake's 3rd adventure. And, well, I have conflicted feelings about Drake's Deception.

It tells a fantastic story about the relationship between Drake and his mentor, Sully. In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune we know that the two are partners in crime and get into all kinds of shenanigans together, but there's not much beyond that. In Among Thieves, Sully exits early on into the adventure because the stakes get too dangerous for his liking. With Drake's Deception we get to play the moment when the two meet and see, throughout the adventure, that they're not just friends. Sully is the orphaned Drake's surrogate father and Drake is the child Sully never had. What moves the plot along later in the game is Drake's loyalty to Sully, not his desire to unearth a legendary artifact (unlike the first two games).

While the Drake/Sully part of the story is great, the Drake/Elena portion gets very little spotlight. We see her in the middle of the adventure, again a little later on, and finally at the very end. We learn that she and Drake were married at some point after Among Thieves. However, they are now separated. Yet, she still wears the ring because it comes in handy (Drake doesn't). I love the witty, funny banter of the two in the previous games, so I was disappointed she was around for only a few chapters. Though, I do get that this adventure was more about Sully and Drake.

The Elena thing is only a gripe.

- Spoiler -
What I don't like about Drake's Deception is room after room of pain-in-the-ass enemies that completely bog down the progression of the narrative. At one point the main antagonists douse the chateau you are in with gasoline and set it on fire. While you are trying to escape the burning, crumbling building the generic henchmen are still hanging around attempting to shoot you and get in fist fights. It's a little ridiculous. It feels more like a way to extend the game at some points. Do we really need the second wave of enemies after we just killed 10 or 15 guys? No... we don't. It slows the game down.

- Major Spoiler -
At one point towards the end Sully gets shot from behind by Talbot (the #2 villain) and dies. Nate freaks out and jumps down to chase after the bad guys only to have to fight 5 or 6 powered up henchmen where I promptly die a few times (mind you, I always play on the "Normal" difficulty setting the first time through and these dudes kicked my ass). By the time I killed them all, the adrenaline from Sully's death had worn off and I was mostly happy to have finally killed those dudes. It takes away from what should be the most gut-wrenching part of the story.

Maybe drop the number of dudes down to 2 or 3? Or, because he's so driven by Sully's death, Nate can take more damage than usual? I don't know. I'm not a professional game designer (I would like to be though. Hahaha).

Also, for a game to have such an emphasis on shooting in its single player mode (the Uncharted series has had a multi-player mode beginning with Among Thieves), you'd think the gun play would be solid, but it's average at best. Which is weird since the shooting in Among Thieves was excellent. I can't understand why they'd really mess around with it since they nailed it the 2nd time around.

- More Major Spoilers -
So that's one small gripe and an average size complaint.

Here's the thing that actually irks me about just this game (I can think of no instances where the 1st two did this to me). The things that Drake survives through are verging on the completely ridiculous. In the course of one adventure he: escapes a sinking cruise liner, conveniently washes up on shore outside the city Elena is in, gets sucked out of a disintegrating plane and manages to clutch onto a piece of cargo with a parachute, lands in the middle of a desert and roams for at least a day without water, and finally stumbles upon the very people he's chasing.

Look. I know all about suspension of disbelief. And, I get that it's a story, but you have to see these set pieces; one after the other, after the other. They are stunningly done and would likely be a cut-scene in most other games. However, to have each one of these things happen in the course of one story, to one person, and have that person survive them all, well, the writer in me can only suspend so much disbelief. Also, these events all happen in the second half of the game alone.

Criticisms aside, I enjoyed Drake's Deception a great deal. It's definitely worth a purchase and, if I had to put a letter grade on it, I'd give it an A. The Uncharted series is one of the best in video games and sets the bar for storytelling in a game. I look forward to seeing where Naughty Dog takes Nathan Drake next.

"Boom, Boom, Boom" - The Outhere Brothers