Nathan Drake is at it again. He’s dis­covered a cursed golden statue, des­troyed the Cintamani stone, and curb stomped every ter­ror­ist that has dared stand in his way. Now, in 2011, Drake returns for another world-trotting adven­ture with even more crazy ter­ror­ists! Does Drake hit gold, or is this one adven­ture to scare you off?

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception takes place some­time after Among Thieves. Nathan has finally been able to dis­cover the loc­a­tion of an item craf­ted by Sir Francis that leads to the Atlantis of the Sands. However, he isn’t the only one chas­ing after the lost city. Pursued by Katherine Marlowe and her crony, Talbot, Drake must face his per­sonal demons in order to beat them to the fabled lost city.

The game fol­lows a lot of the same for­mula of its pre­de­cessors. There’s a treas­ure, there’s a race with some bad guys to get to the treas­ure, and then at the last minute the her­oes learn that there is some ancient curse. This is all famil­iar ter­rit­ory for the fran­chise, but what really helps the Uncharted series stand out as some of the best this-generation is its focus on dia­logue and char­ac­ters.

Uncharted 3 really takes the rela­tion­ship between Drake and Sully and builds upon it. In past games we’ve been told about their his­tory, but in Drake’s Deception we’re given a full back-story as the game delves deep into their per­so­nas and agen­das to deliver a tale that is truly about them. It works and it is genu­inely touch­ing to see how far both the char­ac­ters would go for each other.

Villains Marlowe and Talbot also add a nice change in vari­ety from past ant­ag­on­ists. Marlowe feels intim­id­at­ing not because of her phys­ical fea­tures, but by how she talks and uses her resources. Talbot also uses his suave and overly polite per­sona to be more intim­id­at­ing then past vil­lains. They needed some more screen time, but these are the best vil­lains we’ve seen in an Uncharted game to date.

Beloved char­ac­ters such as Elena and Chloe also make returns along with a couple of new addi­tions. It is nice to have favor­ites return, but more could have been done with them and the new char­ac­ters. The plot is just so focused on the Drake-Sully rela­tion­ship that they almost feel like filler at times.

The focus on the rela­tion­ship also harms the plot at times. Numerous plot holes and red her­rings can be found through­out the entire game. There’s even a full level that ends up lead­ing the plot nowhere.

This is a fant­astic char­ac­ter story that delves deep into our main char­ac­ters. However, the over­all plot could have used some tight­en­ing up, but is still very inter­est­ing and still stands remark­ably high com­pared to oth­ers.

Uncharted 3 is some­what shorter than Uncharted 2. Whereas Uncharted 2 could last up to 12 hours, Uncharted 3 ends up fall­ing at about the 8 hour mark on the default dif­fi­culty. There is some replay value to be had in the form of 100 treas­ures that are scattered through­out the cam­paign. Still, the replay value is much lower in Drake’s Deception than in pre­vi­ous games due to Naughty Dog get­ting rid of the medal sys­tem. In pre­vi­ous install­ments you would earn medals that con­tained points that were then used to unlock mod­i­fi­ers for the single-player cam­paign. These are gone, which is a real shame because a lot of them were fun to play around with.

Uncharted 3’s level design has also taken a rad­ical depar­ture from Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 offered much big­ger levels to play around in that at least gave the illu­sion that you could approach fights from dif­fer­ent angles. Basically it was either stealth or shootouts. Uncharted 3 is a much more closed off trial-and-error type of game. It quickly becomes a game of mem­or­iz­a­tion as you try and remem­ber where exactly enemies are scrip­ted to go.

Something that Uncharted 3 vastly improves on is the puzzles, which are abso­lutely some of the best we’ve seen. Previous install­ments never did find a good bal­ance of puzzles and gun­play, but Uncharted 3 finally pulls it off. The puzzles range in dif­fi­culty, but none of them get so dif­fi­cult that you’ll throw the con­trol­ler down in frus­tra­tion. They’re smart and are actu­ally enjoy­able.

Playing through Uncharted 3 is just like play­ing through any of the pre­vi­ous games, except for a few minor changes. However, undoubtedly the most import­ant aspect – the con­trol scheme is unchanged so past play­ers will feel right at home.

The biggest shock to the sys­tem is the new shoot­ing mech­an­ics. Uncharted 3 throws out Uncharted 2’s aim­ing sys­tem in favor of one focused on weapon recoil. This change is very jar­ring as the shoot­ing ends up being rather stiff at first. Tinkering around with the sens­it­iv­ity helps alle­vi­ate this prob­lem (Note: Naughty Dog has recently released a patch that con­tains an option to switch to Uncharted 2-like con­trols).