That belongs in a museum: Uncharted 3 (PS3)

Drake stumbled through the sand, dehydrated and exhausted from two days of travel across an endless desert. Cresting a dune, he nearly fell as he slid down its face and into an ancient village. Force of will alone drove him to find something, anything to drink and to keep moving, somehow, because to stop would be to die.

Then he clambered like a monkey in and out of a 30 foot hole in the ground before fighting off a dozen heavily armed men.

Uncharted 3 is a fine cap to the gaming trilogy and a worthy follow-up to the spectacular Uncharted 2 but it is not without some notable issues. Essentially two distinct and separate experiences, hand-off’s between interactivity and narrative moments are sometimes jarring.

U3 is a contradictory experience, where one moment basic screenwriting mistakes are front and center and other moments represent brave choices of narrative as subtext. The clear internal conflicts of Uncharted 2 have been resolved, reducing the relationships to givens, for the most part. This lack of conflict hurts the drama and the overall story. However, in sharp contrast to most games, even a flawed Uncharted game is better written and realized than virtually the rest of the industry combined. These games are stories about characters not events that happen around and to characters.

Visually stunning, U3 raises the bar over not only its predecessor but virtually all competitors’ as well. Scale and scope are massive, as is the environmental realism. The downside of this graphical fidelity is a strictly linear, narrow corridor of gameplay. Exploration is not only unacceptable it is not possible as every ounce of the PS3’s considerable power is brought to bear against these smaller environments. This is not necessarily a bad thing as U3 avoids the pitfalls of so many corridor games.

It’s good, really, really good.

With excellent platforming marred slightly by unruly combat (especially compared to Arkham City & Gears 3) and some incredibily obtuse puzzles, Uncharted 3’s special sauce is the characters. It is a story about fathers and sons, and righting past wrongs as you rise above your beginnings.

Uncharted 3 is the adventure of a relationship, with a bunch of cool shit wrapped around it.