Review by: Justin Amirkhani

Naughty Dog has brought Nathan Drake and his band of merry adventurers back for another treasure hunt full of excitement and peril. There’s bad guys and heroism, puzzles and death defying leaps; everything one would expect to find in a vintage Robert Zemeckis or Steven Spielberg flick. The only problem is that despite all its flair and panache, Uncharted 3 can’t help but force the player to stay distanced from the experience.

Nathan Drake is a character that by all logical respects the average player will have nothing in common. Unless your average dashingly good looking, perpetually brave, and inexplicably wealthy archaeologist-bandit likes to play video games on the weekend, there’s a good chance you won’t exactly be able to empathize with him. That doesn’t mean that you can’t like him though; he’s charming and funny and carries himself in a way that reminds you of every hero you looked up to as a kid. But like the cool clique in high school he seems infinitely distant— the previous games haven’t done a good job of delivering an understanding of his motivations.

The narrative of Uncharted 3 largely looks to remedy the void by exploring Drake as a character, even going so far as to give us a glimpse of his childhood life as a street-dwelling troublemaker looking to find his place in a world that had abandoned him. It’s this section that first lets you sink your teeth into some actual character, the child version of Drake being expertly animated to show his insecurities with subtle paranoid glances and awkward hand motions. It’s enough to get you to believe in child Drake but the feeling doesn’t transition to the adult version, leaving you with a protagonist who you want to like but know you’ll never really understand.

Much is the same with the rest of the cast. We understand they like excitement and risk but we don’t really ever connect with them. Sully – like the player – is enamored with Drake for no obvious reason; Cutter is too much of a Jason Statham rip-off to be reconciled and Chloe is the same devilish sexpot but without the love triangle to keep her engaging or relevant.

In fact, it takes a rekindling of the romance between Nathan and Elena near the midpoint to get things interesting again. For all the additional backstory given to Drake and Sully it doesn’t add to a more personal experience through the whole first half that focuses on it.

Mechanically the game is the same as its predecessors which is in large part a blessing. Drake is still no marksman and the gun combat is a little sloppier than one would expect from a blockbuster title, but it’s adequate and engaging enough to spice up the moments between climbing around on stuff.