Uncharted 3 Early Thoughts

The adventures of Nathan begins once again.  The 3rd installment of this great series launches today, and after I’ve gotten through 8 chapters, I’m here to give you a quick review of what I think so far.

Right when I fired it up, the first thing I noticed was a bit of loading, a couple of minutes before even starting the intro.  However due to preloading, the loading screens were non existant after that point.  So fret not when you see them.

After an action packed start, I quickly realized that the hand to hand combat got reworked.  I actually prefer to duke it out now (hah).  Using Square to hit, triangle at prompts to counter, and circle to throw and struggle.  I’m very happy with these changes.

The first scene is a bar fight with tons of environmental interaction.  I loved it.  After all the frenzy, you are introduced to the antagonist (as it seems so far).  A mean old hag.  This is followed by a flash back to the day Nathan met Sully (woohoo backstory).  This whole interaction was rather boring at first, but turned out pretty interesting.  You witness the day Nathan got the ring, you learn about his childhood some, and of course why Sully and Nathan joined together.

This then moves on to a underground London train area with the first gun fights, which took some time to get used to.  Uncharted always seems to have a very …. different feel to it’s targeting.  After some time, I started landing some head shots again.  But like I said earlier, I’ve learned to love hand to hand.

Moving on, after some more story, you end up in France in the midst of some jungles.  Some… odd lighting that kind of annoyed me, but was rather sharp.  Put aside, it was very lush and beautiful.  This moved to some old architecture and then into some tomb raiding.  Then to the iconic burning building scene.

The burning building was amazing.  While it wasn’t as dynamic as they made it out to be.  It was still great.  The gunfights seemed to be a bit… out of place.  Who the heck is stopping to shoot at someone while the building around them is falling appart??

The Nutshell:
The graphics are amazing as usual.  The environments are lush and colorful.  The cinematic feel is as epic as ever.  The gunfights are good, but no Gears of War.  The new hand to hand combat is a huge upgrade.  The plotline is holding well so far.  The difficultly is rather easy even though I’m on hard, I’ve only had a couple snag points.

My verdict: Get it!