Naughty Dog continues the role they had with the third (and possibly final) installment of the Uncharted series.
If you are not familiar to the Uncharted series, this is the games in a nutshell. They are a combination of platforming, puzzle, action-adventure and a third-person shooter rolled into one. You take control of treasure hunter Nathan Drake (and all of his wittiness) as you progress through the streets of London all the way to the Middle East ending in the ultimate climax in the Sahara desert. Along the way, you'll come across a vast majority of puzzles that must be solved in order to progress even further. They're not so difficult as Drake always travels with his journal with clues on how to solve them but if they still aren't that obvious or you take too long the game will pretty much hold your hand to assist.
And of course, the main thing that you will be doing throughout the game would be taking a gun and shooting some bad guys. Once again, the shooting has been tweaked almost completely all the way from balancing the trademark AK-47 and the SAS-12 shotgun to replacing old guns from the other games with newer models. Old favorites like the M4 are replaced by the M9, the Moss-12 shotgun replaced with the Sawed-Off Shotgun and the elite pistol replaced with the Para9 that fires a LOT faster than any other pistol used in Uncharted 1 and 2. Also, some new weapons also make their debut such as the T-Bolt Sniper. Like its predecessor the Dragon Sniper, the T-Bolt will kill ANYTHING with one well-placed shot on any part of the anatomy though the bolt-action makes it a slower, yet more powerful rifle. Because of this, the Dragon Sniper has been downgraded to keep things more balanced and for the better.
Along with improving the gun play, enemy A.I. has vastly improved making the enemies a lot less predictable. They won't waste any time trying to flank you with every opportunity that comes their way, so camping is a big no-no. Also they will not hesitate to turn a gun fight into a hand-to-hand brawl when the opportunity knocks.....which brings us to the best improvement of them all and that is the physical combat. In Uncharted 1, it was a simple mash-button ordeal and in Uncharted 2 it was even more blatant. This time around, the combat is more fluid and feels like an actual brawl. It feels so good just trapping a guy in the corner and wailing into his stomach with haymakers or moving in close to a weakened enemy and introducing his face with an interactive item turned weapon like a bottle or a hammer of all things to knock their blocks off.
And of course, after completing the lengthy single campaign, online multiplayer awaits. This has undergone a slight upgrade from the second for the better or for the worse depending on whether you liked the second game's multiplayer or not. The first one had you starting with the AK-47 and an elite pistol. Uncharted 3 gives you more control as to what weapon you start with along with four customisable slots and a wide variety of weapons to choose from. Added to the multiplayer are medal kickbacks. As you earn kills along the way (plus the more you balance them the better), you fill up your kickback which grants you a temporary powerup like an RPG, grenade launcher or temporary invincibility that can turn a match if used correctly. Also, the matches from the second game are back and Co-Op Mode has gone through a major overhaul. Siege, Survival and Gold Rush are combined in random segments that last 10 rounds. Two to three people now share up to 15 lives instead of having to rely heavily on not dying three times in a row to fail (and for the better too since Co-Op mode can be pretty difficult) which means that you MUST work together in certain aspects to get through all 10 rounds successfully. Add the fact that multiplayer can also be done offline and, well, the fun has been doubled.
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, if it is the last game in the series, truly ended the series with a bang. Better weapons, better A.I, a much tougher challenge than the second game and the multiplayer is just as fun as ever. If you haven't already, add this game and the rest of the others to your PS3 collection as soon as possible.