I imagine this game was majorly hyped and was supposed to be a big deal, but I'm kind of an infiltrator in the land of the PlayStation fanboys so I've pretty much been unexposed to all the hype surrounding anything except for Last of Us and the next Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes or Phantom Pain games. So it seems to me there was probably some disappoint to be had in the land of the PlayStations. Personally I found this game to be a disappointment, at the least, for a multitude of reasons.
Graphics:
This game has plenty of graphics up it's sleeve. It looks beautiful from start to finish, even though Naughty Dog's palette is a little bit to saturated with pastels if you ask me. The character models and textures look better than the first two games, the animations are spot on, and the effects are great. As far as cinematics go, there are parts that blow the other games out of the water - specifically the entire sequence where you cause the cargo plane to crash. I have nothing to say about the visuals except that they are wonderful. Not stunning, no, PC still has better graphics, but this is about as good as it gets on PS3.
Storyline:
Deceptions story-line takes you back and teaches you a little bit about Drake because, frankly, they never revealed anything about him and you pretty much didn't know who he was, nor who Sully was, or how they were involved. The relationship between them is key to the conflict between Drake and the villain of the game, so there are lots of flashbacks going on. The thing I will say about the villains, unfortunately, is that both of their deaths are very anti-climactic and unsatisfying. After the ending of Among Thieves, which saw the best villain death, I don't understand why they went this route. On top of that, the end of the game unto itself is unsatisfying - there is no closure not to mention zero mention of what happened to two of the characters.
Throughout the story, though, the game does still adhere very well to the Indiana Jones formula and it makes for an interesting ride. You grow to love your protagonists more and hate the antagonists more. Plus the fact that they have endless troops to throw at you makes it easier to hate them.
But the villain is so dull. She's so dull. She's a bitch and you hate her but who cares, she may as well have thrown tea and crumpets at you. At least the villain in Uncharted 2 was a great one, but Marlow? Right.
Game-play
One major feature of this title surely pissed a lot of people off and got old very fast, so I'll get that out of the way. The drugged out sequences. There are far too many of them. The sequences where you have no gun and are forced to run away from everyone, there are far too many of those too. Other than that, the game-play hasn't changed at all from the first game. It's still a rinse-repeat cycle of "Safe room, fight room" like it was in the first game. You find a room that is empty, it's safe to be in. You find another "room" (area) that may or may not look safe, you have to fight people.
One very thankful addition is that you can now throw grenades back at people, so long as you press triangle appropriately. More often than not they don't kill anyone but at least they don't hit you, and you already have enough problems with all the people rocketing and grenading and sniping you, not to mention the mounted machine guns and shotgun guys. Despite what feels like ramped up enemy aggression, the combat is still not as insane as Drake's Fortune, and so it doesn't make the game unduly frustrating.
Bonus Features
There are none. Where Among Thieves had unlockable cheats, and free guns, Deception has nothing but maybe some artwork. It's theorized they maybe did this because there are so many parts of the game where you aren't supposed to have a gun, but regardless, I think it's ridiculous if the previous game had unlockables and then the next game is completely devoid of them.