Uncharted 3: first impression

Having played all their 'Jak & Daxter' games on the PS2, you can say I'm a longtime fan of Santa Monica based game developer Naughty Dog. I just received the long awaited third installment in their 'Uncharted' franchise title 'Drake's Deception' yesterday and immediately started playing. Thought it 'ld be a good thing to break loose from this virtual extravaganza for a moment to share my first impression so far.

First off: the packaging looks really awesome. I got the Special Edition with a 'steelbook' case (above you see the regular version), which actually looks like Nate's roughed up notebook, having this soft suede feel to it, with all his little scribbles, clues, collected newspaper clippings and maps inside. It's great. I haven't downloaded all the bonus stuff yet that comes with the voucher the SE brings along, I just chucked in the disc and went for the first seven chapters last night. (The campaign mode lasts 22 chapters, while UC2 had 26 chapters).










DC Comics will publish a six issue limited series of 'Uncharted' comic books starting November 30. Above the covers for the first issues (first one is a variant done by Adam Hughes). The comics will have by Sergio Sandoval and Pol Gas with scripts by Joshua Williamson and covers by Tony Harris.

For those of you not familiar with the franchise: Uncharted is an action adventure game, combining bare knuckle fighting and shooting scenes with exploring and puzzle solving situations. It features the best of Indiana Jones and James Bond combined, think of it as Tomb Raider, but with fists instead of breasts. The main character, Nathan Drake is a treasure hunter and a descendant (or so he claims) of the famous explorer Sir Francis Drake. His longtime buddy Sully (Victor Sullivan) is an oldtime adventurer and a bit of a hustler himself, he often finds himself caught up in some sort of criminal activity. Also along for the ride in all three games is female journalist and TV reporter Elena Fisher, voiced by actress Emily Rose (she also did the character's motion capture) now known for her role of detective Audrey Parker in the popular SyFy show 'Haven', based Stephen King's novel.

While most games today appear on all game consoles and PC, Uncharted remains one of the few Playstation 3 exclusive games that still exist, a rare treat!

Young Drake.

The first levels have a real genuine feeling to it, set in South-America we see Nate as a kid trying to nick his great-great-grandfather's ring in a maritime museum. That's when he meets Sully for the first time, who is out for Francis Drake's ring himself too. The following chase scene on the roofs and through the appartments of reminds me of the fast paced scenes in 'The Bourne Ultimatum', you know, the part where Jason goes all out trying to survive while on the run in Morroco.

I also like the London settings, where Nate and Sully first catch up with Charlie Cutter, their new compadre, resembling just more than a bit Jason Statham, both in action and likeness. Many thought that Statham had actually joined the cast for a while, but Charlie's really voiced by Graham McTavish. Known for his role in Luc Besson's recent action packed thriller 'Colombiana', Graham already did al lot of voice acting work for other games, including characters from 'Infamous 2', 'COD: Black opps' and 'COD: Modern Warfare 2'. He also voiced the character Zoran Lazarevic in 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves', so he's no stranger to the franchise.

Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin founded Naughty Dog in 1986 and created the 'Crash Bandicoot' and 'Jak & Daxter' games. In 2001 their company was bought by Sony. After openly criticising Sony for not respecting the individual creative talents, Gavin left Naughty Dog in 2004 and created his own comic book 'Iron and the Maiden' with artists Francis Manapul and Joel Gomez. Published by Aspen Comics in 2007, the Trade paperback was released last year by Top Cow.

25.000 Gigabytes.
A month ago, Christophe Balestra, Co-President of Naughty Dog showed through his twitter account that the total assets of Uncharted 3 are taking up almost an entire 25 Terabyte drive, that's almost 25 thousand Gigabytes of raw data!

When you bought 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves', the disc almost held 25 Gigabytes while the game had 26 levels. Deception 'only' has 22 levels. A lot of time has been spent to make this third game playable on the latest 3D TV-screens, resulting in a massive amount of data. Uncharted 3 therefor takes up more than 50 Gigabites of space on the disc and had to be really compressed to fit the maximum size of one double layer Blu-ray disc.

Like all games Uncharted 3 has different levels of difficulty, which gives different people the chance to play and also the possibility to evolve your skills, if you didn't have any. Beside 'Hard' and 'Normal' there is always the 'Easy' setting for certain people. I've heard Naughty Dog testers on the net say the game could and actually was completed in 3.3 hours on 'easy'.

Uncharted 3 even has a 'Very easy' setting, though I am really having a hard time trying to comprehend what kind of people, if any, this is targeted at, seeing that I'm playing this game on 'Hard'  and lucky for me, when I've finished it I'll have unlocked the so-called 'crushing' mode. But I'm still at level 7 right now, so I haven't even entered the desert to search for the 'Lost Atlantis of the sands'.

Covers for the first and second game. 'Drake's Fortune' was released in December 2007. Two years later, in October 2009 Naughty Dog came with the sequel 'Among Thieves'. In the first game Nate found Sir Francis Drake's diary and searches for El Dorado in the Amazon while second is set in The Himalayas and centers on Marco Polo's voyages to the East, the legend of his lost ships and the mythical kingdom of Shambhala.

Uncharted Future?

Based on the first game 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune' a big Hollywood movie is nog being produced, which will definately draw many new and unfamiliar customisers to the franchise. I'm guessing that might be a reason why Naughty Dog/Sony seems to have simplified the gameplay.
As for a new sequel, I've heard the guys at Naughty Dog say that the PS3 wouldn't be able to handle a forth Drake adventure technically, suggesting that the next game will be created for the Playstation 4, which is not so strange, seeing that the PS3 was released in November 2006, six years after the PS2, which came out in 2000, again six years after the release of the original Playstation console in December 1994.

Another game called 'Uncharted: Golden Abyss' will be available soon on Sony's new handheld 'Playstation Vita', both of which will be released December 17 In Japan. In Europe and in the US the release of 'Golden Abyss' will also coincide with the release of Sony's Vita, which will be available here in Februari 2013.

Let's hope the guys at Naughty Dog will someday return to Jak & Daxter once more. I would love to see them in HD sometime, even if it's just a polished collection of the three games in HD. Below: headturn and character design for 'Jak' by Naughty Dog artist Bob Raffei. Check out his site for more great artwork from this amazing series of games!