The best of the three, Drake’s escape from a sinking cruise ship, might actually improve upon it. There are at least three passages in Uncharted 3 that try to channel the sheer chaos of the lengthy shoot-out within a collapsing hotel that was Uncharted 2’s exhilarating highlight. Few developers can match Naughty Dog for epic action set pieces. Story is vital to Uncharted games, but they would still stand out even if they were disconnected sequences of action scenes featuring wordless rag dolls. Thankfully it’s a videogame, where the narrative bar is far lower and the banal quip and perpetual motion of the summer blockbuster remain exciting when done well. It even has the daddy issues of a Spielberg movie.
#Uncharted 3 game movie#
If it was a movie it wouldn’t be a particularly good one, sidling up alongside The Mummy as an overly loud and bumptious Indiana Jones acolyte whittled down into a formless nub by non-stop spectacle and lowest common denominator handholding. Uncharted 3 owes as much to movies as it does videogames. Uncharted continues to muck up the past with the esoteric and supernatural, annoying the history teachers of the world while making conspiracists like me stroke our beards in excitement. This time the fabled lost city with surprising mystical properties sought after by explorer Nathan Drake is in the middle of the Rub’al Khali desert, and involves a centuries-old conspiracy known to both Lawrence and Sir Francis. Lawrence into its convoluted, globe-hopping plot, adding Lawrence of Arabia to a stable of historical harbingers that include angel-summoning alchemist John Dee and that old stalwart Francis Drake. Another famous cinematic explorer looms larger over Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, and this time it’s someone that actually existed.