This is the second reveal of an Uncharted game that I've covered in my time at IGN, and the same thing has happened each time: I go in thinking Naughty Dog is a great developer but that this next iteration will just be some tweak or graphical improvement -- that the game will be better than the last, but not leave me feeling weak in the knees. Then, I see the game, my expectations are far exceeded, and I'm left to try and put it all into words for you. 

Yes, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception looks phenomenal. By now, you've probably seen the game's trailer, heard that it was all made in the game's engine, and replayed the short gameplay bits at the very end of the video a few times. But even better than that is the fact that Sony's given us two straight minutes of footage -- which encompasses just a sliver of what I saw in a recent demo -- that we're happy to reveal today. 

However, before you start replaying that over and over, let's run through just what's going on in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. This, of course, is the sequel to IGN's Game of the Year 2009,Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Naughty Dog likes to keep the timeline a bit fluid, but a year or so has passed since Nathan Drake took down Lazarevic. Now, Drake and his best friend and mentor, Victor "Sully" Sullivan, are on the quest for "the Atlantis of the Sands," a fabled city filled with the wealth of Arabia and hidden somewhere in the inhospitable Rub al-Khali Desert. 

To get there, Nate and Sully are going to need to do the proper amount of globe hopping. Although many of you freaked out when you saw Nathan Drake wandering through the desert ("There's nowhere to platform in the desert! What the hell, Naughty Dog?!"), the devs say that only about half or possibly less than that is actually set in the sands. Just like Shangri-La in Uncharted 2, the fabled city is the end goal, and there's going to be a while lot in our duo's way. 

See, there's a "clandestine order" that's trying to keep our buddies from reaching the mystical city, and they've got an evil leader that "threatens to conjure [Nathan Drake's] deepest fears." Sadly, this order and its leader didn't make an appearance in my demo, but the fact that we're talking about conjuring stuff up makes me wonder if nightmares or hallucinations will be the over-the-top twist Nate has to face (and that the Uncharted games are known for) this time around. 

Still, that's all conjecture (and if that's what you're into, check out this Rewind Theater breaking down all the clues from the debut trailer). What I know for certain is that this order has the capital to hire thugs to try and kill Nate and Sully, and that's exactly what's happening in the demo I saw. The boys are at a chateau in France. It seems that Sir Francis Drake -- Nate's ancestor and plot point of the original game -- actually had a bit of a run in with the Atlantis of the Sands back in the day while sailing around the world and investigating trade routes for Queen Elizabeth. 

Anyway, there's a clue in this chateau, and as the guys search for it or get done searching for it, the bad guys show up and start pouring gasoline all over the place. They're going to burn the place down so our heroes can't find it, but apparently they don't know Nate and Sully are actually there. How do I know this? Well, I don't actually, but the guys tossing gas everywhere didn't seem to be looking for Nate and Sully. 

 

This worked out well because it gave me a chance to see Nate's new stealth and melee moves that Naughty Dog and Sony have been talking about. The chateau is falling apart, so there are walls with huge chunks missing and broken out floors. When Drake came to one of these sections, he could see the bad guy below him. Nate jumped from the ledge, the player pressed the melee button in the air, and Drake landed on the bad guy with a headlock that knocked him out. 

This was the first of many little Uncharted 3 touches that make the game seem familiar and brand new at once. In Uncharted 2, I could recognize the mechanics of the original, but things had been enhanced -- like the first time Drake scaled a wall and I saw his fingertips seek out the appropriate handhold. In Uncharted 3, what stands out to me so far is Naughty Dog playing with my expectations of what's about to happen. 
At one point, Nate was shuffling along a wall and needed to leap off of it, turn in midair and grab a handhold on the other side of the room. No sweat, right? You've seen him do it a million times before. However, when he got to the other end, the ledge he grabbed broke away and he tumbled to a lower point only barely getting his grip. Later, Drake grabbed on to a chandelier, and the hanging fixture bobbed and swayed with his weight -- objects like this that formerly would've been static now have weight and gravity. 

Still, it was the little moments that got me. Teamwork in Uncharted 2 was really just a quick scene of someone jumping and grabbing on to someone else's arm (except for the stuff with Jeff the cameraman, God, rest his soul), but even in this short demo, it was interesting to see Naughty Dog toying with that concept. 

At one point, Nate and Sully are separated by a chasm and the old man starts tight-rope walking over a beam like Nate has done a thousand times before. Bad guys burst in from behind Sully, and the player has to fend them off as Victor crosses -- and Nate quips "Is it an inner ear thing? Let's go!" Later, in the section (which you can watch above), Drake's foot goes through some rickety steps and as Sully tries to free him, Nate has to defend the duo from advancing bad guys. Moments where you actually feel like a team are really cool, and I'm interested to see how Naughty Dog expands on them through the game. 

I hate to be that guy, but it's actually a shame the video above cuts off where it does. Right after that, the whole staircase gives out, Sully's dangling from the fire below, and Nate's got to shimmy to him and boost him up. The whole thing breaks in another direction and duo has to climb for everything their worth. Of course, the music's thunderous during all of this and really driving home the tension and how nuts the situation is. 

Where my demo ended was with Nate and Sully finding a ladder they thought would get them out of the burning deathtrap, but instead had them dangling precariously from it as it begins to topple toward the fire below. The entire run up to that moment was maybe seven minutes or so, and it only got more and more intense as the time went by. 

Part of that intensity is the music and voice acting that I've already mentioned, but a lot of it has to do with how the game looks and acts. From the first time you're exposed to the flames, the light and shadows being cast on the characters and walls is dazzling -- when Nate's scaling the place and the fire is creeping up in his wake, it's a thing of beauty. On top of that, Naughty Dog has added in a bunch of animations for Drake so that his motions are more realistic than ever. He'll talk to Sully and take in a situation, and then do this two-step hop of sorts before taking off in a jog to climb whatever wall is in his way. When the fire is getting more and more intense, his hand is shielding his face and he's getting lower and lower to the ground. 

I feel like I've talked (or at least written) your ear off but only have more to say. I saw an enemy grapple Drake from behind while another came from the front, our hero kicked the bad guy in front of him and then took out the one who was holding him. Naughty Dog hinted at new contextual actions like Drake grabbing beer bottles and using them in fights, but there's only so many words a preview can hold. Luckily -- or horribly depending on how you look at it -- there's plenty of time to go over it all before Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception hits on Nov. 1, 2011, and while we all mark the days off on our calendar and wonder how T.E. Lawrence is going to tie into Sir Francis Drake's story, IGN will be there with the Uncharted news as it happens.

 

I want this game so bad :3

Can this thread be lcoked please. dont know why but it posted the thread twice