I got a chance to play a bit of Uncharted 3’s singleplayer at rAge recently and it has left me even more excited for the game. The guys and gals over at the Ster Kinekor stand had a playable version of the singleplayer on the show floor, and I took a quiet moment late on Friday afternoon to give it a go.

The burning château and the sinking ship levels were playable, and while the cargo plane was listed on the menu it unfortunately wasn’t playable due to technical issues.

Uncharted 3 plays so naturally it sometimes feels like it’s playing itself. After seeing the videos of the three sections revealed so far I was wondering how all the up-close melee combat is controlled, but it turns out that mashing the square button gets you through them.

It’s not quite Quick Time Events, but it feels a little disconnected, like I’m mashing square to move frames forward in a full-motion videogame. This is the only negative thing I have to say, however, as everything else is phenomenal - Uncharted 3 really is like taking part in an action/adventure movie and offers all the thrills of the best of them, along with the immersiveness of controlling Nathan Drake.

We’ve seen people play these levels (and if you haven’t, check out the videos, unless you’re on media black-out, in which case you probably aren’t reading this preview), and I’m happy to report they’re as fun and fluid to play as they look. A couple times in the demo I wasn’t sure how to move forward but a quick bit of exploration of my surroundings made something happen.

One of the design mantras that Naughty Dog must chant every morning is ‘the player must never get stuck,’ and for a game like Uncharted this makes sense. We want to see what happens next and what other ridiculous things take place - escaping falling down, burning up buildings and sinking ships, or catching a plane while it’s taking off are unlikely to be the most epic things that take place in the game.

And we don’t want the flow of the plot to be hindered by something like getting stuck and not knowing what to do. This means there is some loss of gameplay in the interest of plot flow, but I’m happy to live with that trade-off in this game series, if not others.

Some of the things demonstrated before continue to amaze me, such as massive structures pitching and yawing causing movable objects to roll around or slide around and causing Nathan to steady himself against railings or walls. These touches really do add to the immersion of the game as things feel that much more ‘real,’ even if the art style is not as realistic as in some games.

Uncharted 3 looks every bit the quality of its predecessors, and then some, and the plot is as intriguing as ever. There’s not a lot new in terms of gameplay elements since a lot of the ‘new stuff’ is really implemented as cut-scenes (and I expect a lot of the jeep-plane-catching sequence will be the same), and I do have some concerns over just where Naughty Dog is going to go after this, but for now I’m content to enjoy the ride of a virtual lifetime.

Roll on November, it’s going to be a big month in gaming!

Purchase:

Country	Name	Link
		Click to buy Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Singleplayer Hands-on