Uncharted 3: Buy This Game!

Another Grand Slam from Naughty Dog!

If you own a PS3, odds are that you have heard of the Uncharted franchise.  If you own an Xbox 360 or a Wii, I am sorry.  Really and truly sorry.  These games are only available as a PS3 exclusive.  Better luck next time.
Featuring Nathan Drake, a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake, renown English explorer, Nate is a wise-ass, skull cracking treasure hunter, who has a penchant for finding himself in some very  remarable situations. The result is that this series becomes a combination of Indiana Jones and some cracked out 3D version of Pitfall.  The Uncharted Franchise has won Naughty Dog several Game of the Year awards for their past efforts.  Renown for their incredible attention to detail, remarkable motion capture based graphics, and Hollywood worthy soundtracks, the Uncharted games have been hailed as being closer to feature films than standard video games, and with good reason.
  The latest offering from developer Naughty Dog Studios is true to the franchise.
  Drake, along with a motley cast of characters, some returning from previous games, some new to the series, are once again on a hunt for a fabled lost city, The Atlantis of the Sands, and find themselves in a race against time, surrounded on all sides by the minions of a modern day secret society who has its own designs on the secrets contained in the lost city.
To call the single player campaign story mode of this game immersive is like calling the Gobi desert a sand box.  It just doesn't do it justice.

  Yes the graphics (3D for those of you lucky bastards with the right toys) are incredibly detailed. Breathtaking in-fact.
People, water, everything looks real.  The motion capture is especially well done.

Yes the game play is remarkably fluid, with clearly defined, easy to access controls.  Move, swim, take cover, climb drain pipes, hang from ledges, sneak attack like a mo-fo master ninja, snipe like a gilley suit wearing Navy Seal, it is all super simple to do.

Yes it the soundtrack sounds like it is scored by John Williams or Danny Elfman, pure adventure film.

Yes the puzzles are difficult!  Like any good fortune hunter, Nate must work his way through a number of intricate puzzles to proceed on his journey.  Most of them will stump the uninniated, but with a little in-game research all  are eventually solvable.

Yes the story is engaging.  Even if you are new to the franchise, Nate and the relationships he has built with the other characters make them people you can care about.  This is not just another hack and slash - blast everything you see dungeon crawl.  Sure, the story is linear, but it will keep you on the edge of your seat, needing to know what happens next.

Yes it will pull you up out of your seat by your ears, and make you squeal in a combination of unthinking terror and giddy excitement.  There is a sequence later in the game where Nate is sucked from a flaming cargo plane at 20,000 feet without a parachute.  The following sequence is the most jaw dropping, heart stopping, adrenaline pumping thing I have ever experienced in a video game.  When the sequence ended,  a non-gamer friend who was watching it unfold turned to me, breathless, and exclaimed 'Holy shit!  That was intense!"

Without giving away too much else about the story, all I can say is that this game is pretty friggin' incredible.

Oh!  And it has a multitude of amazing multi-player online elements that will keep it fresh for months to come.

Like I said earlier, BUY THIS GAME!  Unless you don't like fun.  In that case, go back to your Xbox.