Amy Henning

In a cinematic action game, the player needs to keep moving forward because the intent of the game is to both tell a story and excite the player. Viewed as a question of design alone, difficulty that forces several replays of any section is undesirable because it gates progress and converts the game into a movie that is merely very inconvenient to watch.

Deceptively Good Despite its Flaws

HIGH That stunning horse-riding sequence.

LOW Too many questions without answers, and a plot in search of a soul.

WTF Drake barely survives the desert, but is apparently hydrated enough to run and jump around like a monkey.

You aren't There

HIGH The hallucinatory sequences in Ubar and Yemen.

LOW Gunfights on the water and in a sandstorm magnify the significant deficiencies of the gunplay.

WTF These guys are really staying in a burning building to shoot at me?

The iVideo Game Apple would've Made

HIGH My son telling me to jump back onto my horse after I chased down a moving truck with it, jumped into the back, and took out a bad guy.

LOW You’d think Drake has Wolverine-like healing powers after crashing through the floor for the umpteenth time.

WTF A middle-aged Sully convincing a teenage Drake to stay with him. There has to be some international law against that.

We're joined by Reviews on the Run host (and GameCritics alum) Scott Jones, who speaks publicly for the first time about his controversial Uncharted 3 review. Afterward, Chi and Mike take a Crater Lake-deep dive into the successes and failures of the game. Plus: Is gameplay an endangered species, and how on Earth do we find the time to play all these video games? With Chi Kong Lui, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim "Deepak" Spaeth.

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Links:

• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Review

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