YMMV / Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

• Anti-Climax Boss: After much build-up, the final battle against Talbot is a simple series of QTEs that aren't much different or more challenging than any other fist fight against the common mook.
• Base-Breaking Character: Talbot's cool, suave demeanor, genuine yet unexplained loyalty to Marlowe, and near-superhuman abilities make him either one of the coolest and most mysterious villains in the series, or a nonsensically written villain whose ability to survive point-blank gunshot wounds and disappear out of nowhere comes across more as Plot Armor than anything else.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Out of nowhere during the wandering in the desert in Chapter 18, there's a random female narrator who recites a poem.
• Breather Level: Chapter 18 is a purely story-driven level that chronicles Nathan's agonizing journey through the desert. Unlike the preceding and following levels, there are no Mooks or obstacles of any sort for the player to overcome.
• Broken Base: The aiming mechanic was changed; the lag between moving the controller's joystick and the reticule moving on the screen was dramatically increased, and there is resistance to movement when aiming over an enemy. Some people were very upset about this, while others accused them of nitpicking. Naughty Dog has released a patch to fix this to a degree, but it's still a noticeably different experience from Uncharted 2's aiming.
• Demonic Spiders: The Djinn, which appear exclusively in chapter 21. Not only can they take more punishment than any other enemy in the game, but they also hurt Drake if he tries to use melee attacks against them. To top it off, they are unique in that they are the only Mooks in the franchise who can teleport.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Charlie Cutter. He's cocky, sarcastic, and has excellent banter with Nate. He's also one of the better representations of a British character. He's even got a more vulnerable side to him that's just endearing, and fits into the main cast like he's been there all along. You can't help but feel sorry for the guy when he's tripping balls after being drugged by Talbot, freaking out about small spaces, or when he's put out of action after falling and breaking his leg.
• Epileptic Trees: A prevailing theory over the years is that Talbot is some form of Djinn, explaining some of his stranger aspects such as his surviving a bullet to the chest or seemingly disappearing out of nowhere, though Word of God explains that these are simply examples of Talbot using illusions and sleight of hand to confuse Drake and his crew.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The biggest criticism of Uncharted 3. While the game still received a good amount of praise, most reviewers noted that aside from a few tweaks it didn't really do too much to set itself all that apart from Among Thieves.
• Magnificent Bastard: Talbot is Katherine Marlowe's right-hand man, doing the majority of the heavy lifting and thinking for his boss in outpacing Nathan Drake. Deducing a traitor in Marlowe's organization with ease after an operation goes wrong, Talbot later drugs and hypnotizes the traitor, Charlie Cutter, into helping thwart Drake at several turns. With mysterious abilities to survive gun shot wounds and disappear down dead end alleys with ease, Talbot routinely outwits Drake and his friends to swipe artifacts from them as they are collected, even hypnotizing Drake into giving Marlowe the final piece of the puzzle to find the lost city of Iram. Genuinely loyal to Marlowe to the end, Talbot loses his calm, cool demeanor for the first time in the game when she dies, and nearly murders Drake and Sully for their hand in her death.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The level up music in the Multiplayer mode, which is a short rendition of Nate's Theme. It'll really make you feel like a badass adventurer.
• Padding: The entire Ship Graveyard segment of the game. It barely advances the plot, if at all, and Nate's reason for being there — to rescue Sully — is rendered moot as Sully is somewhere else. Four chapters are dedicated to this set piece with little progress in the plot or character development to show for it.
• Player Punch: Towards the end of the game, Sully's apparent death. Nate is PISSED, and he lets his enemies know all about it. But thank God it was just a hallucination.
• Scrappy Mechanic: While previous games had several gameplay-related unlockables, Uncharted 3 has none, and as a result there is less replay value. This is fixed in the remaster.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: While Among Thieves was a mild step down in difficulty from its predecessor thanks to improved gun handling and better melee and stealth systems, Drake's Deception ratchets the difficulty way up, with much more aggressive enemy AI that seems hellbent on forcing you into melee combat whether you like it or not, more and bigger Giant Mooks sprinkled liberally throughout the levels, and additional enemies wielding heavy weapons in just about every firefight. Most players can expect to die about 50% more than they did in Among Thieves, despite a shorter playtime.
• Signature Scene:
  • The plane battle in chapter 17, while brief, is one of the most fondly remembered moments in the game, to the point one stage in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale pays homage to it.
  • Drake being left stranded in a desert after the plane he was on crashed, finding a dead soldier covered in sand, and yanking a rifle out of the corpse's hands. The scene provides the illustrations to the game's cover and title screen.
• Special Effect Failure: While appreciated, the bonus skins added to the remaster are lifted directly from the multiplayer mode, which means they aren't quite as detailed as the single-player character models nor do they react to physics, weather, etc. As a result, they have a certain level of Unintentional Uncanny Valley to them.
• That One Boss: While he isn't marketed as a boss, the armored guard you fight near the end of Chapter 14 is a pain in the ass. Unlike most armored mooks who can still be killed with 2-3 well-placed headshots, this guy's armor covers him from head to toe and makes him completely impervious to bullets: the only thing that can harm him is a Hammer Grenade Launcher, which you have to wait until a mook carrying one arrives so you can kill him and take it. Until then, you have to try and survive the guy as he chases you all around a wide open area with very little cover, and a few rounds from him will finish you quickly.
• That One Level:
  • All of "The Settlement". The chapter consists of several gunfights with mooks of all kinds - armored, snipers, shotguns, RPGS, and more, and all at the same time. At the same time, although there's several bits of cover, they primarily consist of several shoddy pieces of rubble that don't hide Drake well making it unfairly easy for several of them to flank around you and take potshots at your backside. To top it all off, the chapter starts you off without any weapons, which means you're going to have to try and get some guns from some of the soldiers you've killed before the remaining enemies, all still armed to the teeth may we remind you, can finish you off, and they'll often do so in a matter of seconds.
  • The second part of "Caravan". The sandstorm greatly limits your depth of view and you have to kill turret gunners on Jeeps to advance forward, which wouldn't be very hard if you know where they are before they kill you.
  • This is immediately followed by "The Atlantis of the Sands." The level primarily consists of battles with (illusionary) Djinn-possessed soldiers. They start out like regular mooks, but when you "kill" them like normal enemies they then proceed to revive in firey super-powered forms. Not only do they take full additional rounds to finally put down for good, but their new powers mean they now they begin using Teleport Spam to easily get behind you to finish you off, have fireballs that have the same lethal range as a grenade, and are immune to fisticuffs since only you'll take damage. Additionally, unlike the "zombies" and "guardians" from the first two games where their unique attacks forced you to go out into the open but didn't penalize you for leaving cover, they still use their normal attacks of laying nonstop gunfire at you which will quickly kill if you leave cover for two long, so you're forced to remain a sitting duck while they can get behind you at the drop of a hat. The fights with them end up being luck-based because of this since your survival is now dependent on whether they immediately try to teleport behind you or not, and even on the easiest difficulties you should be prepared to die often.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The 'lining up the body parts' puzzle in Chapter 11. The idea is to place a make shift 'torch' into one of several holes in the ground, and the light from it is supposed to cast a certain shadow onto the wall. You can switch to first person view to line it up, and the guide hints that a shadow should be cast to help you. The game's hints on this puzzle are unhelpful, making this one an exercise in trial-and-error.
  • The chateau puzzle in Chapter 6 presents the player with a wall bearing a grid of runic symbols, and a framework with four plates of heraldic animals (ox, eagle, lion and horse) to shift horizontally and vertically. The goal is to place the animal tiles in the appropriate spots on the grid, though the way to figure out where the ox and horse should go can be tricky: There are two reflective surfaces on the ground that display different symbols when you view them from different angles. You are supposed to memorize each of the reflected runes, then infer that the animal plates should be placed on the grid space that is surrounded by said symbols.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite being an interesting addition to Drake's crew and featuring a fun dynamic with Drake himself, Charlie only sticks around for the first third of the game and is Put on a Bus afterwards.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It's revealed that Nate isn't really Francis Drake's descendant, and suggested that he made up his heritage, and he's escaping his sordid past as an orphan whose father abandoned him and mother committed suicide. It's an epic twist that turns the whole series on its head, as it casts many of Nate's actions from earlier games in a new light but it's only mentioned twice in a one-off line from the villains and never directly touched on again... until the next game.
• Unintentional Period Piece: This game takes place partly in Syria and Yemen, which are both portrayed as (relatively) peaceful countries without a hint of civil war, firmly placing this game in a setting predating The Arab Spring (which actually began almost a full year before the game came out, but nothing was modified during development to reflect this). Could also double as Harsher in Hindsight, given the explosive gun battles in those locations that Drake participates in.