Previews// Uncharted 3

Naughty Dog also deserves a heap of credit for making the navigation so natural. I was gently guided through the whole thing without ever running across an opening that should have been passable but wasn't. The guidance was subtle and effective. There's nothing to take you out of a set piece like that like furiously flailing against a door that looks like your exit but isn't.

The other chunk of Uncharted 3 I played through was the airstrip. It started with an exchange with Elena that I won't spoil for you and continued with an assault on the aforementioned airstrip with the aim of getting on board a cargo plane.

I should take a moment to mention that, like the château, it looks stunning. The airstrip in particular really had an atmosphere all of its own. It was sunrise and the sky was gorgeous. I know the colour of the sky isn't your primary concern when you're about to shoot some dudes and storm a plane, but it really creates a sense of atmosphere that gives this stage an atmosphere all of its own.

Anyway, I only had four bullets to start with, so stealth was the order of the day. The level was just open enough to give a sense that you could approach it with a spot of strategy, though I think if you spent too long poking around it, you'd run out of options reasonably quickly.

Then – disaster! (***MILD, NOT VERY STORY-RELATED, SPOILERS***) The plane set off! So I started pegging it after the thing. It is, again, a tribute to the level design that I did this. There wasn't much apparent hope in charging after it - it just felt like the thing to do. Fortunately, Elena turned up with a jeep and I was able to catch the plane and scramble up into the landing gear to stow away.

Once inside, I was treated to another example of what could have been another by-the-numbers stage. Instead, I fell out of the back of a plane, had a fight on its boarding ramp at who-knows-how-many-thousand-feet, had a shoot-out in a hold full of cargo sliding from side to side and, finally, was flung out into empty space without a parachute and a several week wait to see what happens next.

That's not a bad push, really.

The overriding impression I was left with of Uncharted 3 was of how good a job Naughty Dog has done of creating an experience that's both cinematic and immersive. Yes, those are two douche-y buzzwords in one single sentence from someone who should know better, but they're appropriate here. They're also two things that don't always sit well together in games. Making something 'cinematic' often means throwing the player into a cutscene or, at best, a quicktime event. It's a rare thing to come across sections of a game that both look like they could be in a (good) James Bond film and leave you fully in control of your character. Uncharted 3 really does give you the feeling that you're inhabiting a great action movie.

Fingers crossed this is kept up across the whole of Uncharted 3 and I didn't just play two cherry-picked, non-representative sections of the game.

Uncharted 3 is out on November 2nd.