I finished this on Normal on Friday (I started again after chapter 8 when the patch was released). My impressions of the campaign on Normal follow... really I should play this on Hard for the "real" experience and comment again, but still....
GAMEPLAY: B+: Mostly this game is great on its own terms, and far beyond what anyone else offers, but a lot of the time it still feels like a "what could have been" because of its predecessor being so fucking excellent. I don't think enough time was spent on balancing the level design and encounters, and possibly too much time was spent on the set pieces. Not that I would want to give up a single one of those, but this game could've played a lot better if they had some time to polish and iterate on the core gameplay.
The first 8-10 chapters of the game are WAY too heavy on the puzzles and walking around and WAY too light on the action. The puzzles themselves are good, and harder than any before, but the game loses its breathless quality when all it is is a bunch of trekking through linear confined spaces and trivial climbing. It looks good, sure, but it barely feels like a game and, for the first time, actually lends credence to the bullshit critics of Uncharted 2 when they said "it's just a movie, the gameplay is crap." Granted there is still some good action stuff in those chapters, but the tunnel-like "exploration" is way too predominant. Even the shooting aspects tend to be these lame little "you're going somewhere in an enclosed space, guy pops out, you shoot him" situations. Those are great if they're the exception... not if they're the rule!
After that, though, the game turns into a balls-out shooter game, which ALWAYS has been the core strength of the series, especially in Uncharted 2. And it's a really good one here. Post-patch the shooting mechanics are nice and refined, the weapons are varied and fun to use, and the encounters require some tactical decision-making. Several of the battles were extremely fun and memorable, such as the shipyards and a certain shootout in a desert village. I encountered nothing truly difficult in the game, though a couple of the places mentioned by others (like the cruise ship ballroom) were harder than others. On Normal they were still easy though... you just have to keep moving and save the heavy weapons for the armored dudes. You can take a ton of damage, and the sniper guys are very slow to actually shoot. On Hard or Crushing I can imagine this being a real pain in the ass though. Also much of it makes little sense... there were several situations where there was no reason for all those guys to attack you given the situation. Thus it could feel contrived.
So yeah, the regular combat is definitely solid but not as satisfying as in the previous game because by and large the level design is conventional and flat (whereas in Uncharted 2 it was often awesomely vertical [my favorite word]). There's nothing, really, like the crazy geometry of the Monastery and village fights in Uncharted 2.
So if the regular combat is solid but a bit on the safe side (maybe closer to Uncharted 1 than Uncharted 2... but with hardass armored enemies), at least the set piece stuff is fantastic. Like, unparalleled fantastic. Really, when strung together with the regular action, the set pieces make chapters 12-20 really amazing and worthy of the series. Things devolve into cliche at the very end, which is unfortunate, however.
STORY/WRITING/VOICE ACTING: A-: The voice acting is of course impeccable and the best in the industry. The character relationships remain another strength. The Sully/Nate relationship is beautifully expanded upon; and you have to love Cutter. As usual, the overall story is a solid excuse for sending people to interesting places, but sadly I thought there were a few very intriguing characters and motifs that were annoyingly ignored by the endgame, thus squandering a lot of the potential. This is somewhat niggling, in that this game operates on a higher level than most other games in terms of story, but it's still a bit sad. Even with the horrible end boss fight in Uncharted 2, somehow taking care of Zoran felt more satisfying than what happens with the villains in Uncharted 3. The Uncharted 2 ending felt like an organic ending, whereas the Uncharted 3 ending felt like it was time to wrap the game up. If the motivations of these villains are not explored in Uncharted 4, then that's a big opportunity lost.
Also I've noticed that some of the writing is becoming repetitive. "The whole place is coming down!" is seriously spoken like 4 or 5 times in the game. There were several examples of little things like that that were hard to ignore by the end. There was just a hint of phoning it in and lacking inspiration (NEVER a problem in the first 2 games).
AUDIOVISUAL: A+: It's the best-looking and best-sounding game I've played. What else is there to say? Okay, so it didn't have near-perfect image quality of Uncharted 2, and both Elena and Chloe looked different in not a good way (the creepy ghost eyes in U2 aside), but overall this was pure gold. In particular I thought Drake looks amazing (after being a bit off in the 2nd game), but some of the environments have to be seen to be believed.
VALUE: B+: The in-game counter said it took me 10.5 hours to complete; I picked up 50/100 treasures. I think that's shorter than Uncharted 2. Regardless it felt like a solid length, no longer or shorter than it should have been; too bad the first 4 or 5 hours were so devoid of action. Both U1 and U2 were great fun to play through on other difficulties. It's hard to say now, but this one should be at least a fun Hard playthrough for another 10 hours. As for Crushing... I don't know. It could be a real chore in U2 without memorizing all the placements, and this might be more frustrating.
OVERALL: It feels like an A-. It's a damn good game and without really any equivalents by anyone else, but there are hints of lack of inspiration and definitely bits of lacking polish (whether it's AI bugs or friendlies getting stuck inside walls/floors or somewhat lazy firefight design).
Thinking back on this year, I've beaten the following new games (plus a bunch of remasters... but irrelevant):
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (360)
L.A. Noire (PS3)
Portal 2 (PS3)
Killzone 3
LittleBigPlanet 2
The only other game I'm likely to get to this year is Assassin's Creed: Revelations (which I started) and maybe Skyrim.
Of those games, U3 beats the shit out of Killzone 3 and LBP2 (the latter of which is excellent but will never have that same punch as the big story-driven experiences) and immolates L.A. Noire, which had potential but did not deliver a cohesive experience. So that leaves Portal 2 and DX. DX was... a very good DX... and I very much enjoyed it, but when all is said and done I did not enjoy it as much as Uncharted 3. Portal 2 on the other hand... hmm. Well, it's a nearly perfect game. It achieves everything it wants to achieve perfectly, and it's clearly very inspired and unique. So on that level it beats Uncharted 3. On the other hand I consider Uncharted 3 to just be a Bigger Deal. So I don't know. I guess in terms of personal enjoyment I'd say they're a tie, or maybe Uncharted 3 is better, but Portal 2 is the better game.
