Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

The third installment follows Nathan Drake in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake and the legendary desert Atlantis, the lost city of Ubar in the middle of the Arabian desert. The story focuses more on Drake's relationship with his mentor Victor Sullivan and reveals their shared past, while the player experiences spectacular sequences such as a burning mansion, a ship sinking during a storm, or a flight aboard a cargo plane in the middle of a desert storm. The sequence aboard the ocean liner, which gradually capsizes and changes the orientation of the entire level, ranks among the most ambitious scenes Naughty Dog ever built on the PS3, and shows how the studio can turn an environment into a gameplay mechanic in its own right.

In terms of gameplay, the game built on the proven formula of cover shooting and platforming, added close-quarters combat, and improved enemy AI as well as melee animations. Melee combat became a fully-fledged alternative to shooting for the first time, with the ability to disarm opponents, use the environment, and switch between multiple attackers at once. Naughty Dog's graphics engine reached its peak on the PS3, with elaborate fire, water, and sand effects that ranked among the best on consoles at the time. Multiplayer grew to include extensive character customization options and a long-term progression system that kept the community playing long after release.

Reviews were once again outstanding, though some critics argued that the story was less cohesive than in the second installment and that plot digressions felt less tightly constructed. Even so, the game sold very well and cemented the series' position as the platform's flagship. Uncharted 3 also showed how far the PS3 had come from the generation's troubled start, and became the series' last major entry before the transition to the PlayStation 4. The game's development involved extensive technical experiments with particle effects and fluid physics, which Naughty Dog later put to use in other projects, and the title was the last installment over whose direction game director Amy Hennig had full creative control.