Looks like Lawrence of Arabia hid some clues to the location of the City of Brass, deep within the old home of a French crusader. Now, it’s time to bring those secrets to light in the name of massive profits.

There was no universe in which this decrepit old mansion was going to survive a meeting with Nathan “Walking Disaster” Drake, but burning it to the ground in a blazing inferno is definitely a new way to show off those fire effects that Naughty Dog has been working on. Even now, they’re pretty impressive for the time.

More than that though, this is also starting to establish a character trait that would get expanded on in A Thief’s End: Drake’s obsession with taking great personal risk in pursuit of treasure and glory, and Sully’s role in keeping him grounded despite being in the same “industry”.

Thankfully, there’s enough here in Drake’s Deception that we can sink our teeth into it, hopefully next time.

We’ve somehow managed to outwit a powerful and secretive organization run by the most evil people on the planet: The British. The ball’s in our court, and we need only take advantage of it.

Well, we couldn’t exactly leave without a massive shootout. This is Uncharted. We always end a section with a massive shootout. And the fighting feels as good as it always did.

Props to the team for also managing to include another “Drake explains the central mystery” into the game. Don’t think I missed Sully getting a fistbump from Chloe either after he managed to correctly make the same deductions Nate did. That was a funny little improvised motion that I can’t help but appreciate.

And now we’re in France, looking for clues to the location of the fabled City of Brass. Next time, we’ll try to beat the Brits to them.

Looks like Nate and Sully go back far more than anyone thought, but what could we possibly do after this flashback is over? Our protagonist is dead on the streets. Who will we play as!?

I unironically love the detail that we can’t pick up enemy guns because we’re still sneaking into a highly secure compound and the gun we’re equipped with has a silencer that we can’t give up. Those little instances of verisimilitude can bring players in just that much more than they’d otherwise be.

For some reason, it only occurs to me know how much the scene between Talbot and Marlowe, where she figures out they’ve been tricked by a fake ring, really undermines the credibility that Talbot has as a villain. It’s not just that he was fooled, it’s that he’s such an unbelievable dork when he realized it that even his own boss is dumbfounded. Not even that great Robert Atkin Downes can save him from that.

And that won’t change no matter how cool the game thinks he is.

Looks like this time, the world of Jak and Daxter is well and truly saved. I doubt we’ll need to revisit them again anytime soon.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re done with Naughty Dog. After all, we still have the final adventure of the Nathan Drake trilogy left in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Credit where it’s due, this is a strong opening sequence for the game, getting us straight into an action sequence with enough underlying intrigue that we’re going to want to keep playing to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes. Between the deal, the new shady antagonists, and the tension of how Drake and Sully will survive despite clearly being shot and left for dead, there are plenty of hooks to draw the player’s interest.

And while the tailing mission that follows, where we play as Teen Drake, slows down the pace a bit, it’s thankfully not too long before we’re back at it. The more important thing it does is establish the relationship between Drake and Sully. In general, Uncharted 3 focuses much more on their dynamic compared to previous games, where Sully takes a backseat to Elena and Chloe. We’re always had the idea that the two of them are close partners and associates, but that was the extent of what we knew until this game.

Thankfully, their characters are given enough time to develop. The problem is that a lot of the characters surrounding them, including and especially our big villains, are not. As we progress through the game, you’ll start to understand what I mean.

We’ve beaten Jak 3 for one and all, so let’s take a minute to discuss it before we finally wrap things up.

Like I said, next time we start Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Please look forward to it.

This is it. The final battle awaits us as we storm the Dark Maker ship to make sure Errol doesn’t awaken the cargo before we blast it to pieces.

As always, the fate of the planet is in our hands!

Fortunately for us, the Dark Maker’s strongest, most apocalyptic weapon amounts to nothing in comparison to… conventional firearms! Specifically, our ever-dependable Beam Reflexor and its incredible ability to crowd-control our enemies. Just ignore the fact that the driving section in the middle of the fight took me a few tries.

I admit that part of me is surprised nothing in the last round ever mandates the use of our eco powers. I never took out Dark Jak, and Light Jak only made a few appearances to heal us between phases in the last part of the fight. At least the platforming section at the start has us use our wings to glide a few times.

There is beauty in the way this is structured too. We begin with a platforming challenge, then a vehicle section in the wasteland, followed by the last combat sequence. All one after the other, making use of each of the big three mechanical pillars.

As for the reveal that “Jak is Mar. THE Mar!”, I’ve said enough about that during this stream and the post-game discussion that will be posted tomorrow. Overall, Jak 3 is still probably the best game in the trilogy, even if that shows off exactly why the other mascot platformers like Sly and Ratchet left him in the dust.

Next week, we start Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Get ready, my friends. This is the part where all of the big late-game plot twists for Jak 3 are revealed.

And a lot of them don’t make any sense.

Honestly, the plot twist that the Precursors are ottsels is probably the part of this series of reveals that makes the most sense. It’s the rest of it that stretches credulity, with Damas and Jak not knowing their obvious relation to each other, and the idea that the Precursors were ready and willing to pull a fast one on Jak and turn him into an ottsel before he realized what was happening to him. It’s a lot of strange behavior from characters who should have the facilities to know better.

But none of this is game-breaking, thankfully. These were just part of the growing pains that came from taking storytelling in video games more seriously. Clearly, the Naughty Dog of later console generations learned much from their earlier attempts in this one, as we’ll doubtlessly uncover when we return to the Uncharted games next week.

For now, stay tuned for the finale of Jak 3.

In this episode, two of the worst gimmicks in Jak 3 make their presence known. Fortunately, both of them have the good sense to make their segments short so that we don’t grow overly tired of them.

Someone in chat compared that turret/vehicle escort mission to the Alchemist from Spyro 2, in the way that both of them take the most obtuse, unnecessarily long routes they possibly can to get to their final destination. I’ve never agreed more vigorously with somebody in my life. As for the Dark Titan section in the ship, I didn’t like using that machine in Jak II, and I especially don’t like using it now.

At least after those missions, we get a solid platforming level with light combat to break things up. I’m still not sure why Errol is so gung-ho about killing everyone, but I guess he was always a psychopath so it doesn’t matter.

This was the era of video games where we still didn’t take plot and story too seriously, so it’s important to not be too harshly critical when plot points don’t make sense. The gameplay of the PS2-era platformers always took priority.

Thankfully, Jak 3 plays well enough that it can overcome all of the shortcomings of the story.

Looks like the Precursor monks aren’t above asking us for help. Fortunately, we’re still the heroes we were back in Haven City.

So despite how rude they’ve been, you better believe we’ll bail them out.

This combat encounter against the Dark Markers was more than a little eye-opening. In theory, with vents of Dark and Light Eco allowing us to make extreme use of our powers, it would be wiser to save ammo and rely on Dark Bomb/Blast to eradicate our enemies.

In practice, the Beam Reflexor is such a powerful weapon, and the Dark Makers drop so much ammo for our guns, that it genuinely doesn’t matter how much eco we have access to. The gun is just one of the best things we have access to at any given point in time. Not only is it putting out a ton of damage, but it also staggers and stun-locks most enemies with repeated refractions.

Consider this is a gun mod we earned in the first two hours of the game, and it’s carrying us even as we approach the finale, it’s unreal how powerful it is compared to every else we can do in combat. Even when we have unlimited Dark Eco, it’s just no question.

I suppose it’s time we met the other major antagonist face-to-face.

Just don’t expect me to be interested in him.

I can’t pretend that I remotely care about Errol. He was a lame rival character in Jak 2, and despite all of his upgrades, he’s even less interesting here. He’s lucky that we don’t need anything more than a crazy robot man because he’s got the charisma of wet cardboard.

On that note, we should be wrapping up next week at the rate we’re going. We’re out of Act 2 and starting Act 3. See you next time for the finale of Jak 3.