Ah the Zelda chronology.  What exactly happened after the events of Ocarina?  How could Twilight Princess and Wind Waker both exist within the same universe?  For years, the chronological storyline of the Zelda franchise has been a topic of hot debate amongst fans of the franchise.  The generally held belief for the franchise (before today, at least) held to the concept that the Zelda timeline split after the events of Ocarina of Time into two separate storylines - one which led to Twilight Princess, the other to Wind Waker and eventually the original Legend of Zelda.

Today, those debates are laid to rest.  Nintendo has released the "Hyrule Historia", an art book/encyclopedia of all thing Zelda.  Within the encyclopedia, an official timeline has finally been put to ink.  To be honest, not only is it an unexpected answer to this debate, but an odd and honestly questionable one.  However, this is coming straight from the horses mouth, so what follows is the official storyline.

Four games in the series come before the "time split".  In order, they are:

Skyward Sword, Minish Cap, Four Swords, Ocarina of Time. 

Okay, that makes sense.  What doesn't make sense is that rather than the generally accepted two-way split after Ocarina of Time, Nintendo has revealed that the series actually splits into THREE separate timelines.  The first of these timelines follows the basic ending of Ocarina, where Link is returned to his youth.  The games following this timeline are:

Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, Four Swords Adventures.

Again, makes sense.  Second is the "saved future" that Link leaves behind after sealing Ganon in the Sacred Realm in the time Adult Link inhabits in Ocarina.  The games that follow are:

Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks.

This leaves a rather large group of games out of the picture.  This brings up a third, alternate future from Ocarina of Time.......one where LINK FAILS.  Thats right, Nintendo is saying that it is cannon that Link was defeated in Ocarina in this storyline.  Quite an interesting, if controversial, choice by Nintendo.  The games that follow this timeline are:

A Link to the Past, Oracle(both of them), Link's Awakening, The Legend of Zelda, Adventures of Link.

This really doesn't seem to work for me.  It almost feels like a random excuse to just slam all of the remaining games together so it, well, just works.  Either way, this is now accepted cannon for the franchise.  I'm more curious to hear from YOU guys and see what you think about this explanation of the franchise's chronology.

This game is a bit of a conundrum to me.  It is no secret that I am a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Heck, I even liked the first one.  No action game before it had felt so...free.  The ability to look at the world around you and not only admire its beauty, but to be simultaneously mapping out paths to treck over, under, and across this world was an experience unlike any I'd had in gaming before.  The series of course came to power with Assassin's Creed 2, with the introduction of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a character who has quickly become one of my favorite in all of the history of gaming.  There are few characters whom you can control in the history of gaming where you essentially follow that person's entire life, and I give credit to Ubisoft for crafting a character and a world so interesting that, at least to me, is powerful enough to be the sole reason I push forward in a game.  Or three games.  But Revelations, while a game I will absolutely reccomend to ANY fan of the franchise, feels the odd one out of this Auditore Trillogy.  It's like the final roar of an old lion - It is still a thing to be respected, but it has lost some of its power.

Now in the third chapter of Ezio's life, Assassin's Creed: Revelations should be the best game in the trillogy.  It should be the perfected sum of all of what Ubisoft has learned in making the series.  But instead of being a coherent, fluid gaming experience like Brotherhood was, Revelations feels at times quite disjointed.  The story of the game is fine, a sort of sewing up of loose ends for Ezio as he finishes the work that his Father never had the opportunity to.  This causes him to chase after the final clues left by Altair, and at times view the world through his ancestor's eyes, which make for some of the more interesting sections of the game.  It is strange to see Ezio's motives not driven forward with a sense of revenge for once, but it allows a whole new world to be viewed through his eyes.  This world is Istanbul, or Constantinople, and the story found within is both very foreign and yet completes a full circle.  Ezio finds himself suddenly witness to a familial quarrel for the title of Sultan, and will soon be a very important player in how the next Sultan will come to power.  This core story, however interesting, is so different from the rest of the franchise that it can't help but make this game feel like a side story.  A very good one, sure, but a side story nonetheless.

The core gameplay is what I suppose we can call "Classic Assassin's Creed" by now.  Fighting enemies feels just about the same as it was in Brotherhood for Ezio, so it works well.  Platforming and climbing are better than ever with the addition of the Hookblade, which adds brand new types of interactions to the world.  However, there are some quite random gameplay sections that have been added to the game that really, just don't belong.  There are also some new gameplay mechanics that are fantastic, so I'll start with those.  Cheif amongst them is the new grenade crafting mechanic, where you are given the ability to make nine grenades in groups of three - lethal, tactical, and diversion.  Each of these groups then has different explosive power and multiple options to choose from.  For example, my lethal grenade is a poison bomb that creates an invisible death cloud over a large area.  My tactical has smaller explosion, but it spreads lambs blood to freak people out into thinking they are injured.  There are so many different ways to mix and match grenade options that it is fun just to try them out on their own.

Also interesting is the much more in-depth meta game involved with training your fellow Assassins.  Sending your trainees out into the larger world plays out as a struggle for power between the Order and the Templars for the great cities of the Meditteranian.  Winning over power of these cities increases your income, and you even get refils of many grenade items periodically depending on what level of control you have of what city. For example, my Assassins are in full control of Jerusalem, Rhodes and a few other cities, and this nets me some extra income and virtually endless grenade supplies.  It is a completely optional side quest, but can greatly aid you throughout the game, especially considering that carelessly calling your Assassins into battle without proper training can swiftly end in their death, and requiring you to find a new candidate to train.

I'd like to quickly give credit where credit is due and say that Jesper Kyd has created some of my favorite gaming music ever throughout the Assassin's Creed franchise, and his work here in Revelations hold the banner up well.  While the soundtrack isn't quite as instantly memorable as some of his previous works, it is a great mix of the familiar and foreign, a constant reminder that Ezio is a player in a foreign land.  It blends in well with the surroundings, as it always had, and adds to the overall character of Constantinople itself.  I can't imagine playing this franchise without a different style of music, and was kind of afraid Revelations might take things down a bad path, but luckily my fears were misplaced.

While there is plenty of great gameplay to be had, Revelations added in some outright horrible new sections to the franchise.  The bad comes in with two new "modes" of the game that are, really, just attempts at knock offs of other far better games.  Each section of Constantinople is controlled by a den - do too many crimes, and your den will be attacked.  You then enter "Den Defense Mode", a tower defense game mode where waves of enemies come through an alleyway, and your archers and riflemen shoot them as they go by.  It isnt even a very good tower defense game - if you dont have a perfect setup near the end of it, a mega-enemy comes by and you wont be able to kill it in time to win.  Second of these sections are strange "Memory Recovery" modes meant to fill in a bunch of Desmond's backstory, which is really the only reason Desmond is in the game. These sections, though, are FPS platformer sections where you can randomly place floating geometric shapes in the air and walk on them.  It's like they were trying an otherworldly Portal where you just build bridges.  These sections control HORRIBLY, and really take a lot out of the game.

In fact, let me point out one thing about Desmond's sections of the game.  There is a very small hub world in which he inhabits called Animus Island, where one other character resides.  I wont name names, but he has assisted in guiding Desmond with a silent hand throughout the franchise.  His character model, though, is one of the strangest I have seen in some time.  He may be meant to look a bit crazy, sure, but his facial expressions ended up looking like someone in the middle of a sneeze mixed with that split second wince someone has right before they take a hit to the groin.  His role seems to have very little purpose in the game until very late, but he and this utterly random FPS esque mode adds more ammo to the Anti-Desmond camp who see his story as bogging down the franchise as a whole, and this time I can't really argue with that.

What really stings, though, is that these Desmond sections kind of take the place of what was my absolute favorite thing about this franchise - Glyph Hunting.  There are no glyphs to look for anymore.  These puzzles and the alternate-history story they told were some of the best parts of the franchise.  Without them, the entire game feels like it is already missing one of the main pillars on which it stands.  Sure, theres collecting a specific set of ten items for a superior set of armor, but the challenge of getting this game's "legendary armor" is nothing in comparason to what labors were needed to get, say, the Armor of Altair from AC2.  Much of the sense of exploration that makes this series so fantastic has been lost, perhaps a sad casualty of pushing this game's development through so many different Ubisoft studios at a single time.

The best thing that I can say about Revelations is that it is the Assassin's Creed universe seen through an interesting lens.  Constantiople gives the player a completely new, thriving city to travel and discover, and while perhaps not quite as interesting as Rome, it has a charm and pulse all its own.  Traversing this world is as interesting as ever, especially with the new Hookblade, but Revelations is not the game it could have been. Don't misinterpret this as me hating on the game, as I actually really liked Revelations, but that is also because I am a huge fan of the AC franchise as a whole.  If you aren't a big fan like I am, there is going to be very little to convince you to get this game.  Revelations is a game I can easily reccomend for the fans, as the story of Ezio as well as its convergence with that of Altair are an intriguing backdrop.  It is more of the same fun gameplay the franchise is known for, just weighed down by a, sadly, sizeable list of poor design choices.  It is a good game, but nothing near the game that I feel it could have been, and a pretty strong candidate for a new poster boy against annual releases.  

So, the official change log for AE 2012 has been released, and as expected, the highlights of the log are the major nerfs to Yun, Yang and Fei Long.  After skimming along the list, though, a few changes really caught my attention and got me excited about seeing how some of these new tweaks could have an effect on high level play.  This patch is apparently the final balace that SSF4 will have, and it looks like the playing field has the potential to be shaken up quite a bit with some of the new move properties introcuced.  Below, in no particular order, are the five characters I am looking forward to trying out in the new AE 2012 build the most.  I wont go over EVERY change each of these characters have, just the main ones that really grabbed my attention.  Also, i'm leaving out my main, Adon, as his tweaks just solidify his position as my main all the moreso.

JURI - While she has never been one of my main characters, Juri has always been fun to play as.  Juri's tweaks focus on two primary areas - her Fuhajin (charge kick) and Ultra 1.  Fuhajin's first kick motion got a 20 damage buff, up to 50 from 30, so a quick combo from her is going to sting that little extra amount every time.  Her Ultra 1 is really where things get interesting though - she may only get 1/3normal meter charge from some moves while the Feng Shui Engine is active, but her forward dash now covers more space when the move is active, which I think will throw off some opponents.  Most interestingly, EX Shikusen (dive kick) now has far different properties depending on which combination of kicks are used while in Feng Shui. More hit stun was added on to her Senpusha (pinwheel) to give her some more FADC potential as well.  Juri has the potential to be a much stronger offensive weapon than she already is.  Looking forward to seeing just how different Ultra 1 feels.  I've always felt that an U1 Juri is a far greater threat than an U2 Juri, and these tweaks should push some Juri players to switch up their ultra usage more often.

EVIL RYU - Hooray for this health buff.  Seriously, I already love playing as E.Ryu, so more health is awesome. I have called him SSF4's "proverbial glass cannon" in the past, but this buff from 850 to 900 Health and Stun will give him that extra sliver of health that could make or break a round.  As if everything about him and his moveset wasn't already screaming "attack, attack, attack", now he has a new set of tools that allow some fantastic corner pressure.  The one change that I really love is the new forward MK cancel.  He can now cancel this move into an Air Tatsu.  The corner pressure potential with this is astounding, as its now possible to do Foward MK>EX Tatsu>Medium or Heavy Ryusokuaku (axe kick) in the corner.  In fact, both of those versions of the axe kick can be used on a knocked back opponent now.  10 more damage to his sweep, 20 more for his Super, and for some interesting wakeup games, his target combo now knocks down.  Add in the fact that the charge time to do a full Ultra 1 has been shortened, and you have a character that I expect to see a great deal more of both online and in tournament play.

GOUKEN - I only really started messing around with Gouken a few months ago, but he quickly became one of my favorite characters to play as in the game.  I may be upset that Gouken's HP Senkugoshoha (palm strike) will not go nearly as far across screen as it used to, but all of the new tools Gouken has make for some fun possiblities.  The two most blatant changes are to his Super's startup (Forbidden Shoryuken only has a 3 frame starup now, way down from the previous 11 frames) and, of course, his Ultra 2, Denjin Hadouken.  Denjin now acts much more similar to the Denjin people know and love from Ryu in SF3: Third Strike - the move goes faster, charges in the same way as in Third Strike, and got a slight damage buff.  Add in an extended counter-hitbox to the MP and HP versions of his Kongoshin (counter), and the unexpected addition of making his Far MP special cancelable, and you have a character who already has a great damage output, but with a good number of new tools to fall back on.  Really looking forward to the new combo potential with that far standing MP>Gohadouken>FADC>so on will give.  Ultra 2 Goukens are exceedingly rare right now, but this patch should change that up for sure.

CODY - Let me get this out right away - I hate Cody.  I hate playing against Cody.  He confuses me.  I've never understood why some of his combos work even though they feel like they take a minute each to complete, or why he has such excelent anti-air normals, but I feel like his new additions in AE 2012 deserve a closer look.  Most of his changes are added hit stun when Cody is using his knife, which I really like.  A good Cody with a knife is kind of like playing Vega at times - that knife is going to hit you from much further away than you may anticipate.  Picking up the knife is also much safer now - you can block while doing so, or so it would at least seem.  His Bad Spray, the wakeup move where he tosses dirt at his opponent, is now special cancelable too.  This won't have an effect often in matches, but it's a strange trump card to add to Cody's already kind of random move set.  Oh, did I mention that his walk speed has been increased?  To me, that is his biggest change, for a high pressure Cody is already a frightening enough opponent to begin with.  Now he will be able to close in on you at a much faster rate - add in the knife, and you have a character who may be able to whittle your life away much quicker than one would think.

ONI - Again, health buff is a major game changer here.  Oni's health and stun are both up to a solid 1000 now, but what really draws me to him is summed up in three words - Airborne EX Tatsu.  Off of his air dash, an EX Tatsu now causes Oni to suddenly drop straight down towards the ground.  Can you imagine the crazy crossup game potential that this gives Oni?  The Air EX Tatsu is now a one-hit move that does 140 damage flat, so no worries about needing the move to hit multiple times to ensure damage.  The first hit of his second Target Combo, Back MP, is also less likely to screw up combos on crouched opponents.  The hitbox of the actual palm blast from his air dash was also made bigger.  Really, I already liked Oni, but a few more tools and this new crazy EX Tatsu are going to make what I consider a very good character all the more unpredictable.

I think this patch update has the most potential to really shake up the tier lists for AE more than any update to SF4 has beforehand.  Even the most minor of changes could make a character go from great to amazing (heres looking at you, Cammy), so you'll be sure to find me glued to my screen once this update is out, just so I can try to find every little new opportunity my favorite characters have.  How about yourselves, though - What are the real gamechangers here?  Who do you expect to be a contender that wasn't before?  For me, I expect to see quite a bit more of Evil Ryu and Gouken in the future, but only time (and the pros) will tell.

Where does one even begin with Skyrim?  It's plot?  It's game mechanics?  It's visuals and audio?  It's sheer, daunting scale?  This I can say for certain; Skyrim is the new crown jewel of Bethesda Game Studios' already stellar game catalogue.  It is the absolute sum of the lessons the developer has learned since the release of Oblivion; a grander, more epic, more beautiful game whos scale and dauntingly full-of-life world draws the player in like few other games have, if any.  Bethesda game veterans will find the game instantly accessable control wise, but they may be surprised with just how much better Skyrim is than it's predecessors.  In a season full of major hit titles week in and week out, Skyrim can stand tall and say that it very may well be the king amongst them.

Like the other games of the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim places you into the boots of a new rising hero, a seemingly faceless member of the masses before fate bestows upon them a grand quest.  This time, you are a Dovahkiin, or "Dragon Born", one born with the soul of a dragon and blessed by the gods to do great things. Thus, you find yourself in the middle of the grand realm of Skyrim to do...well, whatever the heck you want to do.  Soon enough, one will discover that there is PLENTY to do in this world gone mad - people to help, bandit forts to eradicate, new powers to seek out, new skills to learn, and much much more  It's all quite frightening, really, to be presented with not only so many things to do, but so many different ways to play through this game.

Since the game takes place in the Nord's home realm of Skyrim, I took to playing a Nord in this runthrough. He is a thick skulled, stubborn, Nords-first warrior in heavy armor who lives and dies by the sword - or in his case, battle axe or hammer, by the name of Caoimín.  He is what I instantly imagined throughout the entire buildup to this game's release as a typical main character for this universe, so I just decided to go with it.  Half of what makes this game so astounding to me is the sheer multitude of ways one can decide to handle any given situation, or entire playthrough for that matter.  For instance, I use no magic.  At all.  Okay, only to heal myself, but thats virtually IT.  This means that despite however long I take to finish this game with this character, however many bandits are taken out, however many dragons are slain, that I will do it all over again just to play as a different type of character. Apart from these main choices - race, weapons, skills, armor - there is still a ton more to work towards in Skyrim.  Armor and weapon making, cooking, alchemy, enchantment, pick pocketing, and many more skills must be trained just as hard as swinging your sword in this world.  Without training a few core backup skills, you'll find yourself lagging behind the rest of the world. Trying to tackle it all at once is a fool's chore, so as I pointed out before, multiple playthroughs are pretty much demanded to get everything out of the game.

The game plays as you would expect an Elder Scrolls game to nowadays.  Melee combat is essentially unchanged, which is fine, add some new fun slow-mo kills taken straight from the pages of Fallout 3.  Magic, especially Destruction magic, really impresses though.  It is far evolved from the magic of Oblivion, feeling not only much more powerful, but much simpler to use.  The new Shouts, the ability granted only to the Dovahkiin, are the major separation in combat compared to Oblivion.  Shouts are the central focus of the game - seeking out new words is always your main goal, as these words grant your character powerful new abilities.  My current abilities grant me everything from breathing fire to throwing my voice across a room to confuse opponents.  What other shouts remain ahead of me to discover remains one of the driving forces that makes me keep wanting to play.  But to unlock new shouts, you must not just find the word.  You also must slay a dragon.

Oh yeah, have I not mentioned the Dragons yet?  The other major separation from previous Elder Scrolls titles, Dragons are your enemy.  I, personally, like to use the term "prey".  They will appear at random throughout the world, roaming the skys, seemingly in search of you, the only known Dragon Born (if there is another reason, I have not uncovered it yet).  Their roar will echo from the distance, they will soar across the sky, and suddenly the fight for life and death is on.  Being a ground-based player, a bow is my only choice to attempt to reach them while still in flight, but the fights are adrenaline pumping no matter how they are approached. There has been more than one occasion where a Dragon has ambushed me right after taking out a good number of bandits, so being in the wilderness of Skyrim is always tinted with excitement and danger.  Each time a Dragon is slain, you absorb its Soul.  Souls are used as a currency to activate Shout powers you have found.  Each power levels up three times once you find all three words that make up that Shout.  Thus far, even after all of my playing, I only have five powers and a total of ten words.  Obviously, I want more.

I have been playing the game on XBox 360, and this I knew from the start that I would be punished graphically for doing so from the start.  Seeing screenshots from the game being played on someone's top notch PC rig compared to my 360 does make me want to weep, but when you take into consideration the sheer scale of the game, especially when one is able to take a view of the grand wilderness, or see the Skyrim equivalent of the Northern Lights, you quickly begin to forget the graphical differences.  The world is so beautiful and inviting anyways that you barely notice.  The only time it really rears is head are the lower-res textures on many of the more complex objects, but nonetheless, everything is usually moving too fast for you to notice.  Still, I would have wished to see an install to the HDD increase the graphics.  I can hope for a patch in the future, maybe.

As I was playing for the first few hours, my expectations had already been blown away in nearly all categories but one.  Music.  I started to think "I really liked the music in Oblivion, theres no way I can like the music in this game more".  Then I got into my first Dragon fight.  War drums pounded, deep voiced chanted, and I suddenly felt like I was being a part of the most epic moment in history this portion of Tamriel had ever endured.  I then left to trade in some new items for coin to Skyrim's central city, Whiterun.  I listened as a calm, repetitious yet powerful song began to build as I traveled the streets.  Suddenly, the life pulsing through Whiterun's streets seemed all the more powerful, all the more real.  And let me say, the world is truly alive. People dont just stand around anymore.  They have jobs, and they do their jobs.  They train, they small talk, they argue.  If there is one place that Bethesda has truly expanded on in their games over the past few years, it is making the worlds seem as true to life as possible.  The fact that people have a schedule and do their jobs and live their lives in this world is a testament to the design prowess that permiates every little part of this game.

Skyrim, of course, does have the glitches that seem to come with every open world game.  Every now and then speaking to someone will become a difficult chore as the menu wont act correctly.  Sometimes a character will walk through a door or seem to get stuck in a wall.  One moment in particular that made me laugh was when I was ordered to take the head of a witch - the game replaced her character model with a new headless one, but something went awry and the body was launched across the room and into a fireplace for some reason.  I laughed, but these little bugs are a part of what makes these open world games so memorable.  Sure, sometimes they are frustrating and there is even the occasional crash (ive had only one), but some of the most entertaining moments of the game are sometimes caused by these bugs, and they create memories that allow us to just remember the game all the more fondly.

Skyrim is one hell of an achievement.  From the world's design to the intense combat to the incredible audio direction, this game has a ton of heart and soul in it.  Despite the fact that I am nowhere near complete with the game, it has already been the single most enjoyable gaming experience of the year thus far for me, and with few contenders remaining, has a strong chance of being my favorite game of this year.  

I wrote an article earlier this month asking of 2011 was the best year in gaming history.  The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in my opinion, has absolutely cemented it as so.

Heading into Uncharted 3, developer Naughty Dog had a gargantuan hill to climb.  Their previous entry in the series not only brought the Uncharted series into the world of modern gaming royalty, but legitimately reinvented the action game.  This time around, everything had to be bigger and better than ever before, and I found myself questioning wether or not it was even possible for a game to be more action packed than Uncharted 2 was.  Had Naughty Dog built up expectations to a point where there was no way they could be reached?  Would Uncharted 3 move the series forward or was it impossible for lightning to strike twice?

Uncharted 3 throws us right back into the misadventures of treasure hunter Nathan Drake and his partner/mentor Victory Sullivan (aka Sully) in their quest to find the next great treasure.  This time around, a figure from the past come forward in the form of Katherine Marlowe, a more distinguished villaness for than the Uncharted series is used to, but no less cuthroat than the others.  I won't spoil the plot details, but the fact that there is a strong personal bond between the heroes and the villain this time around make for a very compelling plot, one that drives the player forward much moreso than that of the previous two entries.  Nate's continual effort to push onward throughout the game truly feels driven by his emotions and his desire to deny Marlowe her goals.

Fantastic motion-capture and vocal perfomances by the game's main cast of course help bring the game to life, but Uncharted 3's attention to detail is really what makes it thrive.  Animations are fluid, game environments are vast and intricately detailed, and yet rarely does one ever get lost.  I also love that Uncharted 3's level designs have the kind of diversity that one would expect from a Mario game.  Each of the games environments is painstakingly crafted to create the absolute most immersive experience that could be offered.  I cannot think of another game other than perhaps God of War 3 that has a scale as large and yet remains so infinitely detailed.  The characters themselves are also expertly crafted - you can really see each small eye movement as one enters a brand new area to explore or each thread Nate's garb move according to the wind.  Fire and water, known as two of the hardest things to deal with when creating a video game, are central to some of the game's moments, and do not take the player out of the moment at all.  I've played games that I have loved that have been slightly tarnished by poor visual effects design, but there is not a game on the market right now, at least on consoles, that has the consistant visual excellence and diversity of Uncharted 3, and that alone makes the game one of the greats of this generation.

Of course, what everyone came to the party for was the gameplay, and I can assure you readers that the gameplay in Uncharted 3 is better than ever.  It's shooting mechanics remain similar to those of the previous games in the series, and there really isn't a problem with that.  It is the absolutely non stop, insane platforming that really defines the Uncharted series, and this third entry doesn't dissapoint.  The climax of the game's 7th chapter, for example, is an amazingly action packed race for your life, the kind of action that completely eclipses the climax of most other video games.  Death is right at your heels the entire time, and a single slip up is all it takes for it to catch up, yet the player knows exactly what to do.  It is one of those high pressure, high risk platforming moments that Uncharted seems to have mastered, and that all other games in the genre now have to look to as par for the course.  However, Uncharted 3 attempts to throw a bit of stealth into the game every now and then, and it's a nice change of pace to go from running for your life in one level to suddenly becoming the apex predator in the next.  You do not have to be stealthy in these sections, but it feels incredibly satisfying to eliminate everyone in quite a large area in complete silence.

Everything about Uncharted 3 is an attempt at perfection.  Naughty Dog set out to create the most polished, the most atmospheric, and the most action packed entry in the series, and in these respects they have absolutely succeeded.  The level design is absolutely brilliant, gameplay is better tuned than ever, and yet I find myself more focused on the characters themselves.  My theory is that Naughty Dog knew that they could succeed in their level design and platforming - heck, they proved it with Uncharted 2, so the only thing to do was to go bigger and better.  This time, the area of the game that seems to have had the most evolution is it's plot.  While each of the three Uncharted games could stand on its own as an individual story, the sense of history and emotion behind Nate's actions this time around gives the game an interesting feel.  Moreso than ever, you want Nate to succeed.  You want to solve this puzzle and help him move forward.  You want to know what will happen next to our characters in a way neither of this entry's predicessors could.

It is nearly impossible at this point to not compare the Uncharted trillogy to that of Indiana Jones, but really, that isn't so bad of a thing.  Beyond crafting one of the most complete gaming experiences of my life, Naughty Dog has created a core cast of characters that will stay in my memory for years to come.  Is Uncharted 3 a perfect game?  No, as there is no such thing, but Nathan Drake is not going to be giving up his crown in the action adventure genre for some time to come.  It will be very interesting to see how the new Tomb Raider reboot answers this game, because to be brutally honest, I just don't think anyone can top the Uncharted series on its own turf right now.  Uncharted 3 is, in a word, a masterpiece, and a game that I believe every PS3 owner absolutely must have in their library.  It's that good.