I was quite excited about playing this game in 3D as Naughty Dog don’t tend to do a half assed job on things. Naughty Dog did deliver with this game as it is one of the better games in 3D but really shows that the PS3 was the wrong system to try and push 3D gaming with. Uncharted 3 is one of the best looking games on PS3 and is clearly using up every resource that the system has to offer, it only makes sense that enabling 3D will hurt the visual quality. Naughty Dog definitely did the job well but unfortunately the PS3 held this game back from being a 10/10 for 3D quality.
If you start this game in 3D you will see how amazing the cut scenes look, the depth is very impressive and visual quality is amazing. Unfortunately gameplay isn’t as pretty. The transition between cut scene and gameplay is no longer seamless as it was before. You now notice the moment that the game goes back to gameplay because the game gets filled with quite a lot of jaggies. Thankfully the jaggies don’t have the same negative effect on the 3D as they did in the Jak games so you will get used to them being there after a while. The game also appeared to have lost a few pixels when it comes to the resolution. There is no way it is in720p anymore and this is most likely the cause of the jaggies. I cant help but think what this game would have looked like if the PS3 was powerful enough to run the game in 3D as smoothly as it runs the game normally.
Once you have gotten over the downgrade in visual quality you can really begin to enjoy this game in 3D. This is the first 3D game i have played that made the game better simply because it was in 3D. Uncharted 3 was a brilliant game to begin with so it is great that something like 3D could add so much more enjoyment to the game. Hiding in cover you really see how cool the effect is. You clearly see that Nate is closer to you and when enemies are shooting at you there will be bullets flying out of the screen. When you come out of cover to shoot back at enemies the depth stays impressive as the camera is on Nates shoulder and gives a great sense of depth. As with most games that have 3D the laser sights from snipers look really cool! The water was something i was worried about, since the first Uncharted game Naughty Dog had created amazing looking water. Thankfully the 3D didn’t screw this up! When you jump into water you get an amazing effect as the water distorts Nates body below making it look incredibly realistic now that you have proper depth added to the scene. One unexpected part of the game that i found to be great with 3D was picking up collectibles. When you pick up a collectible it will pop up on the screen and rotate around for a few seconds. The collectible comes out of the screen much further than anything else on the screen making it really cool to look at.
Naughty Dog did an amazing job adding 3D to this game but it is quite frustrating that the PS3 doesn’t have the power to properly render games in 3D. Levels in the game such as the chapter with the boat (Chapter 12 i believe) have very few jaggies due to the level being quite small and not having a big draw distance. Hopefully Naughty Dog hadn’t given up on 3D and go ahead and give Uncharted 4 3D support when they release it for the PS4 since the system will have much more power to do it properly. Uncharted 3 is a great game to play in 3D, it makes the a lot more fun to play and shows off great depth for almost everything that it does. If the visual quality of the game remained unchanged i would be giving this game a 10.
