If we have one critical flaw here at HAWTwired that I regret, its our lack of literacy when it comes to the Playstation 3. By which, I don't mean our brain malfunctions and we can't read a screen a PS3 loads into, but we as a group are not very familiar with the little black box and its library. Its not for lack of want; the Playstation family has a great history and the PS3 exclusives number along some if the greatest titles of this generation. But as labor-of-love, unpaid games writers, we can only play what we can afford, and thus far, for our editors, the PS3 hasn't fit into our individual family budgets.

For that reason, I always try to expose myself to at least one PS3 exclusive when I hit the game expos, and at PAX I went after what may be the biggest of them all: Uncharted 3.

First we were allowed quality time with the multiplayer, which, I know there are a lot of fans of Uncharted's multiplayer, but I'm not one of them. The controls just didn't feel tuned in or precise enough for me. The shooting was a little on the spastic side (I'm pretty sure real AK-47's have less recoil than their Uncharted counterparts), and the movement/platforming felt like a jerkier, airier version of Assassin's Creed. Both features were functional, but neither felt tight and polished. In fairness, this is a demo, remember, but I'm a big fan of the motto, "If you can't make something great, don't show it". I'm sure that to legions of Nathan Drake fans that have been following the series since its inception, the controls were old hat by now, but as a new user, they were certainly not pick-up-and-play friendly.

After nose-diving-off-high-rises and tossing-grenades-when-I-meant-to-look-down-the-sights my team to a narrow defeat, the folks from Naughty Dog took us into a small theater space to show us a short demo of the game's single player campaign. It was only then that I truly understood what Uncharted 3 was about.

The level had Drake and his blonde lady friend (the interwebz say her name is Elena, but I assume, in typical action hero format, you can tell his lady friends apart by their hair color) trying to break into your typical armed-guarded Middle Eastern airfield to catch a large cargo plane. The plane begins to approach the runway before Drake can get on board, so he quickly abandons any ambitions for stealth and a running, gunning chase breaks out as the player tries to get onboard before it takes off.

Stowing away in the plane's guts, Drake decides to emerge, resulting in a heart-pounding action sequence that included, but was not limited to:

• A one-sided fist fight against a guard twice Drake's size

• Dodging the majority of the plane's cargo as it was quickly dragged out the hold at 15,000 feet

• Manically climbing debris back into the plane's hold

• And engaging in a running gun battle in-between the shifting freight in the hold as the plane banks back and forth.

It was during this sequence that I was amazed to feel my face lighting up in a way that I haven't felt since watching Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade in the theater as a kid. That was the level of adventure and excitement that merely watching the game instilled--childlike wonder. Every time Hollywood released The Mummy or Flight of The Phoenix or National Treasure or a hundred other such films, this was the magic they were trying to capture--the down-to-Earth adventure sensibilities of Alan Quartermain with the big budget excitement of Jerry Bruckheimer, combined in a golden ratio that audiences have been waiting to see again since the original Indiana Jones trilogy.

The multiplayer? That's unimportant. At the risk of making an incessantly long preview even longer, here's an allegory. Years ago I worked in a fine dining restaurant situated inside a casino. Every day, that restaurant lost money, but that wasn't the point of it. It was an amenity to the casino patrons. And while maybe 200 people chose to partake in the restaurant and found it a wonderful addition, the casino's real game was the 20,000 daily that hit the main floor. That's what Uncharted's multiplayer is: an amenity. It's not the reason the majority are coming to the show, but its a nice goody to have waiting for you on the side.

The real star here is the single player campaign, and while we can sit here and talk special effects and camera movements and graphical resolution all day, it's how they fit together in the senses if the observer that causes them to cross the line of conscious appreciation of technical skill and into the realm of guttural, emotional reaction and amazement that separates this game from the vast majority of titles out there today.

HAWTwired Hype Level: 9/10

A stomachable side-dish of multiplayer gives way to a gourmet single-player main dish.  Uncharted as a AAA franchise is solidifying its position at the head of the pack.