Welcome back to Platted That! This series from Handsome Phantom is here to give gamers a review of getting the platinum trophy for PlayStation 4 titles. We started off by chasing down Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and then slipped into Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Naturally we had to dive right into Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Uncharted 3 is a great game. The depth it gives to it’s hero Nathan Drake and especially his smarmy father figure Victor Sullivan show off the talent Naughty Dog has in it’s writing department. New series addition Charlie Cutter was a joy to have along in the early game and, although she wasn’t a focus, it was great having Chloe along for part of the ride.

The first two Uncharted games have a nearly identical trophy list. The more polished game-play of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves made that platinum run more enjoyable and required less mop-up after finishing the main campaign. Uncharted 3 tried to mix up the game-play formula a little bit. Players can now throw back grenades, tied to a meter where triangle has to be hit within a specific window of time. Continuing the trend in the trilogy, Uncharted 3 also focuses a lot more on melee combat.

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The differences ultimately don’t add up to much. The general direction gamers will work toward is still going to look a lot like the platinum for the previous games. Most likely, you’ll start by running through the game on Crushing difficulty while trying to grab the 101 collectibles hidden throughout. The Crushing difficulty in Drake’s Deception is equivalent to the difficulty scale of Uncharted 2, but the emphasis on melee combat leads to a few boss-like encounters that might feel a little frustrating. In lower difficulties the button prompts for fights are provided on screen. In Crushing, this isn’t the case. The game will explain early on what buttons to hit in what kind of situation, so it’s not going to be soul crushing – just a little tough.

I expected the new trophies to lead to a longer mop-up time than the previous two games, but this wasn’t really the case. The trophies that didn’t pop organically, during the initial run through of the main campaign, took very little time to kill farm via chapter select. The speed-run trophies fit between Uncharted and Uncharted 2 on the difficulty scale. I had to take a couple cracks at getting through “Stay in the Light” within the time frame, but the other two only took one focused try. All in all, the time commitment was under ten hours, which is probably one of the quickest platinums available.

In the previous platinum run-throughs of the Uncharted trilogy, I felt that looking for the collectibles was the worst part. They weren’t too difficult to get, and I had this handy guide from IGN for Drake’s Deception. The issue was the distraction they were from one of the best trilogies in gaming. The Uncharted games improve consistently between each title. The game-play is simple but fun, and rarely frustrating. The plots of the games are staple adventure stories, seen before in the likes of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, but the characters Naughty Dog brings out are fun to watch and charming as hell. Investing in these characters from Drake’s Fortune to Drake’s Deception is by far the best part of the journey.

Recommendation

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is about as easy as platinum trophies get. If you’ve platinumed the previous games in the Uncharted Collection, this will probably be the easiest of the three. Be ready for the melee encounters and be familiar with what the face buttons do in these situations. Have a guide ready for collectibles, and be ready for another hour or two mopping up trophies after the main campaign. But most of all, enjoy it!

For PlayStation gamers who have yet to meet Nathan Drake, the Uncharted Collection is $19.99 on the PlayStation store or can be gotten brand new at your local game store for the same price. That’s twenty bucks for three platinum trophies and one of the best trilogies in gaming. And fans of the franchise who haven’t Platted That! it’s the perfect excuse to dust your copy off and go on one more adventure. As for me, I’ve got Uncharted 4 updating and readying to be played as we speak. Platted that? Tweet me some tips!

But we want to know what you think! Have you Platted Uncharted 3? Did any trophies give you a challenge or was it a walk in the park? What platinum trophies are you working on? Was it super cool or super creepy that Marlowe looked like Helen Mirren? Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders? Let Handsome Phantom know your thoughts and you could get a shout out on Adventure Mode!