Despite myself, I love Nathan Drake. More rugged than Jason Statham, sexier than Indiana Jones and much less of a jerk than Han Solo, he is one of the great action heroes. Watching him escape death by a hair is endlessly compelling. He isn't just one of the PlayStation 3's best heroes, he's one of the best game characters of this console generation. And he has amazing hair.

Well,+ain't+that+pretty?

Uncharted 3 is finished and will be on shelves in just under a month, and before we get stuck into the review, I got my first chance to actually play two of the scenarios that have had everybody salivating for the past eight months: the burning mansion and the cargo plane escape. Although I've seen both of these short missions before, it's suprising how different it is when you're actually playing them. One sees Nathan and Sully escaping a grand old building as it erupts in flames and crumbles to pieces around them, where the other shows Drake board a cargo plane as it takes off and fight off the bad guys within whilst dodging barrels and crates as they fly out of the loading bay and into the sky. Both are action sequences better than anything Hollywood has come up with in the past five years.It's indicative of a wider shift in games, this – where once they were trying their best to approximate the excitement and visual spectacle of a Hollywood blockbuster, now they're effortlessly outdoing them. It's partly because of the graphical capabilities of modern consoles, of course; Uncharted 3 looks incredible, whether it's the thoughtful lighting, the realistic, context-sensitive animation or the thoughtful cinematography, the camera following Drake dramatically as he leaps, stumbles and hangs on for dear life, or framing the sunrise in the background as he stretches out from Elena's buggy towards the landing gear of the plane.But it's also to do with the creativity of the design, the flow and pace of the action set-ups. It's not just about guns and explosions, as anyone who's suffered through one of the Transformers movies can tell you. The first two Uncharted games might have had a thing or two to learn when it comes to pacing, but Naughty Dog has learned from experience. And lastly, it's to do with characterisation. Nathan Drake might not be the deepest character in the world, but he's a more endearing personality than most movie action heroes, not to mention the useless meat-heads that typically populate game worlds.There's a problem that games have that films don't, though, and that's the unknown quantity of the actual player. Like every Uncharted game before it, Drake's Deception is flawless until you hit a momentary stumbling block and ruin the flow. Miss the Triangle prompt next to a beam that you have to kick down from the ceiling, and you can spend a couple of minutes running pointlessly back and forth across a room as the tension and sense of grand adventure disappear in a flash. Or Sully might get himself momentarily caught in a doorway, temporarily breaking the illusion that this is all really happening in front of you.Thing is, though, that Uncharted 3 almost never seems to slip up. Its signposting is much improved since Drake's Fortune. You're guided seamlessly through action sequences so intense and high-octane that spectators can't help but laugh out loud as Drake climbs up the cargo plane's landing gear as it takes off, or hangs by his fingernails from a crumbling banister as everything around him goes up in flames. If these two scenarios represent the overall pace of the full game, we're in for one hell of a ride.I wish they still made movies like this. The fact that they don't, though, is good news for games – and great news for the people who play them.As we speak, Uncharted 3 review code is winging its way to our offices. Look out for our final verdict on what looks like Nathan Drake's greatest adventure in the near future.