Finished Uncharted 3 last night.
Sure enough it did eventually suffer from the same kind of issues I had with Uncharted 2, plus quite possibly some of the worst difficulty spikes I've ever encountered in a video game! Seriously, chapters 12-15... What in the hell? Did they playtest this thing?
Even so, I still preferred it to Uncharted 2 overall, and would have enjoyed it more than the first game, if it hadn't of got ridiculous with the difficulty from chapter 12 onward.
So yeah, I'd probably rate the games like so, 1 > 3 > 2. But it's real close between 1 and 3.
As for the Chloe vs Elena debate that was also close in Uncharted 2, but in 3... well, Chloe looks like she's had a botched face-lift, so yeah, Elena all the way.
Anyway, my faith in Uncharted 4 is kinda restored, but I still have the suspicion that it could end up with similar issues.
If I've picked up on one thing about Naughty Dog after my time with The Last of Us, and the Uncharted games, it's that while they're incredibly talented when it comes to presentation, they're severely lacking in some fundamental areas of game design. And while Zazz is cool and all, I'd much rather play a game that was also well designed and fun to play from start to finish.
I do like how they at least seem to recognise their faults and make fun of them in-game though :
To end this post, a couple of GIFs from my gameplay on Uncharted 3. The first one is an epic moment, the second is also pretty epic, but for very different reasons.