'Uncharted 3' faces big-name competition

— -- Virtual leading man Nathan Drake has been in some tough spots before: a sea-pirate ambush in his 2007 PlayStation 3 debut, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and a cliffhanging train wreck in 2009's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, to name a couple.

This time around his latest star vehicle, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, which hits stores Tuesday, is flanked by two heavily armed game heavyweights, Battlefield 3, just out, and next week's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

In the fantasy world, "he would snap both of their necks," jokes Amy Hennig, creative director at Naughty Dog, the studio that developed the Uncharted games.

In reality, Uncharted 3 has to duke it out at retail with an unprecedented surplus of high-quality recent releases, including Batman: Arkham City and id Software's Rage. And more are on the way, including a new version of the fantasy role-playing Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim; the action-packed Assassin's Creed Revelations; and the long-awaited Legend of Zelda update for Wii.

"It's a tough economy, and people only have so much money to spend," Hennig says. "You want to make sure that you get your audience. Some of these guys are 800-pound gorillas and suck the air out of the room, to mix metaphors, but I think we are offering something different."

Luckily, Uncharted 3 is armed with a weapon of its own: near-perfect critical reviews. According to rating aggregation site Metacritic.com, Uncharted 3 rates a 94 out of 100, surpassed recently only by Batman: Arkham City, which has a 97 on Xbox 360 (the PS3 version has a 95).

So far this year, consumers have spent about 5% less on gaming than in 2010, when total sales approached $19 billion, according to The NPD Group. But the high review scores many releases are getting should help "drive stronger sales this year, especially in the early part of the holiday season," says analyst Matthew Jacob with ITG Investment Research.

As the economy led publishers to release fewer titles, the quality of each individual game has risen, Jacob says. "It's been thought that ratings actually do matter in the video game industry, and it does seem to be the case."

It's not unusual for publishers to target fall for releasing top games to catch holiday shoppers; more than half of all games are sold during the last three months of the year. But this fall has so many heavy hitters that, inevitably, some are not going to find their rightful audience, says analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

Uncharted 3, expected to sell in the millions, will not be one of those also-rans, Pachter says. Instead, he singles out the new Assassin's Creed, Revelations, fourth in a Renaissance-era series that has sold 28 million units worldwide, and open-world gangland adventure Saints Row: The Third, another big franchise, as having "the biggest uphill battle."

Already a winner: Arkham City, which shipped 4.6 million copies in its first week, twice 2009 predecessor Arkham Asylum. "It is a remarkable game," says Adam Sessler of G4 TV series X-Play.

But the time required to finish Arkham (Rocksteady developers estimate it has more than 25 hours of content) and the expansive Assassin's Creed, Revelations, along with even-more-lengthy Skyrim, makes Sessler wonder "whether the market can support three games of that type coming all within a month."

As for Uncharted, 3, Sessler says its non-military, non-science fiction action setting "is really going to help" it succeed. Like the Indiana Jones films that inspired the game, Uncharted takes "this beloved nostalgic cinematic experience and makes it interactive," Hennig says. "It's like your favorite pulp action movie, but you get to play the hero."