While I have a lot of respect for Naughty Dog, I honestly didn't expect to like this game at all. I'd seen it at a few press events and played it for a few minutes here and there to get a feel for the play control mechanics, but I never really paid too much attention to it and had all but written it off as a Tomb Raider clone with a dude as a protagonist. I typically don't pick up 3rd person shooter adventures and thought I wasn't going to get into it anyway. I also hate games with names that have semicolons, asterisks, and punctuation marks -- a pet peeve of mine. Fester's Quest? Fuck you. Avatar: The Last Airbender? Cuntish.

But holy fuck, was I was way wrong. I need to come clean on this.

Luckily Colette had picked up the demo and we took a stab at it last night -- my expectations were so low that I was all but completely blown away by how much fun it was. I played the demo through all the way in Normal and was really impressed by the enemy AI (they don't run into the open much, if you connect a shot they immediately hide elsewhere) and the play control is spot on: easy to take cover and react as well as switch shoulders on the gun. I also was expecting the lead to be more on the goofy side but they pulled off believable characters that are fun to watch like an old Harrison Ford movie that didn't suck. I haven't purchased many PS3 games because I'm so picky about next-gen games, but this is one I actually can't wait to finish post Thanksgiving glut.

I really don't want to jump on the whole Ass Creed hate bandwagon, but I found myself way more entertained by this one than Ubi's game. I would have never guessed that in a million years.