So having finished the single player, I have to say while I overall liked it quite a bit, the story was very, VERY messy and the ending not only came out of nowhere but seemed rushed as hell. They introduced several plot threads like Nathan Drake not being his real name, something happening between Nate and Elena (though you can kinda infer this), the Arabians that magically knew where the city was being completely unexplained etc and then completely dropped them.
But about the ending... how in the hell was that the ending? Where was the climax? Why was Drake shooting a stone arch that wasn't even attached to anything enough to destroy a whole city made of brass? What about the Djinn, they just completely let that go! I mean, I'm glad there wasn't a boss fight because the Uncharted team is horrible at those, but talk about an anti-climax. Then the Talbot fight was cool, but they never explained anything about him, like how he was able to disappear into thin air or survive gun shots... so many wasted plot points.
Gameplay wise, things seemed very very slow at times, but when it was going it was going very well. There were a few silly rooms where you'd like, start out with no cover near you or no effective cover near you and it would be a crap shoot if you'd get out of it alive, but overall it was good. Though, I should point out, enemies seemed super-hyper-aggressive in this one. Why the hell would they just charge my cover repeatedly? Sometimes they wouldn't even try to flank, just run right behind my cover and open up. And they run faster than you can aim toward them! That's just silly.
Also, while I liked the new melee system, there were waaaaaaay too many forced melee sections, especially since they're never different. Especially bad because you end up in melee quite a lot in regular gameplay anyway, so it just gets stale instead of being awesome.
Overall I still liked it quite a lot, more than Uncharted 1, but there was just a *lot* of dumb stuff to bring it down.
Actually, having had some time to digest my thoughts on the game... I think I actually did like Uncharted 1 better. There's just so much stuff wrong with Uncharted 3 it left a kind of bitter aftertaste.
The djinn were imprisoned by solomon years ago - they made a point out of this. The barrel that Marlow and Talbot were extracting was the one with the Djinn spirits in it so that they could control the populace through the hallucinogens it was putting in the water.
The Nate/Elena thing was easily inferred I thought - Drake proposed but didn't wanna settle down, wanted to adventure more, mainly because of the Drake thing. And on the name, I didn't think that was particularly important. The point was that it wasn't his name; he just took on Drake's name as a kid because he had no family and he was enamored by Francis Drake, and wanted to achieve the same thing, "Greatness from small beginnings". It was a way to validate himself.
The Arabians -didn't- know where the city was? They presumably stumbled across it in the storm same as you did, I don't get why that's so strange. As for the city coming down, both Sully and Drake remarked that "the entire city is resting on this cavern" and that they were "surprised it was still standing". The climax was the death of Marlowe and Drake's coming into his own; he no longer needed to prove he was a great adventurer like Drake, but he was a good enough man to attempt to save her anyway. And the Talbot fight/escape sequence was great.
I don't know why Talbot survived that gunshot, I'll give you that. Maybe cutter didn't actually shoot him? Did anyone drink any water shortly before that? I dunno.
He didn't vanish into thin air though, from any time when I recall. Well, he did near the end, but Drake was very clearly tripping out at this point. Talbot wasn't even there.
-- I'm too tired to drive anywhere, anyway, right now, do you care if I praise Black Turtle? Call me numbers.