Beautiful environments and an adventurous story result in a game not quite as good as the second.
With this game things do seem to be slowing down a little bit since number two. The second in the series was just so good that it is naturally difficult to beat it. I'd say this is my least favorite of the trilogy as the balance between shootouts and spectacular puzzle scenarios just seemed to be lacking. Too, the overall story just missed in a few areas which made it not quite as enjoyable as the previous two.
In the previous entries there was a really nice flow between puzzles and fighting but in this game after about a third of the way through the puzzles dropped off and shifted into high impact and unique firefights which on some occasions had oddly disjointed difficulty spikes. That is, things would flow on a nice path and then you'd just get bombarded with enemies from every direction and every skill level. You're going to die and you just have to suck it up and push on through. In around a handful of situations you might find yourself annoyed by this. It simply seems that the new norm in FPS games is simply to crush you with a countless amount of enemies from every random location. This certainly increases the challenge in some instances but it does sometimes feel like a bit of a cop out. On the other hand, this game manages to create some brilliant shooter scenes that involved some unique set pieces and environmental features that move beyond more traditional FPSs. I simply won't spoil those pieces for any who might not have read much about this one.
The story in this game starts off good by getting you interested in where things are going. However, it almost seems like the forward movement sort of stops for much of the game as you simply move forward through various environments as you move slowly forward. Then, things all come to a head in the last chapter or two and you end with an incredibly anticlimactic confrontation with the bad guy who you've only encountered a few times. This is a bit annoying as you feel like the villains in this game are just there to make a token appearance and not really have any other value in the story other than to show up at the end and yell at you a little bit. Then, you quickly dispense of them, beat the game, and roll credits.
Overall, I had my hopes pretty high and was mildly disappointed. It's not that it's a bad game but simply not as refined or polished as one would hope. I'm thankful, however, that it was still a very good game and worth playing. Otherwise, I might have just lost hope altogether in the future of this series.