It not differentiated from other popular third-person shooters is a problem. Admittedly I haven't really played the Uncharted series for obvious reasons, but I did purchase Uncharted 3 just because I got a 3D TV and wanted to see some spectacle. Although Uncharted 3 was more linear in structure. It at least had a decent plot and good characters to back it up. I also felt that the gameplay was better portioned out in Uncharted 3. It has some meaty sections where you are exploring, climbing around, solving puzzles. The puzzles were much better designed and were actually part of the game rather than sidequests. But just because Uncharted got popular doesn't mean every game should be Uncharted. It also doesn't excuse Uncharted and games like it to just rest on their laurels. These games are popular because they are well made but also they are very easy.
This is not the kind of design that should be championed. I'm all for appealing to a broader audience, but you can do it without throwing challenging gameplay and level design under the bus. You want to make the tombs optional. Fine. But they should take a lot more than 1 minute to complete. Why do I have to slog through 12 hours of monotonous shooting for, what, 10 minutes of something that actually feels like tomb raiding? You can see a glimmer of some awesome tomb exploring and puzzle solving there but it's so brief before they rip it away from you in fear that you might get bored or stuck.
