Nathan Drake slumps on all fours in the desert sand, head down, unable to go on. He's ready to stop. No more fighting, no more quips. Done. This is where it ends.

We're deep into a hands-off demo of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, coming up on a chapter called The Sanctuary, and our man Drake is stuck somewhere out in the middle of God's anvil...alone. When he finally manages to drag himself upright again, Drake stumbles over the dune with a reeling gait that almost sends him right back down, face-first into the sand. "I'm coming, Sully," he mutters. "Almost there." No, he's not. His arms jangle loosely when he jogs onward. Running on empty.

I keep telling ya, kid...you gotta wash behind those ears.

That, in a nutshell, explains why I love Nathan Drake as a character. Beyond the smartass attitude, the pulp-hero exploits, the repartee with his friends, or his humanistic side (excepting the millions he's killed in pursuit of treasure, of course), I delight in his weakness. I savor his vulnerability. I relish his mistakes.

Most of all, I enjoy Nathan Drake as a failure...a wonderful, spectacular failure.

A distant oasis turns out to be an abandoned ruin. Drake finds a well, but the only splash of water in it is undrinkable. Brittle floors collapse under his weight, covering him in dusty layers of sand until he painfully picks himself up off the rubble. "Okay,” he tells himself, “don't give up."

And he doesn’t. Not even when he accidentally crashes through a wall into a nest of enemies who are just as surprised as he is. They cautiously reach for their assault rifles. Drake, of course, doesn’t even have a sharpened spoon in hand.

Yeah. Not a great day.

I'll pay $200 for Simon Cowell there and another $50 to let his drunk father watch.

In addition to getting thrown out of an airplane in the middle of the desert, Uncharted 3 sees Drake trapped in a burning chateau and, later on, a tidal wave hits the cargo ship he’s standing on, among other things. Why? Because he’s Nathan Drake and he made the mistake of touching a boat, that’s why. He can’t go anywhere, enter any building, or ride in any kind of vehicle without disaster striking. People always shoot at him, too. To reiterate, he’s Nathan Drake. Nothing ever goes right for him.

And he survives every single catastrophe by using his wits. Letdowns, betrayals, and setbacks abound, the odds are never in his favor, but Drake always presses on and tries harder. That’s spectacular failure...carving out small, potent wins even as you continually lose.

Nathan Drake takes a nice, relaxing bath.

It’s fair to say Drake inherited this trait from his spiritual mentor. Reference Raiders of the Lost Ark, and you might notice how Indiana Jones never, ever wins. He gets the idol. The idol gets taken away. He recovers and loses the Ark of the Covenant three times. Every fight scene features bad men beating the living crap out of him. Every advantage he gains is quickly reversed.

That makes it even easier to revel in every tiny, temporary victory with them. When one of those surprised thugs rushes our hero, Drake nails him with a fast punch, snatches his gun right out of midair, and turns it on the others. It’s a small HELL YEAH moment. Our guy does something awesome when the chips are down, and suddenly he’s got a fighting chance.

Just a slim chance, though. Anything more would ruin him. You might not think about it too much, but Drake grunts when he jumps or exerts himself, just like Sam Fisher and Lara Croft did back when they were human. He flinches or ducks when explosions go off and hunches over when a room fills with smoke. Injuries wear on him. He has a sense of mortality. He feels terror when dangled over a bottomless chasm. He reacts like we would react...or like we hope we’d react.

That gives him a depth that impenetrable, invulnerable, invincible examples like the Master Chief, Kratos, or even Mario can’t even hope to reach.

I still get my frequent flyer miles, right?

The now-iconic image of Drake standing in front of a crashed plane in the desert is iconic for a reason. It's a perfect visual metaphor for who Nathan Drake is: resilience in the face of total disaster. He’s the underdog who strives. He feels pain and fights through it, and he never, ever wins.

After all, both Indy and Drake walk away at the end of every adventure minus the prize they set out to claim. They do, however, beat the bad guys and get the girl. That counts for something, right?