For the past few years, we here at Naughty Dog have been cranking away at creating not only a new single player adventure for Nathan Drake, but an awesome new online experience as well. It has taken blood, sweat, and possibly even a few tears to get to this point, but on June 3, you can get the first crack at a small slice of the multiplayer modes we’ll pack into the full game.
Everything in the Uncharted 2 multiplayer experience has been designed to get you into the game and playing quickly, so you can just skip this blog post if you’re really that impatient. Just kidding.
When you boot up the beta you’ll find we’ve included 2 playlists for you to try out: co-op and competitive. If you’ve got friends, we’ve made it easy to play together – just hit the triangle button to see your PSN friends list and you can send them an invite, join their party, or just check out their profile. Keep in mind that for the beta, the party size is limited to 5 for competitive and 3 for co-op!
Let’s give you a quick rundown of our two playlists so you can be ready day one…
The competitive playlists contains 2 maps, with 2 game types available on each: Deathmatch and Plunder. Deathmatch is pretty similar to what you’ve come to expect out of “team deathmatch” in other games. Plunder is Naughty Dog’s take on “capture the flag.” At the start of a round, we’ve placed a treasure in a neutral location on the map and the first team to bring it back to their capture chest scores a point – three points to win. What takes this mode into the UNCHARTED universe? Easy; you can now throw the treasure quite a ways in any direction – in some cases, you’ll HAVE to if you want to score a point.
The biggest thing to keep in mind while playing in competitive matches is to keep thinking three dimensionally. There are many, many different places to climb, hide, and shoot from above ground level. The best advice I can give: remember to look up. And keep moving – if you stay in one place too long, you are likely to have your neck snapped from behind or even be pulled off the ledge you are perched on!
As for the cooperative playlist, we’ve put in a snippet of one of our co-op experiences. Our co-op setups are really rocking right now with three people playing as Drake, Sully, and Chloe as they fight their way through a war-torn city to recover a treasure worth a fortune. In this mode, teamwork is everything and running off alone is a sure way to get killed. Thankfully, in most cases – except for, say, being blown up —you’re not out of the game. If you’ve been downed, you can be revived by one of the other players before your timer runs out! If everyone wipes, you start at the last checkpoint you passed, but be careful, if everyone wipes three times the match is over and you have to start over again. Oh, and keep an eye out on the combo meter on the upper right of the screen. Keep your combo meter increasing by getting kills, picking up treasures or completing objectives and you’ll get a multiplier to the points and cash you’re accumulating. Enemy kills are worth different point amounts depending on what gun you used, so experiment to get the best results. I’ll give you a hint, pistols are awesome.
A quick note on your rank and the Profile screen. You are ranked on the total amount of online cash you have earned. This includes both the co-op and competitive modes, so you can rank up either way. In competitive, you earn cash for defeating enemies, and earning medals. In co-op, you earn cash for your point score and by earning medals. You can see your rank both next to your name in the lobby and scoreboard, as well as in the Profile screen. In the Profile screen you can see your rank and how far until the next level, you can select Boosters to give yourself a leg up in competitive multiplayer, and select your player skins for competitive multiplayer. Remember to select your boosters before playing competitive multiplayer, and be aware that boosters do not apply in the co-op playlist.
One of the few highlights of Ubisoft’s E3 press conference was an extended look at Assassin’s Creed 2’s cinematics. That and the game’s release date. The game will be out on November 17, late enough to be fresh in everyone’s mind come “GOTY” awards, early enough to still sell a few million come Christmas time.
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