Perhaps lost in the hooplah of E3 and the long-anticipated re-release of Final Fantasy 7 is the fact that the multiplayer beta for Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves went live this evening. If you bought inFAMOUS, you, too, can join in, using the code that came with the copy of your game. There’s two halves to the beta: a competitive mode which includes Team Deathmatch and Plunder (basically one-flag CTF) modes and two maps to play them on, as well as a co-operative mode. Since I don’t have a mic, I haven’t yet tried out the co-op mode. Hit the jump for my impressions!

A lot of people seemed worried that Uncharted, being a single-player only franchise so far, would have a multiplayer component that was tacked-on as a gimmick to sell more copies. However, in my time spent with the beta, the online portion of the game has been nothing short of awesome.

The controls are pretty similar to the original Uncharted, with a couple of tweaks. The cover system seems to work much better; I found myself accidentally sticking to walls and ledges a lot less frequently during the beta than I have on my time spent with the original Uncharted. The aiming also seems to move a lot faster than the original Uncharted, as well as feeling a bit smoother. Also, you don’t have to use the SIXAXIS function of your controller to aim your grenade throws, which is nice.

The game itself is stunning, and maintains a solid framerate. The netcode also seems stable, as I’ve only run into one three-second long hiccup of lag, and the connection I’m playing is actually less than ideal. In fact, the netcode of this so-called beta seems to play better than many completed products that you’re asked to pay sixty bucks for.

The game play itself is incredibly fun. Just like in the single player version of Uncharted, you can climb almost anything, and need to if you want to get the edge over your opponents. While the two levels I’ve played don’t have more than two stories worth of verticality, holding the high ground gives you a distinct advantage, and a lot of the best sniper roosts are going to force you to expose yourself while climbing up there.
In fact, while playing Plunder on the Plaza map, you have to throw the treasure you’re carrying up to the capture point, and then climb up to actually cap it. This is a really awesome idea, because it makes the flag capture points for both teams the sites of some extremely tense firefights that can go on for several agonizing minutes.
One of the features that I hope Naughty Dog improves on for the full-fledged version of Uncharted 2 is their perks system. As it stands right now, there’s only two categories of perks: ones that make your various weapons more accurate, and ones that effect your ammo. They’re nice and all, but pretty much everyone has the same load-out, so more perks would be awesome.

However, there are a couple of things that Naughty Dog needs to improve on before the game goes retail. For one, the hit boxes around players’ heads seem a bit dodgy at times, especially with the sniper rifle, but of course that could just be user error. I also found an annoying bug on the Plaza level, where your character would often “fall” through the ground on a particular ledge you needed to climb in order to get to the flag capture point. It would also be nice if Naughty Dog gave a bigger variety of guns, or at least improved the spawn rates of some of the better ones (such as the sniper and the M4 assault rifle), because as it is right now you’re probably going to spend a lot of time with your starter weapons.

Last, but not least, the way the game assigns teams since arbitrary at best, and completely unfair at its worst. You rank up as you play, similar to Halo 3 (not CoD:MW, because, as far as I can tell, you don’t actually earn anything when you level up), so you would think the game would try its best to make teams even. Nope. There has been a lot of times where I’ve been on a team stacked with guys whose ranks are in the double digits, and we’re facing a group of scrubs who haven’t even hit level five. A lot of games end up being blowouts, which just isn’t a lot of fun and can be downright discouraged. If Naughty Dog is going to bother putting in a ranking system, they need to at least do SOMETHING with it.

However, for a beta of an upcoming marquee title, Uncharted 2’s multiplayer aspect is looking extremely polished, highly addictive, and a whole lot of fun to play.

Categories: Demo, Hype Machine, Impressions, PlayStation 3, Sony