Marshall's New Media News

September 11, 2009 - Back in June, a handful of PlayStation 3 owners got tapped to participate in the multiplayer beta for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Players could take on a co-op mission, blast each other in deathmatch, and go after some golden idols whenever they felt like it. People seemed to be having fun and enjoying the taste of what was to come.

Now, Naughty Dog's going to blow that "taste" out of the water with a massive Uncharted 2 multiplayer demo that is open to anyone with a PS3 and the Internet.

There's so much going on in this demo that's it's really hard to pick where to begin describing it. I talked to the developers the other day, and they said the purpose of this freebie is to give you as much of the multiplayer game as they can in a reasonably sized file. So, you give Naughty Dog 1.5 GB, and they're giving you four maps, four competitive modes, two co-op modes, the much-hyped cinema mode, the ability to create custom games, access to new skins, about 80 percent of the boosters you'll find in the final game, and so much more.

If they weren't planning on shutting the demo down around the time the game ships on October 13th, there's a good chance people would play this forever.

In terms of maps, you're getting the same Plaza and Village settings you played on or at least saw during the beta along with the Ice Cave and Temple. Both of these locales are described as smaller venues that are going to be a blast for close-quarters combat. The Ice Cave, of course, is going to feature that snow you're always seeing in the Uncharted trailers while the Temple will pack water sections and plenty of opportunities to flank opponents.

Similarly, Deathmatch and Plunder are back this time around -- both packing variations such as different difficulties for Plunder and weapon sets such as shotguns/snipers and pistols/grenades for DM -- but joined with Elimination and Chain Reaction. A round-based game, Elimination has two teams squaring off with the objective of killing everyone on the other team. Wipe out the other guys three out of five times, and you're the big winner. Chain Reaction has you capturing flags, but you have to do them in a specific order - one team works out from their base needing to capture 1 through 5 while the other team starts out from their home and needs to snag 5 through 1.

If you don't like any of the default settings, this demo's going to allow you to mess around with the options for sore limits, friendly fire and so on as well as letting you set up matches for just your friends. If you play with strangers, the new skill ranking system will pair you with similarly experienced players.

Of course, all of this multiplayer mayhem plays into the game's cinema mode where you can save matches, replay them, move the camera around, and do nifty green screen stuff. All of the tools that will be in the final cinema portion of the game are going to be here for you to play around with.

A final feather in the demo's cap is that it's going to have the fully fleshed-out money/store system so that you can take the cash you're earning in multiplayer and buy new skins, boosters, co-op weapon upgrades and taunts.