Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Hands-on

by Greg Miller - IGN.com | 27 April 2009 12:00
 
MULTIPLAYER CONFIRMED.
 
I'm a pretty big fan of the Uncharted franchise. I've got my Platinum Trophy for the first game, and I'm eagerly awaiting Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Still, when I've gone to events for the sequel, my biggest concern has been where Elena and Sully are and why they haven't been announced for this game. Sure, with titles such as Resident Evil 5 as ammunition, I've asked about the possibility of multiplayer, but I had always assumed that if multiplayer came to Nathan Drake's world, it would be your standard, side-by-side co-op affair.
 
Turns out, I know nothing, and Naughty Dog was nice enough to completely level my perception of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at a recent event unveiling both cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes. Both are online-only affairs.
Come see the action for yourself.Now, the Dogs said that there are going to be a bunch of different game types and options for you to check out, but for my hands-on time, they kept it limited to co-op, team deathmatch, and a few rounds of Plunder (capture the flag in the Uncharted universe). Cooperative matches were for three people at a time (folks played as Nate, Chloe, and Sully) while the competitive matches were for teams of five -- a villain team of SWAT-looking guys and a hero team featuring Nathan, Chloe, Sullivan, some dude in a hat, and Elena. Don't freak out fans; Naughty Dog said that the inclusion of Elena and Sullivan in multiplayer didn't technically confirm them for the single-player campaign because the two characters were using their skins from the original Uncharted (there'll be a few options like this), but it's close enough for me.
 
Co-op was probably the experience of the night for me. Remember how much fun Uncharted was as you took cover behind crates, snapped the necks of bad guys, and earned medals? All that is here, but now you get to do it with two friends. However, this is not the same story as the single-player campaign. These co-op missions will be instances and experiences that are all their own.
 
The level I got to tackle was a modified version of the one I got to see last time with the crashed bus, sun-splashed streets, and lush colors. The mission started with a cutscene of our heroes scoping a worn treasure map and Drake pointing in one direction and saying this is where we needed to go. When gameplay picked up, I was at one end of a long corridor that curved around a building and had plenty of cover objects in it. My two companions and myself stormed down the space, were greeted by the bad guys, and soon let our natural Uncharted skills take over as we leapt behind boxes and only popped up to rake in the occasional headshot.
 
Of course, when someone on my team got cocky, he or she would get dropped. Like most co-op titles these days, you have the chance to revive fallen teammates. When hurt, the player will drop to one knee and clutch the ground while an icon mimicking the position pops up above the hurtin' hero. Around the icon is a red meter that's slowly bleeding out. The team has that long to get over to the downed comrade and hold Triangle to refill the meter and get the soldier back on his or her feet. If no one comes to the player's aid, they wait 20 seconds, restart at the last checkpoint, and run back to the battleground. If everyone dies, the mission restarts from the last checkpoint.
 

She's got your back.

Sticking together is going to be key to besting the challenges in co-op Uncharted (duh), even though you will be competing to see who got the most points in a round -- something made more interesting by the point multiplier that's building in the upper right corner of the screen while you're shooting and brawling. Although most PlayStation 3 owners feel right at home when they're hiding behind cover and watching dozens of enemies setup camp in front, Naughty Dog has dropped a number of mission points and enemies that you just can't get past by yourself.
 
After my squad had cleared the alleyway of foes, we popped out in that area where the bus had crashed in the single-player demo. Back then, Drake got around the obstruction by climbing a refrigerator, shimmying up a light pole, and leaping across the sides of buildings. In the co-op campaign, the fridge is gone so Drake can't just scale the pole by himself. Instead, a red icon featuring two silhouettes pops up by the pole to let you know some teamwork is needed to advance. As Sully, I walked to the red circle on the ground, Nate walked to his, and with the press of a button, I gave him a boost. Drake went about shimmying around up there, while Chloe and I fought off the waves of bad guys that decided to swoop in on us. With us engaging the enemy, Nathan climbed to a room, found a bookcase, and knocked out a window to the street below. He rejoined us, we beat the baddies, and then we all moved to the bookcase -- now marked with a set of three silhouettes -- and repositioned it as a ramp to the top of the bus. This let us get to the next section.
 
In terms of the big bad enemies you'll need to gang up on, Naughty Dog says that there will be a few, but I only got to see a "grappler" and a massive dude who was armored like a tank and packing a gigantic chaingun. The grappler is pretty much a sneaky jerk who is using the choke moves Nathan showcased in the first game. He'll get up behind you, put you in a sleeper hold, and you'll be powerless to stop him; it's up to your team to pop the guy in the head and save your skin. For the chaingunner, my squad had to stick together, stay in cover, and shoot as fast as we could to take the opponent out without getting vaporized. At one point, our plan broke down and Chloe was taken out near the treasure we were after. I was pressed up against a doorjamb and doing a bit of blind fire in hopes that I could take out the chaingunner. Of course, I had been playing cowboy and not picking up the ammo enemies dropped, so soon I found myself without a bullet to my name. I tossed a grenade, made a mad dash for Chloe's body, and soon found the screen black and white while my body lay on the ground. It's unclear whether the gunner's bullets or my own grenade killed me, but I got the "Purple Heart" medal postmortem… whatever that means. When you are successful and wipe out the big man, you can pick up his gatling gun and tear apart anything that moves just like your opponent did, but it's important to keep in mind that Friendly Fire is definitely alive and well in Uncharted 2. When I first jumped into another play session, I quickly reacquainted myself with the buttons and tossed a grenade right at Chloe's feet. It went off, she got blown into the sky, and I waited while she respawned. I was thrilled to find the rocket launcher on another outing, but I doubt my friend playing as Sully was as excited when I buried a round right between his shoulder blades as he jogged into combat. Some of the coolest new items in Uncharted are the graspable propane tanks that are littered around the levels. They'll slow you down, but you can grab them, walk with them, and toss them into the air before shooting them and taking out a mass of people… some of whom may be your own people.
 
However, if you don't literally kill each other before making it to the treasure, you'll find the treasure chest and have to defend it for a set period of time. Wave after wave of enemies is going to be coming at you during this standoff, so you'll need to be gathering ammo and switching up your position every now and again, but some good communication should lead to the cutscene of Drake opening the chest and pulling out a big ol' golden idol.
 

Villain!

That same idol will be the star of one of the competitive multiplayer modes. Plunder challenges your team of five to get across the map, grab the golden statue, and get it back to base for a point. Whereas team deathmatch rewards you for kills with points, the only way to get on the official scoreboard in Plunder is by banking the idol. Now, if co-op feels like your traditional (see: awesome) Uncharted experience mixed with friends, competitive play looks like your traditional Uncharted game but feels nothing like it.
 
I mean, yeah, you're Nathan or one of his cohorts, but you're running, gunning, and trying not to get killed. You won't have the luxury of enemies who stay in one place, you won't be able to just chill out behind cover and catch your breath, and you won't be able to feel like the baddest mother on the planet with ease. I feel like I'm a seasoned Uncharted player, and I was getting thoroughly pwned in my first few games of head-to-head TDM competition. True, I turned it around in the end and kicked the butt of Naughty Dog Co-President Christophe Balestra (check out Podcast Beyond on Thursday, April 30, 2009 for the full report), but the beginning was rough because I was still trying to play the mode like I was playing the average game of Uncharted. Don't do that. Run, shoot, and run some more.
 
These TDM brawls were taking place in a blown out plaza at night. The map was filled with torches, destroyed buildings, and things to take cover behind. On the other side, the Plunder missions were going down in a tiny village map that had huts everywhere. Some of these structures had ladders that you could use to crawl to the roofs and cherry pick from there, which I was all too happy to do. Both of these environments looked as good as you'd expect an Uncharted game to look and didn't seem to have any sections of slowdown or framerate dips. Even though nine more people were playing, it still looked like you'd expect Uncharted to look -- even when I fired an RPG into a dude hiding behind some cover and watched as his body spiraled into the air and the cover he was using exploded.
 
What's crazy cool on top of all that competitive goodness -- well, besides the slew of weapons from the game such as sniper rifles, the Desert-5, the SAS-12 shotgun, and the Colt Defender? You're going to be able to save entire multiplayer matches to your hard drive and then edit them and view them in Cinema Mode. Rotating the camera at will and zooming in on specific fights will be just some of the commands you have for the ten cinema save slots at your fingertips. Naughty Dog didn't show the mode, but it definitely sounds interesting.
 

That was close.

Believe it or not, that's just the tip of the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves multiplayer madness. Naughty Dog was sure to stress that there are going to be other modes and a number of co-op missions, but the examples you just read about were all the team was prepared to show. Honestly, I had always been a bit mixed on the idea of multiplayer in Uncharted; I liked the idea of the franchise being a solid single-player experience and nothing else. Still, co-op is a blast and I'm thankful it is its own entity so that the single-player portion can thrive and not be tied to having to have a friend playing to get the full story. Meanwhile, competitive multiplayer is fun, too, but I'm going to need to play more before I get crazy excited about it. Everything looked great visually, but the mode never really had the Uncharted feel to it for me.
 
Anxious to get your hands on Uncharted 2's multiplayer? Well, you can keep checking IGN for news and previews, but if you buy one of the first copies of Infamous, Sucker Punch's new superhero game, you'll get a voucher code for Uncharted 2's multiplayer beta packed right in with it. Electricity-based abilities and Nathan Drake craziness? Sweet.
 
Supplied by IGN.com