Archive for September, 2009

Hey guys,

In case you didn’t know, the Uncharted 2 demo/beta went live yesterday. The game looks to be one of the highest reviewed games of this console generation, and it’s coming out in two weeks or so.

I tried the game out last night. When you choose to player multiplayer, you have to choose a class of game types, and then get to vote on two choices.

First I chose the Deathmatch class and ended up in a game of Elimination, where one team has to eliminate the other. Once you’re dead, you watch the rest of the match. Needless to say, I kept dying right away, got no kills, and definitely got no thrills. It was a really painful experience.

Next up I tried the Objective class and got in a game type (I forget what it’s called) where you have to capture 5 zones in order, and the enemy has to capture them in reverse order. It was quite confusing, and I couldn’t find which zone was the next one to capture. I think my teammates had the same problem, and we lost in a matter of minutes. I’ve played this game type in other games before, and it can by quite a lot of fun, so I’ll give it another try sometime.

This is where I got smart. I created my own match for me and my friends, of which there were none. It gave me a chance to figure out the controls, and I discovered that there’s a mechanic for hiding behind obstacles! Who knew? Not me. And so I figured out how to throw grenades, switch weapons, jump, climb, etc.

Last up I played two Objective class games, and they were both the treasure hunt ones, where your team has to go retrieve a treasure and bring it back to home base. I don’t know if it was just because nobody else knew what was going on or what, but I did great! In one game I personally retrieved the treasure three out of five times, and in the second I got it four times. And I actually killed people instead of getting slaughtered! I finished at the top of the charts for the second game, and I think the first game too. It felt good, and it was a lot of fun.

The games are smaller matches with only eight or ten players, so it wasn’t crazy mayhem. You actually had a bit of time to think, skulk, and do whatever you feel like. Another cool thing is that the game has a set of eight good and eight bad characters. (Only five are unlocked at first.) You can choose a random character, or choose one yourself. So the characters on your team don’t all look the same, which is great. Identifying friend or foe is not a problem because all foes have their names in red and all friends have their names in green over them.

Once I understood the game, I had a blast. The graphics are awesome, the level design is fun. The game feels very different from any other shooter out there, and it’s a refreshing change.