Uncharted 2: Among Theives Beta Impressions [PS3]

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Posted June 25, 2009 by KPabst in Featured, Featured Home, Features.

Let me start off by saying I’ve never played the first Uncharted game, and my knowledge of it is pretty limited. I know the protagonist is sarcastic, it was similar to a Tomb Raider game with higher quality shooting, and less T-Rex boss fights(as far as I know). After playing in this beta for a bit and seeing that ridiculous E3 trailer, the game has my interest piqued, and I’m looking forward to giving the first Uncharted, and hopefully Uncharted 2 a go.

The gunplay itself is a pretty of most third-person shooters, standard controls, standard weapon set, and the ability to toss your grenades out at any time with a tap of L2 and are devastatingly effective. The firing of guns themselves feels like they’ve got some force behind them, while the impact on enemies feels less so.  Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if your massive bullet barrage or grenade spam is even hitting an enemy, till they fall over dead or kill you first. Granted, this is a beta and could be chalked up to any number of things, evolving netcode, needing of hitbox tweaking, or even the inclusion of a Quake/Call of Duty indicator of your shots hitting the target. The guns/grenades feel great, even when lumbering around with the chaingun you feel like it’s really got some heft and weight to it. The way that your character climbs is on par with the best of the best animation in other games. Sadly, this doesn’t apply to all of the animations you go through, the roll animation for instance feels forced, artificial, and minimally effective at even moving you, you just sort of tumble forward and clumsily find your way back on your feet. The animation to slide into cover feels…slippery is the only way to describe it, when close enough to take cover, it’s almost like Tom and Jerry with slipping on a banana peel, sliding forward for a few feet till you’re in cover. Even the way that you jump feels floaty and unnatural, but at least climbing looks gorgeous.

Something that sets Uncharted 2 apart from most other third person shooters is the inclusion of the ability to climb your way around certain parts of the maps, where other games do their damnest to restrict you to the basic arena. So far, all it really does is make you have to climb a ledge where another game would make it a simple ramp or ladder, but the possibility for this is huge. Climb the side of a wall around a corner when being chased, or climb up and lie in wait for anybody who happens by and drop behind them. Few games have added a new element like this that fundamentally changes the way their MP plays, one example can be found in Prey, which added different gravity wells that had people walking around on the ceiling in addition to the floors. Lets hope they can execute on the possibilities for this, at least on a few maps.

It seems that every game and their spinoff is grabbing for the coveted Call of Duty formula, and Uncharted 2 is no different; As you get kills, complete objectives, win matches, you get money which levels you up toward new ranks and new “boosters”, which are essentially perks, although I haven’t seen any boosters outside of the default ones provided. A few abilities that I’ve seen include direct copies of COD4 perks like bandoleer, which increases how many bullets you hold per clip, and the basic increasing of accuracy on different guns in different modes(iron sights, from the hip). Seeing this kind of persistence and progression isn’t a bad thing, and adds a meta-game of leveling up on top of the already solid game. It would just be nice to see a developer try and integrate a new meta-game, or even a genre other then RPG(leveling, experience, etc).

So far, Uncharted 2, at least the multiplayer componet, is coming along nicely. With only a few blemishes, a bit of aped ideas, and massive possibility, it’s hard to imagine what kind of magic they can pull off. The game is changing, and the beta is just a taste of a couple maps and game types, it’ll be great to see what other new and different type they ship with the game. Just a few days after the beta went live, there was already a patch, and another one just the other day. They’re listening to the community, fixing things, and making the game as best as it can be.

Tagged as Among Theives, Naughty Dog, Sony Computer Entertainment, Uncharted 2